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Title: The Radicalism of Shelley and Its Sources

Author: Daniel J. MacDonald

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  The Radicalism of Shelley and Its Sources


  BY DANIEL J. MACDONALD, PH. D.

  A DISSERTATION

  _Submitted to the Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic
  University of America in Partial Fulfillment of the
  Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy_

  WASHINGTON, D. C.
  JUNE, 1912




CONTENTS


                                                                      PAGE

  INTRODUCTION--NATURE OF RADICALISM                                     5

  CHAPTER I--EARLY INFLUENCES                                           12

      Lack of sympathetic home training--Eton--disappointment in
      love--Oxford, conditions there bad--meets cynic Hogg--both
      publish _The Necessity of Atheism_, and are expelled--marries
      Harriet Westbrook--begins correspondence with Godwin--visits
      Dublin to aid Catholic Emancipation--Conditions of people of
      England--Caleb Williams--Queen Mab.

  CHAPTER II--VIEWS ON MARRIAGE AND LOVE                                36

      Parting from Harriet--views on marriage--influence of Godwin,
      of Lawrence's _The Empire of the Naires_--abuses of marriage
      in different countries--the _Naires_ a possible source of
      _Rosalind and Helen_--flight with Mary Godwin--Brown's
      _Wieland_--_The Revolt of Islam_--The _Missionary_ an
      important source of the Revolt--Platonism and his view of
      love--_Epipsychidion_--Mary Wollstonecraft's _Vindication of
      The Rights of Women_--Louvet's _Memoirs_.

  CHAPTER III--POLITICS                                                 66

      Godwin's _Political Justice_--every kind of obedience wrong--
      views on kingcraft--on violence and punishment of death--reform
      through education--principle of justice--laws--ownership of
      property--luxuries--vegetarianism--Leigh Hunt--proposal for
      putting Reform to a vote--_Prometheus Unbound_--masque of
      Anarchy--philosophical view of Reform--the perfectibility of
      man.

  CHAPTER IV--RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY                                   87

      His views on Christianity--not an atheist--agnostic--sources of
      views on belief, Locke, Spinoza, Drummond--God not a creator--
      Pantheism--God, Love, and Beauty identical--immortality of the
      soul--idealism--necessity--freedom of the will--good and evil,
      their origin--virtue equivalent to happiness--disbelief in the
      doctrine of hell.

  CHAPTER V--RADICALISM IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY                         108

      Wordsworth--the Lyrical Ballads--The Prelude and Excursion--
      Coleridge.

  CHAPTER VI--CONCLUSION                                               125

      Weakness of the Radical, of Shelley--Strength of the Radical,
      of Shelley.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                         139

  BIOGRAPHY                                                            143




THE RADICALISM OF SHELLEY AND ITS SOURCES[1]

BY DANIEL J. MCDONALD, PH.D.




INTRODUCTION


The following study of the development of the religious and political
views of Shelley is made with the view to help one in forming a true
estimate of his work and character.

That there is a real difficulty in estimating correctly the life and works
of Shelley no one acquainted with the varied judgments passed upon him
will deny. Professor Trent claims that there is not a more perplexing and
irritating subject for study than Shelley.[2] By some our poet is regarded
as an angel, a model of perfection; by others he is looked upon as "a rare
prodigy of crime and pollution whose look even might infect." Mr.
Swinburne calls him "the master singer of our modern poets," but neither
Wordsworth nor Keats could appreciate his poetry. W. M. Rossetti, in an
article on Shelley in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica,
writes as follows: "In his own day an alien in the world of mind and
invention, and in our day scarcely yet a denizen of it, he appears
destined to become in the long vista of years an informing presence in the
innermost shrine of human thought." Matthew Arnold, on the other hand, in
one of his last essays, writes: "But let no one suppose that a want of
humor and a self-delusion such as Shelley's have no effect upon a man's
poetry. The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and
Shelley's poetry is not entirely sane either." Views so entirely
different, coming as they do from such eminent critics are surely
perplexing. Nevertheless, there seems to be a light which can illuminate
this difficulty, render intelligible his life and works, and help us to
form a just estimate of them. This light is a comprehension of the
influence which inspired him in all he did and all he wrote--in a word, a
comprehension of his radicalism. A great deal of the difficulty connected
with the study of Shelley arises from ignorance concerning radicalism
itself. I shall therefore begin by giving a short description of its
nature and function.

To many, radicalism is suggestive only of revolution and destruction. In
their eyes it is the spouse of disorder and the mother of tyranny. Its
devotees are wild-eyed fanatics, and in its train are found social
outcasts and the scum of humanity. To others, radicalism presents a
totally different aspect. These admit that it has been unfortunate in the
quality of many of its adherents, but at the same time they claim that it
has proven itself the mainspring of progress in every sphere of human
activity. It is depicted as the cause of all the reforms achieved in
society. Without it old ideas and principles would always prevail, and
stagnation would result. "Conservative politicians," says Leslie Stephen,
"owe more than they know to the thinkers (radicals) who keep alive a faith
which renders the world tolerable and puts arbitrary rulers under some
moral stress of responsibility."[3]

Although radicalism is a disposition found in every period of history,
still the word itself is of comparatively recent origin. It first came
into vogue about the year 1797, when Fox and Horne Tooke joined forces to
bring about a "radical reform." In this epithet one finds the idea of
going to the roots of a question, which was characteristic of eighteenth
century philosophy. Then the expression seems to have disappeared for a
time. In July, 1809, a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ says: "It cannot
be doubted that there is at the moment ... a very general desire for a
more 'radical' reform than would be effected by a mere change of
ministry."[4] It was not until 1817, however, that the adjective "radical"
began to be used substantively. On August 18, 1817, Cartwright wrote to T.
Northmore: "The crisis, in my judgment, is very favorable for effecting an
union with the _radicals_, of the better among the Whigs, and I am
meditating on means to promote it." In 1820 Bentham wrote a pamphlet
entitled _Radicalism Not Dangerous_, and in this work he uses the word
"radicalists" instead of "radicals."

For a long time the word "radical" was a term of reproach. Sir Fowell
Buxton, speaking of the Radicals, says he was persuaded that their object
was "the subversion of religion and of the constitution."

Since that time a radical has come to mean any root-and-branch reformer;
and radicalism itself may be defined as a tendency to abolish existing
institutions or principles. As soon as either of these seems to have
outlived its usefulness, radicalism will clamor for its suppression.
Discontent, then, is a source of radicalism. This, however, is of a dual
nature--discontent with conditions and discontent with institutions or
principles. Many conservatives indulge in the former, only radicals in the
latter. Again radicalism is not a mere "tearing up by the roots," as the
word is commonly interpreted, but is rather, as Philips Brooks writes, "a
getting down to the root of things and planting institutions anew on just
principles. An enlightened radicalism has regard for righteousness and
good government, and will resist all enslavement to old forms and
traditions, and will set them aside unless it shall appear that any of
these have a radically just and defensible reason for their existence and
continuance."

Radicalism thrives where conditions are favorable to a change in ideals.
It aims to establish new institutions or to propagate new principles, and
this presupposes new ideals. As the habits of a man tend to correspond to
his ideals, so too the institutions of a nation conform in a broad way to
its ideals. In England during the Middle Ages the institutions of the
country were strongly influenced by the religious ideal; later on, when
the nation's ideal became national glory, they assumed a political
character; and now they reflect the dominant influence which the economic
ideal has exerted during the past century. The ideals of a people than are
bound to undergo changes, and these are sometimes, though not always, for
a nation's good. They are developed in the main by an increase in
knowledge and by industrial change. Institutions, however, do not keep
pace with this advance in ideals; and as a consequence discontent results
and radicalism is born.

Moreover, institutions are never an adequate expression of the ideal. "Men
are never as good as the goodness they know. Institutions reveal the same
truth. The margin between what society knows and what it is" makes
radicalism possible. In his introduction to _The Revolt of Islam_, Shelley
expresses the same thought: "The French Revolution may be considered as
one of those manifestations of a general state of feeling among civilized
mankind produced by a defect of correspondence between the knowledge
existing in society and the improvement or gradual abolition of political
institutions." The greater that this defect of correspondence becomes, the
more intense will be the radicalism that inevitably ensues.

Radicals want a change. The extent of this change differentiates them
fairly well among themselves. Some would completely sweep away every
existing institution. Thus Shelley thought the great victory would be won
if he could exterminate kings and priests at a blow.

                                    Let the axe
  Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall[5]

Others would be content with changes of a far less radical character.
Burke, in his early life, was the most moderate of these. At a time when
the British constitution was sorely in need of reform he said concerning
it: "Never will I cut it in pieces and put it in the kettle of any
magician in order to boil it with the puddle of their compounds into youth
and vigor; on the contrary, I will drive away such pretenders; I will
nurse its venerable age and with lenient arts extend a parent's breath."
Between these two extremes many different degrees of radicalism obtain. In
his _Ecce, Convertimur ad Gentes_, Arnold writes: "For twenty years I have
felt convinced that for the progress of our civilization here in England
three things were above all necessary: a reduction of those immense
inequalities of condition and property among us of which our land system
is the cause, a genuine municipal system, and public schools for the
middle class."

A just appreciation of the radicalism of Shelley's poetry is impossible
without a knowledge of the function of radicalism, and so it must be
considered a little more in detail.

An attempt to abolish an institution is sure to encounter the opposition
of those whose interests are bound up with that institution. The good that
it has accomplished in the past is sufficient warrant for defending it
against the onslaught of its assailants. _Le bien c'est l'ennemi du
mieux._ No matter how inadequate the institution in question may now be,
it will still be championed by the great majority; and were it not for the
radicals' enthusiasm and faith in their cause their opposition would be in
vain. As a witty exponent of homespun philosophy expresses it: "Most
people would rather be comfortable than be right." They may see that a
change is needed, but they hold on to the old order of things as long as
possible. Long before 1789 the French nobility realized that they should
give up their claims to exemption from taxation, yet they retained them
all until forced to relinquish them. Had the "privileges" been less
conservative, the Revolution would never have occurred. It may be said
then that radicalism is born of conservatism. Without it might would be
right, and anything like justice would be well-nigh impossible.

Another factor in the development of radicalism is the inertia of mind and
will of a great many people. Most persons are not easily induced to
undertake anything that requires some exertion. They prefer to sit back
and let others bear the burdens of the day and its heat. A good example of
this is the indifference shown by the French Catholics towards the
oppressive legislation of their rulers. Fortunately, however, in those
countries where free scope is given to the individual, and where liberty
of speech is firmly established, there will always be found some who are
ever ready to take the initiative in demanding a change. Their radicalism
tends to counteract the influence of this sleeping sickness. It holds up
to men the ideal, and inflames them with a desire of attaining it.

Again, the emotions do not move as fast as the intellect. They will cling
to their objects long after the intellect has counselled otherwise.

  A man convinced against his will
    Is of the same opinion still.[6]

Radicalism presents to men an ideal state where everybody is bright and
free and happy; and thus helps to detach the affections from beliefs and
institutions which are no longer helpful. The emotions may not adhere to
the radicals' scheme, but they are at least freed from their old bondage
and can embrace the reforms of the less conservative. The influence that
radicalism exerts in this way is a very powerful one. Everybody knows
Carlyle's famous outburst of rhetoric bearing on this point: "There was
once a man called Jean Jacques Rousseau. He wrote a book called _The
Social Contract_. It was a theory and nothing but a theory. The French
nobles laughed at the theory, and their skins went to bind the second
edition of the book."

The strength of radicalism lies in the fact that it is poetical and
philosophical. Through philosophy it makes its influence felt on a
country's leaders, through poetry on the citizens themselves. Andrew
Fletcher, of Saltown, has said: "Let me write a country's songs, and I
don't care who makes its laws." The poet and the radical are brothers.
Both live on abstractions. As soon as they particularize their mission
fails; the one ceases to be a poet and the other a radical. In his
admirable essay on Shelley, Francis Thompson tells clergymen that "poetry
is the preacher to men of the earthly as you of the Heavenly Fairness."
According to Saint-Beuve "the function of art is to disengage the elements
of beauty, to escape from the mere frightful reality." Substitute
radicalism for poetry and art in these quotations and they would still be
true. Emerson calls the poets "liberating gods." The ancient bards had for
the title of their order: "Those who are free throughout the world." "They
are free and they make free." This is exactly what one would write about
radicals. Poetry and radicalism then go hand in hand. When radicalism is
in the ascendant, poetry will throb with the feverish energy of the
people. It will not only be more abundant, but it will show more of real
life--the stuff of which literature is made. In conservative times
questions concerning life do not agitate men's minds to any great extent.
People take things as they find them. Set men a thinking, however, place
new ideals before them, and then you get a Shakespeare and a Milton or a
galaxy of sparkling gems such as scintillated in the dawn of the
nineteenth century.

We find then two tendencies which always exist in any progressive
society--radicalism and conservatism. Both have appeared in connection
with every phase of thought and human activity. Either, as Emerson has
said, is a good half but an impossible whole. One is too impetuous, the
other is too wary. The one rushes blindly into the future, the other
clings too much to the past. There is constant warfare between the two for
the mastery. In a progressive community neither of them is in the
ascendant for any length of time. A period of radicalism is inevitably
followed by one of conservatism and _vice versa_. The pendulum swings to
one extreme and then back again to the other. As long as human nature will
be what it is, our institutions will be defective, and change will be the
order of the day. This no doubt results in progress, which Goethe has
compared to a movement in a spiral direction.

This action and reaction is reflected in the literature of a nation. No
matter what definition of literature we may accept, whether it be Newman's
personal use of language, Swinburne's imagination and harmony, or Matthew
Arnold's criticism of life, it will always be found that literature is a
crystallization of the ideals of the age. This is true both of poetry and
of prose. The poet is not an isolated individual. On the contrary, he is
peculiarly sensitive to the influences which surround him. He is the
revealer and the awakener of these influences. "And the poet listens and
he hears; and he looks and he sees; and he bends lower and lower and he
weeps; and then growing with a strange growth, drawing from all the
darkness about him his own transfiguration, he stands erect, terrible and
tender, above all those wretched ones--those of high place as well as
those of low, with flaming eyes."[7]




CHAPTER I

EARLY INFLUENCES


The intensity of one's radicalism depends on the extent to which the
institutions of a country cause one suffering and disappointment. Shelley
says in Julian and Maddalo:

                Most wretched men
  Are cradled into poetry by wrong,
  They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

A description of Shelley's radicalism then must take account of all the
circumstances that tended to make him dissatisfied with existing
institutions. Some of these circumstances may seem trifling, but then it
must be remembered that events which appear insignificant sometimes have
far-reaching effects. Pascal remarked once that the whole aspect of the
world would be different if Cleopatra's nose had been a little shorter.
The history of Shelley's life is a series of incidents which tended to
make him radical. He never had a chance to be anything else. No sooner
would he be brought in contact with conservative influences than something
would happen to push him again on the high road of revolt. Even were he
temperamentally conservative (and Hogg says that "his feelings and
behavior were in many respects highly aristocratical"), the experiences
that he underwent were of such a nature as to inevitably lead him into
radicalism.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, in the county of Sussex, on
Saturday, the 4th of August, 1792. His family was an ancient and honorable
one whose history extends back to the days of the Crusades. His
grandfather, Bysshe Shelley, born in America, accumulated a large fortune,
married two heiresses, and in 1806 received a baronetcy. In his old age he
became whimsical, greedy, and sullen. He was a skeptic hoping for nothing
better than annihilation at the end of life.[8] With regard to the poet's
father, it is very difficult to form a just estimate. There is no doubt
that Shelley enthusiasts decried the father too much in their efforts to
canonize the son. It would indeed be strange to find any father at that
time who would be capable of giving our poet that guidance and training
which his nature demanded. It was a time when might was right, when the
rod held a large place in the formation of a boy's character. We must not
be too severe then on the father if he was unacquainted with the proper
way of dealing with his erratic son. No one who has read Jeafferson's life
of the poet will say that Bysshe treated his son too harshly. It was his
judgment rather than his heart that was at fault. Medwin remarks that all
he brought back from Europe was a smattering of French and a bad picture
of an eruption of Vesuvius.

It is to his mother that Shelley owes his beauty and his good nature. He
said that she was mild and tolerant, but narrow-minded. Very few
references to the home of his boyhood are made in his poetry; and this
leads us to believe that neither his father nor his mother had much
influence over him.

In his childhood he seems to have had the day dreams and reveries that
Wordsworth had. "Let us recollect our sensations as children," Shelley
writes, in the _Essay on Life_, "What a distinct and intense apprehension
had we of the world and of ourselves!... We less habitually distinguished
all that we saw and felt from ourselves. They seemed, as it were, to
constitute one mass. There are some persons who in this respect are always
children. Those who are subject to the state called reverie feel as if
their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe or as if the
surrounding universe were absorbed into their being." In Book II of the
_Prelude_ Wordsworth gives expression to a similar experience:

  Oft in these moments such a holy calm
  Would overspread my soul that bodily eyes
  Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw
  Appeared like something in myself--a dream
  A prospect in the mind.

Shelley from the very beginning delighted in giving free scope to his
imagination. In the garret of the house at Field Place he imagined there
was an alchemist old and grey pondering over magic tomes. The "Great Old
Snake" and the "Great Tortoise" were other wondrous creatures of his
imagination that lived out of doors. He used to entertain his sisters
with weird stories about hobgoblins and ghosts; and even got them to
dress themselves so as to represent fiends and spirits. In the _Hymn to
Intellectual Beauty_ he writes:

  While yet a boy I sought for ghosts and sped
  Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin
  And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing,
  Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

He was attached to the occult sciences and sometimes watched whole nights
for ghosts. Once he described minutely a visit which he said he had paid
to some neighbors, and it was discovered soon afterwards that the whole
story was a fabrication.

At ten years of age he was sent to Sion House Academy, Isleworth, where he
met his cousin and future biographer, Thomas Medwin. The other boys,
Medwin tells us, considered him strange and unsocial. It was at this
school that Shelley first became acquainted with the romantic novels of
Anne Radcliffe and the other novelists of the School of Terror. Here too
he became greatly interested in chemistry and astronomy. The idea of a
plurality of worlds, through which we "should make the grand tour,"
enchanted him. Thus we see that he began very early to live in the unreal
and the wonderful.

In 1804 he went to Eton, and there he was known as "Mad Shelley" and
"Shelley the Atheist." The word "atheist" here does not mean one who
denies the existence of God. According to Hogg, it was a term given to
those who distinguished themselves for their opposition to the authorities
of the school. The title must have fallen into disuse shortly after
Shelley's time, as Professor Dowdon failed to find at Eton any trace of
this peculiar usage of the word. Here he became interested in physical
experiments and carried them on at unseasonable hours. For this he was
frequently reprimanded by his superiors, but he proved to be very
untractable.

At Eton Shelley became acquainted with Dr. Lind, whom he immortalized as a
hermit in _The Revolt of Islam_ and as Zonoras in _Prince Athanase_. It
was Dr. Lind, according to Hogg, who gave Shelley his first lessons in
French philosophism. Jeafferson says that he taught Shelley to curse his
superiors and to write letters to unsuspecting persons to trip them up
with catch questions and then laugh at them.[9]

An event occurred in the summer of 1810 which had considerable influence
in developing the radicalism of Shelley. He had known and loved his
cousin. Harriet Grove, from childhood, and during the vacation of this
year asked her to be his wife. Harriet's family, however, became alarmed
at his atheistical tendencies and made her give up all communications with
him. This angered him very much, and made him declaim against what he
considered to be bigotry and intolerance. In a letter to Hogg, December
20, 1810, he writes: "O! I burn with impatience for the moment of the
dissolution of intolerance; it has injured me. I swear on the altar of
perjured love to revenge myself, on the hated cause of the effect; which
even now I can scarcely help deploring.... Adieu! Down with bigotry! Down
with intolerance! In this endeavour your most sincere friend will join his
every power, his every feeble resource. Adieu!" And in a letter of January
3, 1811: "She is no longer mine! She abhors me as a skeptic as what she
was before! Oh, bigotry! When I pardon this last, this severest of thy
persecutions, may Heaven (if there be wrath in Heaven) blast me!" These
ravings show Shelley to have been nervous, hysterical, and supersensitive.

The breaking of this engagement with Harriet made such an impression on
him as to convince him that he should combat all those influences which
caused the rupture. The story of Shelley's life might have been an
entirely different one had he been allowed to marry Harriet Grove. Man is
a stubborn animal. Once he takes up a certain side, opposition merely
serves to strengthen his convictions and make him fight all the harder. If
Shelley's willfulness had been ignored instead of opposed, I have no doubt
that he would have seen things in their proper light and would never have
been the rabid radical that he became. An Etonian called once on Shelley
in Oxford and asked him if he meant to be an atheist there too. "No!" he
answered, "certainly not. There is no motive for it; they are very civil
to us here; it is not like Eton."[10] It is Medwin's conviction that
Shelley never completely overcame his love for Harriet. Hogg notes that as
late as 1813 Shelley loved to play a simple air that Harriet taught him.
In the _Epipsychidion_ he refers to her thus: "And one was true--Oh! why
not true to me?" Love was to Shelley what religion is to the ascetic. He
could not understand why one should put obstacles in the way of anyone in
love, and so he thinks himself in duty bound to fight everything that
supports this hated intolerance. This led him to wage war against religion
itself.

Shelley entered University College, Oxford, in the Michaelmas term of
1810. It was unfortunate for him that conditions at the university were as
deplorable as they were. He did not find there the intellectual food that
his mind needed, and no doubt his sensitive soul was scandalized by what
it felt. Intellectual life there was dull. Mark Pattison[11] says Oxford
was nothing more than a grammar school, the college tutors were a little
inferior to public school directors, and they obtained their positions
through favoritism and not through merit. Copleston, a defender of the
university against the attacks of the _Edinburgh Review_, admitted that
only extreme incapacity or flagrant idleness would prevent a student from
obtaining his degree at the end of his course. Fynes Clinton, in his
_Autobiography_, tells us that Greek studies at Christ Church were very
much neglected. During his seven years of residence grammar, syntax,
prosody were never mentioned. Students rarely attended lectures. Much of
their time was passed in hunting, drinking, and every kind of debauchery.
"At boarding schools of every description," writes Mrs. Wollstonecraft,
"the relaxation of the junior boys is mischief; and of the senior, vice.
Besides, in great schools, what can be more prejudicial to the moral
character than the system of tyranny and abject slavery which is
established among the boys, to say nothing of the slavery to forms, which
makes religion worse than a farce? For what good can be expected from the
youth who receives the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, to avoid forfeiting
half-a-guinea, which he probably afterwards spends in some sensual
manner?"[12] Such was the atmosphere in which Shelley was placed, and it
is little wonder that it hastened the growth of the seeds of discontent
and revolt which had been already implanted in his soul.

Misfortune still pursued Shelley. Had he formed friendships at Oxford with
men of sober intellect, the whole course of his life might have been
changed. Unfortunately he soon found a kindred spirit in the cynic Hogg.

This friend of Shelley gives us minute details of the poet's life there.
He thinks that Shelley took up skeptical philosophy because of the
advantage it gave him in argument. _Hume's Essays_ was a favorite book
with Shelley, and he was always ready to put forward in argument its
doctrines. It may seem strange that this cold skeptical philosophy
appealed to such an imaginative poet as Shelley; but destruction, as Hogg
remarks, so that it be on a grand scale, may sometimes prove hardly less
inspiring than creation. "The feat of the magician who, by the touch of
his wand, could cause the great pyramid to dissolve into the air would be
as surprising as the achievement of him who by the same rod could
instantly raise a similar mass in any chosen spot."

On September 18, 1810, Stockdale offered for sale a volume of poetry by
Shelley entitled "_Original Poetry_: by Victor and Cazire." The book was
not out long when it was discovered that many of the poems were stolen
property--a fraud on the public and an infringement of at least one
writer's copyright. The book was at once withdrawn and suppressed. Some
doubt exists as to the name of the person who cooperated with Shelley in
producing this book. Shelley enthusiasts say that Shelley was the
unsuspicious victim of an unworthy coadjutor. Jeafferson is of the opinion
that Shelley was fully conscious of the fraud that was being done. This
biographer maintains that Shelley was an inveterate liar.

"About this time," says Stockdale, "not merely slight hints but constant
allusions, personally and by letters, ... rendered me extremely uneasy
respecting Mr. Shelley's religious, or indeed irreligious, sentiments."
Shelley's father too was worrying at this time about his son's loss of
faith. He may have received the first intimation of his son's speculations
from a criticism in _The Critical Review_ of another work of Shelley's,
_Zastrozzi_, in which the unknown author was condemned as an offender
against morality and a corrupter of youth. The irate father wrote to his
son and severely reprimanded him for his conduct.

In a letter to Hogg, Shelley says: "My father wrote to me, and I am now
surrounded, environed by dangers, to which compared the devils who
besieged St. Anthony were all inefficient. They attack me for my
detestable principles. I am reckoned an outcast, yet I defy them, and
laugh at their ineffectual efforts, etc." And in another letter: "My
mother imagines me to be on the highroad to Pandemonium; she fancies I
want to make a deistical coterie of my little sisters. How laughable!"
Shelley imagines the whole world is against him. He feels very keenly his
isolation. He says his "soul was bursting." There is a relief though. "I
slept with a loaded pistol and some poison last night, but did not die."

Shelley thought he was called upon to come to the aid of all those in
distress. We find him at this time aiding aspiring authors, and defending
traitorous politicians. An Irish journalist, Peter Finnerty, was condemned
for libel and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail.
Shelley contributed to a subscription list in aid of Finnerty and also
wrote a poem entitled _A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things_
to help on the cause. Leigh and John Hunt, who defended Finnerty in _The
Examiner_, were tried for seditious libel and acquitted. Shelley rejoiced
over their triumph, and wrote the following letter to Leigh Hunt
congratulating him and proposing a scheme for the mutual defense of all
friends of "rational liberty."

     UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD,
     _March 2, 1811_.

     SIR:--Permit me, although a stranger, to offer my sincerest
     congratulations on the occasion of that triumph so highly to be
     prized by men of liberality; permit me also to submit to your
     consideration, as one of the most fearless enlighteners of the public
     mind at the present time, a scheme of mutual safety and mutual
     indemnification for men of public spirit and principle, which, if
     carried into effect, would evidently be productive of incalculable
     advantages.

     The ultimate intention of my aim is to induce a meeting of such
     enlightened, unprejudiced members of the community ... and to form a
     methodical society, which should be organized so as to resist the
     coalition of the enemies of liberty.... It has been for the want of
     societies of this nature that corruption has attained the height at
     which we behold it; nor can any of us bear in mind the very great
     influence which, some years since, was gained by _Illuminism_,
     without considering that a society of equal extent might establish
     rational liberty on as firm a basis as that which would have
     supported the visionary schemes of a completely equalized
     community.... On account of the responsibility to which my residence
     in this university subjects me, I, of course, dare not publicly avow
     all that I think; but the time will come when I hope that my every
     endeavor, insufficient as they may be, will be directed to the
     advancement of liberty.

        Your most obedient servant,
          P. B. SHELLEY.

One of the books read by Shelley at this time was the Abbe Barruel's
_Memoires pour servir a l'histoire du Jacobinisme_, which contains an
account of the Society of Illuminists. The remarkable success of this
society in propagating free thought and revolutionary principles evidently
inspired Shelley to attempt the formation of a similar society in England.
His proposals, though, fell on deaf ears, and it is probable that Leigh
Hunt did not even acknowledge the receipt of Shelley's letter.

In February, 1811, a small pamphlet, _The Necessity of Atheism_, which was
written by Shelley, was published anonymously. According to Hogg, Shelley
had a custom of writing to divines and engaging them in controversy on the
existence of God. _The Necessity of Atheism_ is merely an elaboration of
the arguments of these letters. The masters and some of the fellows of
Oxford sent for Shelley and asked him if he were the author of the work.
He replied that they should produce their evidence, if they could prove he
wrote it, and not question him because it was neither just nor lawful to
interrogate him in such a case and for such a purpose. Shelley refused to
answer their questions and was given one day in which to leave the
college. His friend Hogg shared the same fate for the same reason. Shelley
never received any admonition nor hint that his speculations were
improper. Hogg says "there can be no reasonable doubt that he would at
once have acceded to whatever had been proposed to him by authority."[13]
Every kind of disorder was tolerated at the university, and Shelley and
Hogg had no suspicion that their metaphysical speculations were considered
so much worse than drunkenness and immorality. If the sentence was not
unjust, it was at least needlessly harsh. Shelley felt the sting of this
disgrace very keenly, and it did much to embitter him against all kinds of
authority.

Shelley and Hogg proceeded to London after their expulsion and obtained
rooms in Poland Street. The name reminded Shelley of Kosciusko and
Freedom. Timothy Shelley wrote to his son, commanding him to abstain from
all communication with Hogg and place himself "under the care and society
of such gentlemen as he should appoint" under pain of being deprived of
all pecuniary aid. Shelley refused to comply with these proposals. Toward
the middle of April Hogg left London to settle down to his legal training
in York.

It was about this time that Shelley became acquainted with Harriet
Westbrook. She wrote him from London that she was wretchedly unhappy, that
she was about to be forced to go to school, and wanted to know if it would
be wrong to put an end to her miserable life. Another letter from her soon
followed, in which she threw herself upon his protection and proposed to
fly with him. Shelley hastened to London, and after the delay of a few
weeks eloped with Harriet to Edinburgh, where they were married on August
28, 1811. Shelley agreed to go through the ceremony of matrimony to save
his wife from the social disgrace that would otherwise fall upon her.

Writing to Miss Hitchener on March 14, 1812, Harriet says: "I thought if I
married anyone it should be a clergyman. Strange idea this, was it not?
But being brought up in the Christian religion, 'twas this first gave rise
to it. You may conceive with what horror I first heard that Percy was an
atheist; at least so it was given out at Clapham. At first I did not
comprehend the meaning of the word; therefore when it was explained I was
truly petrified.... I little thought of the rectitude of these principles
and when I wrote to him I used to try to shake them--making sure he was in
the wrong, and that myself was right.... Now, however, this is entirely
done away with, and my soul is no longer shackled with such idle fears."
This would indicate that he spent more time proselytizing Harriet than in
making love to her.

It has been said that Harriet's sister, Elizabeth, managed the whole
affair, and that the marriage was brought about through her successful
plotting.[14] After spending five weeks in Edinburgh, Shelley, Harriet,
and Hogg went to York. They were joined there by Elizabeth, who henceforth
ruled over Shelley's household with a stern hand. She is partly
responsible for the estrangement of Shelley and his wife.

During all this time Shelley was in need of money, and shortly after their
arrival at York went south to induce his father to provide them with the
means of living. While he was absent Hogg tried to seduce Harriet. Shelley
sought an explanation from Hogg, and pardoned him "fully and freely."
Shelley's account of the affair in a letter to Miss Hitchener savors much
of Godwinism. "I desired to know fully the account of this affair. I heard
it from him and I believe he was sincere. All I can recollect of that
terrible day was that I pardoned him--fully, freely pardoned him; that I
would still be a friend to him and hoped soon to convince him how lovely
virtue was; that his crime, not himself, was the object of my detestation;
that I value a human being not for what it has been but for what it is;
that I hoped the time would come when he would regard this horrible error
with as much disgust as I did."[15]

Early in November, Shelley, his wife, and Eliza left York suddenly for
Keswick. Shelley's father and grandfather feared that the poet would
parcel out the family estate to soulmates, and so they proposed to allow
him L2,000 a year if he would consent to entail the property on his eldest
son, and in default of issue, on his brother. The proposition was
indignantly rejected. He considered that kinship bore that relation to
reason which a band of straw does to fire. "I am led to love a being not
because it stands in the physical relation of blood to me but because I
discern an intellectual relationship."

Early in 1812 Shelley started a correspondence with William Godwin, to
whom he was then a stranger. In his first letter he writes: "The name of
Godwin has been used to excite in me feelings of reverence and admiration.
I have been accustomed to consider him a luminary too dazzling for the
darkness which surrounds him. From the earliest period of my knowledge of
his principles I have ardently desired to share, on the footing of
intimacy, that intellect which I have delighted to contemplate in its
emanations."

Godwin's influence with the revolutionists of this time was great.
Coleridge and Southey were his ardent disciples for a time. "Throw aside
your books of chemistry," said Wordsworth to a student, "and read Godwin
on necessity." This philosopher seemed to provide them with a simple,
comprehensive code of morality, which gave unlimited freedom to the
reason, and justice as complete as possible to the individual.

In February, 1812, the Shelleys went to Dublin to help on the cause of
moral and intellectual reform. He published there an "Address to the Irish
People" which he had written during his stay at Keswick. Shelley's mission
was moral and educational rather than political. He advocated Catholic
Emancipation and the Repeal of the Union; but he thought that he should
first of all strive to dispel bigotry and intolerance--"to awaken a noble
nation from the lethargy of despair."[16] What Irishmen needed most of all
were knowledge, sobriety, peace, benevolence--in a word, virtue and
wisdom. "When you have these things," he said, "you may defy the tyrant."
It is not surprising that his mission turned out to be a fiasco. Godwin
wrote Shelley several letters in which he tried to convince him that his
pamphlets and Association would stir up strife and rebellion. "Shelley,"
he writes, "you are preparing a scene of blood." The poet accordingly
withdrew his pamphlets from circulation and quitted Ireland.

Shelley then crossed over to Wales, and after a short residence at
Nangwillt settled at Lynmouth. Elizabeth Hitchener, "the sister of his
soul,"[17] joined them there. The poet first met her at Cuckfield while
visiting his uncle, Captain Pilfold. She was a schoolmistress, professing
very liberal opinions and possessing "a tongue of energy and an eye of
fire." Everybody that Shelley admired seemed to him perfect, while those
whom he disliked were fiends. Their correspondence, which extends over a
period of more than a year, gives us a good picture of the workings of
Shelley's mind during this time. They all moved to London in November. It
was not to be expected that a combination of even such disinterested,
enlightened superior mortals as these could last long. Elizabeth's
influence over Shelley soon began to wane. His dislike for her was
equalled only by his former extravagant praise. She was no longer his
angel, but was now known as the "Brown Demon." "She is," he writes, "an
artful, superficial, ugly, hermaphroditical beast of a woman, and my
astonishment at my fatuity, inconsistency, and bad taste was never so
great as after living four months with her as an inmate. What would hell
be were such a woman in heaven?" Miss Hitchener took her leave of the
Shelleys and again became a schoolmistress.

Shelley and his family spent some time in Wales and Dublin and then
returned again to London in April, 1813.

It was about this time that he finished _Queen Mab_. On February 19, 1813,
Shelley wrote to Hookham, his publisher: "You will receive _Queen Mab_
with the other poems; I think that the whole should form one volume."
Medwin says that he commenced this work in the autumn of 1809. "After his
expulsion 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." What was it that induced him to
make the change? There is no doubt but it was his experience of the misery
and suffering around him that prompted him to attack society as he did.

Radicalism, as has already been shown, springs from discontent. The worse
existing conditions are, the more pronounced will be the radicalism that
usually arises. Conditions--moral, political and social--during the latter
half of the eighteenth century were very bad indeed. In his inimitable
sketches of the four Georges, Thackeray asserts that the dissoluteness of
the nation was awful. He depicts the lives of its princes, courtiers, men
of rank and fashion as idle, profligate, and criminal. "Around a young
king himself of the most exemplary life and undoubted piety lived a court
society as dissolute as our country ever knew." Education was sadly
neglected. In Richardson's _Sir Charles Grandison_, published 1753,
Charlotte gives an account of her two lovers. One of them is an ideal
specimen of the young nobility and is represented as spelling pretty well
for a lord. In Ireland, the colonies, and even in England itself,
oppression was well-nigh intolerable. Byron's _Age of Bronze_ contains a
good description of the way in which the landlords treated their tenants.
The changes that followed in the wake of the Industrial Revolution caused
untold suffering. The spread of machinery destroyed the old domestic
industries of spinning and weaving, and many were consequently deprived of
their most important source of subsistence. Children took up the places of
the master craftsmen; and the amount of misery that this substitution
entailed to both children and craftsmen is almost incredible.[18] Politics
was rotten to the core. Even the great commoner, William Pitt, has been
convicted by Macaulay, of sacrificing his principles without any scruple
whatever. The political corruption started by Walpole was organized into a
system. Every man had his price. "Politicians are mere jobbers; officers
are gamblers and bullies; the clergy are contemned and are contemptible;
low spirits and nervous disorders have notoriously increased, until the
people are no longer capable of self-defense."[19] In their struggle with
the Stuarts the people were completely victorious; but it soon became
apparent that they had simply substituted one evil for another. The
despotism exercised by the Stuarts was now practiced by the Dodingtons and
the Winningtons. Burke observes: "The distempers of monarchy were the
great subjects of apprehension and redress in the last century. In this
the distempers of Parliament."

The House of Commons was not responsible to anybody; and its members
showed very little consideration for their constituents. Persons who were
not acceptable to the ruling party were often fined and imprisoned without
due process of law. It is little wonder then that Godwin, Shelley, and
others declaimed against all forms of government. They were acquainted
only with the Parliament of the Georges and the oligarchy of the Stuarts,
and the one was as bad as the other.

The national debt was trebled in the space of twenty years, thus imposing
heavy sacrifices on all. There was an income-tax of two shillings on a
pound sterling; but the taxes which caused the most suffering to the poor
were the indirect taxes on wheat, shoes, salt, etc. In 1815 a law was
passed prohibiting the importation of wheat for less than eighty shillings
the quarter.[20] No doubt the wealth of the country became very great
through the development of new resources, but it was distributed among the
few and gave no relief to the common people.

The poor laws were working astounding evils. With wheat at a given price,
the minimum on which a man with wife and one child could subsist was
settled; and whenever the family earnings fell below the estimated
minimum, the deficiency was to be made up from the rates. In this way the
path to pauperism was made so easy and agreeable that a large portion of
the laboring classes drifted along it. This system set a premium on
improvidence if not on vice. The inevitable effect was that wages fell as
doles increased, that paupers so pensioned were preferred by the farmers
to independent laborers, because their labor was cheaper, and that
independent laborers, failing to get work except at wages forced down to a
minimum, were constantly falling into the ranks of pauperism. It was not
until 1834 that "a new poor law" was enacted which eliminated these
evils.[21]

From one end of the kingdom to the other the prisons were a standing
disgrace to civilization. Imprisonment from whatever cause it might be
imposed meant consignment to a living tomb. Jails were pesthouses, in
which a disease, akin to our modern typhus, flourished often in epidemic
form. They were mostly private institutions leased out to ruthless,
rapacious keepers who used every menace and extortion to wring money out
of the wretched beings committed to their care. Prisons were dark because
their managers objected to pay the window tax. Pauper prisoners were
nearly starved, for there was no regular allowance of food. Howard's
crusade against prison mismanagement produced tangible results, but after
his death the cause of prison reform soon dropped, the old evils revived,
and at the beginning of the nineteenth century were everywhere
visible.[22]

The Church of England, it appears, had become an object of contempt. No
doubt Selwyn's _Dr. Warner_ is a distorted picture of the clergymen of the
time; yet there is reason to believe that Anglican parsons were not very
much concerned with the salvation of souls. "The Church had become a vast
machine for the promotion of her own officers. How admirable an investment
is Religion! Such is the burden of their pleading!"

Some of the conventionalities of the age were so absurd as to engender
sooner or later a spirit of revolt. Servants said "your honor" and "your
worship" at every moment: tradesmen stood hat in hand as the gentlemen
passed by: chaplains said grace and retired before the pudding. "In the
days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt's
under-secretaries did not dare to sit down before him; but Mr. Pitt, in
his turn, went down on his gouty knees to George II; and when George III
spoke a few kind words to him, Lord Chatham burst into tears of
reverential joy and gratitude; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and
so great the distinction of rank."[23] Not to use hair powder was an
unpardonable offence. Southey and Savage Landor were among the first to
appear with their hair in _statu naturali_ and this action of theirs
produced an extraordinary sensation.

_Caleb Williams_, written by William Godwin in 1793, is a severe
indictment of the customs and institutions of England. "Things as they
are," is the subtitle of the work, and on that account an outline of the
work will supplement the review of society already given. "_Caleb
Williams_," writes Professor Dowden, "is the one novel of the days of
revolution embodying the new doctrine of the time which can be said to
survive."[24]

In the first preface to _Caleb Williams_ Godwin says that the story is "a
study and delineation of things passing in the moral world. Its object is
to show that the spirit and character of the Government intrudes itself
into every rank of society." "Accordingly," he writes, "it was proposed in
the invention of the following work to comprehend, as far as the
progressive nature of a single story would allow, a general review of the
modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the
destroyer of man."

Caleb Williams shortly after the death of his father, became secretary of
Ferdinand Falkland, a country squire living in a remote county of England.
Mr. Falkland's mode of living was very recluse and solitary. He avoided
men and did not seem to have any friends in whom he confided. He scarcely
ever smiled, and his manners plainly showed that he was troubled and
unhappy. He was considerate to others, but he never showed a disposition
to lay aside the stateliness and reserve which he assumed. Sometimes he
was hasty, peevish, and tyrannical, and would even lose entirely his
self-possession.

Mr. Collins, Falkland's steward, tells Williams that their master was not
always thus, that he was once the gayest of the gay. In response to
Caleb's entreaties, Collins unfolds as much as he knows of their master's
history. He tells him that Mr. Falkland spent several years abroad and
distinguished himself wherever he went by deeds of gallantry and virtue.
At length he returned to England with the intention of spending the rest
of his days on his estate. His nearest neighbor, Barnabas Tyrrel, was
insupportably arrogant, tyrannical to his inferiors and insolent to his
equals. On account of his wealth, strength, and copiousness of speech he
was regarded with admiration by some, but with awe by all. The arrival of
Mr. Falkland threatened to deprive Tyrrel of his authority and commanding
position in the community. Tyrrel contemplated the progress of his rival
with hatred and aversion. The dignity, affability, and kindness of Mr.
Falkland were the subject of everybody's praise, and all this was an
insupportable torment to Tyrrel.

Emily Melville, Tyrrel's cousin, who lived with him, falls in love with
Falkland and consequently incurs her patron's displeasure. He resolved to
impose an uncouth, boorish youth on her as a husband. She is imprisoned in
her room for refusing, and is saved from a diabolical plot to ruin her
through the timely assistance of Falkland. While still delirious and
suffering from the ill-treatment of her persecutor. Emily was arrested and
cast into prison by Tyrrel for a debt contracted for board and lodging
during the last fourteen years. Death liberated her soon afterwards from
the persecutions of her cousin.

One of Tyrrel's tenants, Mr. Hawkins, incurred his master's displeasure,
and he and his family were turned out of house and home. The laws and
customs of the country are used to oppress the victims. Tenants must be
kept in their places. The presumption is that they are in the wrong, and
so the unscrupulous Tyrrel had no difficulty in imprisoning the son.
Shelley says: "That in questions of property there is a vague but most
effective favoritism in courts of law, and, among lawyers, against the
poor to the advantage of the rich--against the tenant in favour of the
landlord--against the creditor in favour of the debtor." (Prose. Vol. II,
p. 326.) Falkland remonstrated with Tyrrel for this piece of injustice,
but this served only to increase Tyrrel's hatred of him. At length the
crisis came. Tyrrel is driven out of a rural assembly by Falkland. He
returned soon afterwards, struck Falkland, felled him to the earth, and
kicked him in the presence of all. Falkland was disgraced, and to him
disgrace was worse than death. "He was too deeply pervaded with the idle
and groundless romances of chivalry ever to forget the situation,
humiliating and dishonourable according to his idea, in which he had been
placed upon this occasion. To be knocked down, cuffed, kicked, dragged
along the floor! Sacred heaven, the memory of such a treatment was not to
be endured." Next morning Mr. Tyrrel was found dead in the street, having
been murdered at a short distance from the assembly-house. That day marked
the beginning of that melancholy which pursued Falkland in after years.
The public disgrace and chastisement that had been imposed upon him were
not the whole of the mischief that happened to the unfortunate Falkland.
It was rumored that he was the murderer of his antagonist. He was examined
by the neighboring magistrates and acquitted. It was absurd to imagine
that a man of such integrity should commit such an atrocious crime.
Suspicion then fell on the Hawkinses. They were tried, condemned, and
afterwards executed. From thenceforward the habits of Falkland became
totally different. He now became a rigid recluse. Everybody respected him
because of his benevolence, but his stately coldness and reserve made it
impossible for those about him to regard him with the familiarity of
affection.

Caleb Williams turned all these particulars over and over in his mind and
began to suspect that Falkland was the real murderer of Tyrrel. His
curiosity became an overpowering passion which was ultimately the cause of
all his misfortunes. Falkland realizes that his secretary is convinced of
his guilt, so he determines to silence him forever. He calls Williams into
his room and confesses his guilt to him. Falkland said that he allowed the
innocent Hawkinses to die because he could not sacrifice his fame. He
would leave behind him a spotless and illustrious name even should it be
at the expense of the death and misery of others. He then told Caleb that
if ever an unguarded word escaped from his lips he would pay for it by his
death or worse. This secret was a constant source of torment to Williams.
Every trifling incident made Falkland suspicious and consequently
increased the misery of his secretary. At length Caleb flees, but is taken
back, falsely accused of theft, and cast into prison. In all this Falkland
contrives to manage things so as to increase his reputation for
benevolence. Williams is made to appear an ungrateful wretch. The
impotence of the law to secure justice to the weak is only equalled by the
wretchedness of the prisons to which they are condemned. "Thank God,"
exclaims the Englishman, "we have no Bastile! Thank God with us no man can
be punished without a crime!" "Unthinking wretch!" writes Godwin, "Is
that a country of liberty, where thousands languish in dungeons and
fetters? Go, go, ignorant fool! and visit the scenes of our prisons.
Witness their unwholesomeness, their filth, the tyranny of their
governors, the misery of their inmates! After that show me the man
shameless enough to triumph, and say 'England has no Bastile!' Is there
any charge so frivolous, upon which men are not consigned to those
detested abodes? Is there any villainy that is not practiced by justices
and prosecutors, etc.?"

Williams tries to escape from prison and is caught in the attempt. He was
then treated more cruelly than ever. He made another attempt to escape and
was successful. The rest of the novel is taken up with an account of all
that Williams suffered in his endeavors to keep out of the reach of the
law. He falls in with a band of outlaws whose rude natural virtues are
contrasted with the meanness and corruption of the officers of the law. He
is at last caught, but Falkland, to make himself appear magnanimous, does
not press the charge against Williams. Instead he persecutes Caleb by
poisoning people's minds against him. Everywhere Caleb goes he is followed
by an emissary of Falkland who contrives to convince people that Williams
is an ungrateful scoundrel. He can stand the persecution no longer and so
determines to accuse Falkland of the murder of Tyrrel. Williams does this
in a way to carry conviction to his hearers. Falkland finally breaks down,
throws himself into Williams' arms, saying, "All my prospects are
concluded. All that I most ardently desired is forever frustrated. I have
spent a life of the basest cruelty to cover one act of momentary vice, and
to protect myself against the prejudice of my species.... And now (turning
to the magistrates) do with me as you please. If, however, you wish to
punish me, you must be speedy in your justice; for, as reputation was the
blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that death and infamy must seize me
together." He survived this event but three days. "A nobler spirit than
Falkland's," Godwin writes, "lived not among the sons of men. Thy
intellectual powers were truly sublime, and thy bosom burned with a
godlike ambition. But of what use are talents and sentiments in the
corrupt wilderness of human society? It is a rank and rotten soil, from
which every finer shrub draws poison as it grows. Falkland! thou enteredst
upon thy career with the purest and most laudable intentions. But thou
imbibest the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth; and the base and
low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to thy native seats, operated
with this poison to hurry thee into madness...." All these evils flow from
Falkland's standard of morals--and his is the aristocratic, traditional
one. He is the victim of the false ideal of chivalry. The errors of
Falkland, Shelley writes, "sprang from a high though perverted conception
of human nature, from a powerful sympathy with his species and from a
temper, which led him to believe that the very reputation of excellence
should walk among mankind unquestioned and unassailed."

Protests against this condition of affairs were not wanting, it is true,
but they did not influence men to any great extent. Cowper, for example,
criticizes most severely the luxury and vices of his age.

            Rank abundance breeds
  In gross and pampered cities, sloth and lust
  And wantonness and gluttonous excess.

He deplores the corruption in church and state, and pleads for a return to
religion. In the _Progress of Error_ he pictures Occidius as

  A cassock'd huntsman and a fiddling priest.
  Himself a wanderer from the narrow way,
  His silly sheep, what wonder if they stray.

Although he lashes the follies of his time in _The Task_, _Table Talk_,
and _Expostulation_, still he does not attack the institutions of his
country with the vehemence characteristic of later writers. His poems are
a mild expression of the revolutionary spirit that was then gathering
strength.

At a very early age Shelley showed signs of hatred for existing
institutions. These became more pronounced as he grew older, until they
finally blazed forth in _Queen Mab_ in 1813. This poem is considered by
some to be merely a declamatory pamphlet in verse. Shelley himself
described it at one time as "villainous trash." Like a true radical he
gathers up all the evils of society, its crimes, misery, and oppression,
and feels them so keenly that he makes them part of his own being. This
collected lightning he discharged in one awful flash in _Queen Mab_.

The first two parts of this poem bear a striking resemblance to Volney's
_Les Ruines_.[25] In _Queen Mab_ a fairy descends and takes up Ianthe's
soul to heaven that she may see how to accomplish the great end for which
she lives, and that she may taste that peace which in the end all life
will share. Ianthe merited this boon because she vanquished earth's pride
and meanness and burst "the icy chains of custom." Volney's traveler is
likewise disengaged from his body and conveyed to the upper regions by a
Genius. Many consolations await him there as a reward for his
unselfishness and desires for the happiness of mankind. The earth is
plainly visible to both Volney's traveler and Shelley's spirit, Ianthe,
and its thronging thousands seem like an ant-hill's citizens. Volney's
traveler sees but a few remains of the hundred cities which once
flourished in Syria. All this destruction was caused by cupidity. In the
same way the Spirit of Ianthe finds that from England's fertile fields to
the burning plains where Libyan monsters dwell--

  Thou canst not find one spot
  Whereon no city stood.--_Canto II._

Ianthe thanks the fairy for this vision of the past and says that from it
she will glean a warning for the future

              So that man
  May profit by his errors and derive
       Experience from his folly.

Volney's traveler wonders that past experience has not taught mankind a
lesson, and that destruction is not a thing of the past. The Spirit, in
_Queen Mab_, is shown the miserable life that kings live. They have no
peace of mind; even their "slumbers are but varied agonies." They are
heartless wretches whose ears are deaf to the shrieks of penury. The
fairy says that kings and parasites arose--

  From vice, black loathsome vice:
  From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong.

This is somewhat stronger than Volney's dictum that paternal tyranny laid
the foundations of political despotism. Canto IV of _Queen Mab_ contains a
description of the horrors of war. In _Les Ruines_ there is an account of
the war between Russia and Turkey. Both attribute this horrible evil to
cupidity, "the daughter and companion of ignorance." Volney's traveler is
then vouchsafed a glimpse of the "new age" when Equality, Liberty, and
Justice will reign supreme. The final chapters of _Les Ruines_ describe a
disputation between the doctors of different religions, which ends in
convincing the people that all religions are false. The ministers of the
various sects contradict and refute one another, opposing revelations to
revelations and miracles to miracles, until they render it evident that
they are all deceived or deceivers. Man himself is to blame for having
been duped. Religion exists because man is superstitious and tolerates the
imposition of priests. "Thus, agitated by their own passions, men, whether
in their individual capacity, or as collective bodies, always rapacious
and improvident passing from tyranny to slavery, from pride to abjectness,
from presumption to despair, have been themselves the eternal instruments
of their misfortunes."[26] In the notes to _Queen Mab_, Shelley says that
as ignorance of nature gave birth to gods the knowledge of nature is
calculated to destroy them.

  But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;
  Thou art descending to the darksome grave
  Unhonored and unpitied, but by those
  Whose pride is passing by like thine.
  And sheds like thine a glare that fades before the sun
  Of Truth, and shines but in the dreadful night
  That long has lowered above the ruined world.[27]

The third part of _Queen Mab_ contains a glowing picture of the Golden
Age--of the world as it will be, when reason will be the sole guide of
men. For this Shelley is indebted mainly to Godwin's _Political Justice_.

For his denunciation of the professions Shelley is indebted to the Essay
on "Trades and Professions" in Godwin's _Enquirer_. With regard to
commerce, Godwin says that the introduction of barter and sale into
society was followed by vice and misery. "Barter and sale being once
introduced, the invention of a circulating medium in the precious metals
gave solidity to the evil, and afforded a field upon which for the
rapacity and selfishness of man to develop all their refinements."[28]
Shelley says:

  Commerce has set the mark of selfishness
  The signet of its all-enslaving power
  Upon a shining ore, and called it gold.[29]

Godwin expresses his opinion of merchants as follows: "There is no being
on the face of the earth with a heart more thoroughly purged from every
remnant of the weakness of benevolence and sympathy."[30]

And Shelley writes:

  Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade
  No solitary virtue dares to spring.

Shelley says that soldiers--

  ... are the hired bravos who defend
  The tyrant's throne--the bullies of his fear:
  These are the sinks and channels of worst vice,
  The refuse of society, the dregs
  Of all that is most vile, etc.

His note on this passage was taken bodily from Essay V of Godwin's
_Enquirer_. With regard to clergymen, Shelley expresses his opinion thus:

  Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites
  Without a hope, a passion, or a love
  Who, through a life of luxury and lies
  Have crept by flattery to the seats of power
  Support the system whence their honors flow

Godwin's verdict is not so severe. "Clergymen," he says, "are timid in
enquiry, prejudiced in opinion, cold, formal, the slave of what other men
may think of them, rude, dictatorial, impatient of contradiction, harsh in
their censures, and illiberal in their judgments."

_Queen Mab_ then is a fierce diatribe against existing institutions. It
contains very little constructive philosophy. What value has it for
mankind? Does it serve any purpose apart from giving pleasure to the
aesthetic faculties? It assuredly does. It awakens the social conscience.
The first step for the sinner on the road to conversion is to try to
realize the sinful state of his soul. The same is true of a nation in need
of reform. Unless its shortcomings are vividly brought home to it,
reformation will never take place. To do this was and still is the work of
_Queen Mab_. It laid bare the weaknesses of State and Church; it
engendered the spirit of compassion and thus paved the way for reform.




CHAPTER II

VIEWS ON MARRIAGE AND LOVE


In September, 1813, Shelley wrote a sonnet, already quoted, to Ianthe, his
first child, in which he says that the babe was dear to him not only for
its own sweet sake, but for the mother's, and that the mother had grown
dearer to him for the babe's. Hogg informs us, however, that about this
time the ardor of Shelley's affection for his wife was beginning to cool.
It is scarcely correct to speak of the ardor of his affection, for it may
be doubted that he ever loved Harriet very ardently. If he had been
seriously in love with his wife, he would not have written Miss Hitchener
two months after his marriage that he loved her "more than any relation,"
and that she was the sister of his soul.[31] However this may be, it is
certain that in 1814 Shelley and his wife did not get along well together.
Harriet was beautiful and amiable, and adopted in a somewhat parrot-like
manner the views of her husband. As she grew older she no doubt developed
tastes more in keeping with the conventions of that society which Shelley
detested. Professor Dowden suggests that motherhood produced in her
character a change that did not harmonize with her husband's idealism. She
was no longer an ardent schoolgirl, but a woman who has found out that one
must grapple with the realities of life in some way more practical than
the one hitherto followed. Her sister urged her to look for the style and
elegance suitable to the wife of a prospective baronet. This was repugnant
to Shelley's republican simplicity. "I have often thought," Peacock
writes, "that, if Harriet had nursed her own child, and if the sister had
not lived with them, the link of their married life would not have been so
readily broken." Harriet sympathized less and less with her husband's
aspirations, and as a consequence Shelley turned to other women for the
encouragement and inspiration which he once got from his wife. He spent
too much of his time in the company of the Newtons, Boinvilles, and
Turners to render possible the retention of his wife's affections. On
March 16, 1814, Shelley wrote a letter to Hogg, which plainly shows that
he found no happiness in his home. "I have been staying with Mrs.
Boinville for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all that
friendship and philosophy combine, from the dismaying solitude of
myself.... I have sunk into a premature old age of exhaustion.... Eliza is
still with us--not here!--but (with his wife) ... I certainly hate her
with all my heart and soul." Shelley's second marriage in St. George's
Church, on March 22, does not throw any light on the relations that
existed between himself and his wife. They celebrated this second ceremony
simply to dispel all doubts concerning the validity of the first one in
Edinburgh. On April 18, Mrs. Boinville wrote to Hogg that Shelley was at
her house, that Harriet had gone to town (presumably to her father's), and
that Eliza was living at Southampton. J. C. Jeafferson says that it was
Shelley who deserted Harriet and not Harriet, Shelley. According to this
biographer, Shelley left her at Binfield on May 18, 1814.[32] Shelley
still hoped to regain his wife's love, and in some verses inscribed, "To
Harriet, 1814," he appeals pathetically for her affection. Harriet had
become cold and proud, and refused to meet his advances toward a
reconciliation. Her pride, Shelley believed, was incompatible with virtue.
When he found that he had "clasped a shadow," his anguish, owing to his
great sensitiveness, was extreme. Other men put up with their wives'
imperfections, and why could not Shelley have done the same? It must be
remembered, though, that these men have other interests to occupy their
thoughts, and other friends to give them the sympathy and love denied them
at home. This was not the case with Shelley. He had few friends and many
enemies. It should not surprise us then to find him snatching at the first
vision "which promised him the longed-for boon of human love." This vision
appeared to him in the person of Mary Godwin.

A letter from Harriet to Hookham, dated July 7, shows that she was anxious
to be with her husband again. But the time for reconciliation had passed.
Whenever Shelley hated or loved anybody, he did so intensely. Everybody
was either an angel or a devil; and Harriet had ceased to be an angel.
"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." Dowden says Shelley
persuaded himself that Harriet was false to him and had given her heart to
a Mr. Ryan. There is no ground for the charge of unfaithfulness, as
Peacock, Thornton Hunt, and Trelawny bear testimony concerning her
innocence.

Shelley believed that Harriet had ceased to love him, and that he was
consequently free to contract a union with another. He puts forth this
doctrine in the notes to _Queen Mab_. "A husband and wife ought to
continue so long united as they love each other.... There is nothing
immoral in this separation.... The conviction that wedlock is indissoluble
holds out the strongest of all temptations to the perverse....
Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage." He considered
marriage a useless institution, and expressed this view in _St. Irvyne_.
"Say, Eloise, do not you think it an insult to two souls, united to each
other in the irrefragable covenants of love and congeniality, to promise
in the sight of a Being whom they know not, that fidelity which is certain
otherwise." He does not think that promiscuous intercourse will follow the
abolition of marriage. Love, and not money, honors, or convenience will be
the bond of these unions when marriage is abolished, and this will result
in more faithfulness than obtains at present. "The parties having acted
upon selection are not likely to forget this selection when the interview
is over."[33] In his review of Hogg's _Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff_,
Shelley regards with horror the recommendation of the tutor to Alexy to
indulge in promiscuous intercourse. "It is our duty to protest against so
pernicious and disgusting an opinion." In a letter to Hogg, written after
the latter's attempt to seduce Harriet, we find the following: "But do not
love one (Harriet) who can not return it, who if she could, ought to
stiffle her desire to do so. Love is not a whirlwind that is
unvanquishable."

Shelley's views on marriage agree with those of Godwin. They both looked
on marriage as a human institution, and consequently thought it might be
modified or abolished entirely. They considered happiness man's highest
good, and unhappiness man's only evil. Vows and promises are immoral
because the thing promised may prove at any time detrimental to one's
happiness. For this reason husband and wife should not bind themselves to
live always together. This doctrine appealed to Shelley because it agreed
with his views on freedom and his passion for opposing the traditions of
society.

Heretofore it has been found convenient to lay the blame for all the
radical views of Shelley at the door of Godwin. In the case of those on
marriage a good deal of the blame must be borne by Sir James Lawrence.

In a letter to Lawrence, dated August 17, 1812, Shelley writes: "Your
_Empire of the Naires_, which I read this spring, succeeded in making me a
perfect convert to its doctrines. I then retained no doubts of the evils
of marriage--Mrs. Wollstonecraft reasons too well for that--but I had been
dull enough not to perceive the greatest argument against it, until
developed in the Naires, prostitution both legal and illegal." Hogg says
that Shelley and his young friends read Lawrence's tale with delight.[34]
This work, intended to vindicate the rights of women, is a plea for free
love. It pictures the Kingdom of the Naires as a Paradise of Love, where
neither jealousy nor envy, quarreling nor hatred, have any place.
Infanticide and the sufferings that follow in the wake of illicit
intercourse are there unknown. "It would be unjust to conclude," Lawrence
writes, "that every voluntary union would be short-lived." He claims that,
although constancy is no merit in itself, still it obtains in the Kingdom
of the Naires to a greater extent than in Europe. "Know ye not that though
constancy is no merit it is a source of happiness; and that though
inconstancy is no crime, it is no blessing much less a boast."[35] There
is some resemblance between this and the following from Shelley's _Notes
to Queen Mab_: "Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself independently of
the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in
proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object
of its indiscreet choice." In another place Lawrence writes: "Two hearts
whom love with its loadstone has touched, will stick together, nought will
tear asunder. But soon as the magnetic power has ceased, say, why should
wedlock link in iron fetters, superfluous even when they are not
vexatious, those bodies which the soul of love has left?"[36] In the notes
to _Queen Mab_ we read--"A husband and wife ought to continue so long
united as they love each other; any law which should bind them to
cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection would be a
most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration."[37] "Among
the Naires there are neither courtesans nor virgins, for the two extremes
are equally unnatural and equally detrimental to the state. Love there
shuns not the light of the sun, nor is it, as in Europe, degraded as a
vice, nor allied to infamy and guilt."

Shelley lived at a time when the marriage ideal was not held in high
repute. Lawrence describes many kinds of abominable travesties of
marriage. In Persia, to silence the scruples of the lustful, "they have
contrived contracts of enjoyment (for it would be wicked to call them
contracts of marriage) for very short periods of time; these are formally
signed and countersigned, and many priests gain their livelihood by giving
their benediction to this orthodox prostitution."[38] Marriage was a mere
formality for a great many. In France, Montesquieu writes, "a husband, who
would wish to keep his wife to himself, would be considered a disturber of
the public happiness, and as a madman who would monopolise the light of
the sun. He who loves his own wife, is one who is not agreeable enough to
gain the affections of any other man's wife, who takes advantage of a law
to make amends for his own want of amiability; and who contributes, as far
as lies in his power, to overturn a tacit convention, that is conducive to
the happiness of both sexes."[39] In England conditions were no better. A
husband might consort with as many women as he chose and his wife could
get no redress. In Italy and Spain, the inhabitants, "too fond of liberty
to respect the duties of marriage and too attached to their names to
suffer their extinction, require only representatives, and not sons as
their heirs. It is a pity that the Naire system is not known to them; but
cicesbeism is a palliative to marriage and an ingenious compromise between
family pride and natural independence, and it is better to be inconsistent
and happy than unhappy and rational."[40]

In no country of Europe is the marriage vow kept. Why not then, argued
Shelley, abolish this institution which makes hypocrites of men? "Marriage
is the tomb of love.... Two lovers only meet when in good humor, or when
resolved to be so; a married couple think themselves entitled to torment
each other with their ill-humors. When a lover presents a trifle to his
beloved, she receives it with smiles; when a husband makes a present to
his wife, which indeed happens seldom enough, he runs the risk of being
told that he has no taste, or that she could have bought it cheaper."[41]

_The Empire of the Naires_ is not so much an exposition of the free-love
system of the Naires as a grossly distorted and exaggerated picture of the
miseries that follow from the present system of regulating the relations
between the sexes in the different countries of the world. Lawrence draws
horrible pictures of misery, degradation, and even murder that are a
consequence of our opinions on love and marriage. "Whenever women are
treated like slaves," he writes, "they act like slaves with artifice and
hypocricy."[42] Shelley affirms that "the present system of constraint
does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites of open
enemies."[43]

Lawrence attributes the social evil to the existing code of morality. If a
girl falls, she is driven from her home, and the only road then open to
her is that which leads to the brothel. "Prostitution," says Shelley, "is
the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors. Women
for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite
are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. Society
avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation."[44]

It does not seem that Shelley made much use of the plot or rather of the
different incidents of the _Empire of the Naires_. However, it may not be
amiss to indicate the slight resemblance that exists between the story of
Margaret Montgomery and that of Rosalind in _Rosalind and Helen_.

Rosalind loves a young man whom she is about to marry. On the day fixed
for the wedding, her father returns from a distant land to die, and
informs them that Rosalind and her lover are brother and sister.

  Hold, hold!
  He cried! I tell thee 'tis her brother!
  Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod
  Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold;
  I am now weak and pale, and old:
  We were once dear to one another,
  I and that corpse! Thou art our child!

Her betrothed falls dead on the receipt of this news. Rosalind marries
another who uses her very cruelly, perhaps because she gives birth to an
illegitimate child. Her husband dies, and his will, because she was
adulterous,

  Imported, that if e'er again
  I sought my children to behold

  Or in my birthplace did remain
  Beyond three days, whose hours were told,
  They should inherit naught:

In _The Naires_ Margaret Montgomery and James Forbes had known and loved
each other from childhood. Shortly before the time set for their wedding,
James' father sent a letter to Margaret's father breaking off the marriage
in the most positive terms. The latter's pride was inflamed, and a quarrel
ensued in which Forbes was mortally wounded. The dying man sent for
Margaret and told her that she and her lover are sister and brother, that
he and not Montgomery was her father, and hence her mother's and his
opposition to the marriage. Margaret is enceinte, and her reputed father
turns her out of doors. Her lover is killed in Naples. A friend sends
Margaret some money during her stay in London. Shelley makes Rosalind, who
has been dispossessed too, receive some money from an old servant.

Rosalind and Margaret are separated from their life-long friends who
know--

  What to the evil world is due
  And therefore sternly did refuse

to link themselves with the infamy of ones so lost as their sinning
sisters. In both cases common misery reunites them and their friends
again.

In May or June, 1814, Shelley became acquainted with Mary Godwin. Her
father described her as being "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and
active in mind; her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in
everything she undertakes almost invincible." She was brought up in an
atmosphere of free thought, having spent most of her girlhood with Mr.
Baxter, a faithful disciple of Godwin. Shelley and Mary had many
sympathies in common, and it is not surprising to find them soon falling
in love with each other.

Peacock tells us that Shelley at this time was in agony. On the one hand
he was tormented by his desire to treat Harriet rightly, and on the other
by his passion for Mary. Passion won the day, and on July 28 Shelley
eloped with Mary to the Continent. He tried to ease his conscience by
offering Harriet his friendship and protection. He wrote her from the
Continent and urged her to join himself and Mary in Switzerland. He
assured her that she would find in him a firm, constant friend to whom her
interests would be always dear.

While passing judgment on Shelley one should not forget that he simply put
into practice those doctrines which he believed to be true. Neither
Shelley nor Mary thought they were inflicting any wrong on Harriet as long
as they offered her their friendship and protection.

In September, 1814, Shelley, Mary and Jane Clairmont, Mary's half-sister,
settled in London. About this time he was troubled a great deal with money
embarrassments and was in continual hiding from the bailiffs. Toward the
end of the year he read "the tale of Godwin's American disciple in
romance, Charles Brockden Brown."[45] "Brown's four novels," says Peacock,
"Schiller's Robbers, and Goethe's Faust, were of all the works with which
he was familiar those which took the deepest root in Shelley's mind and
had the strongest influence in the formation of his character."

Brown's most important novel, _Wieland_, is a gruesome tale in which the
horrors portrayed owe their existence to the errors of the sufferers.
Wieland, a very religious man, is deceived by an unscrupulous
ventriloquist who persuades him that a voice from heaven bids him
sacrifice the life of his wife and four children. "If Wieland had framed
juster notions of moral duty, and of the divine attributes; or if he had
been gifted with ordinary equanimity or foresight, the double tongued
deceiver would have been baffled and repelled." This is the doctrine of
Shelley; he believed that the evils of society were man's own creation.

  Ye princes of the earth, ye sit aghast
  Amid the ruin which yourselves have made.
  Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet's blast,
  And sprang from sleep.[46]

Brown's views on love are almost as radical as those of Godwin. Wieland's
sister is in love with Pleyel, and is anxious to act in such a way as to
give him hope and at the same time not to appear too forward. "Time was,"
she says, "when these emotions would be hidden with immeasurable
solicitude from every human eye. Alas! these airy and fleeting impulses of
shame are gone. My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They are bred
in all hearts, by a perverse and vicious education, and they would have
maintained their place in my heart had not my portion been set in misery.
My errors have taught me thus much wisdom; that those sentiments which we
ought not to disclose it is criminal to harbor."[47] Shelley's ideal woman
would hold the same views. He writes:

  And women too, frank, beautiful and kind ...
  ... From custom's evil taint exempt and pure
  Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
  Looking emotions once they feared to feel.
  And changed to all which once they dared not be
  Yet, being now, made earth like heaven.

In May, 1816, Shelley, accompanied by Mary and Jane Clairmont, started for
Italy. It is probable that the undesirable state of Shelley's health,
together with the constant begging of Godwin, determined them to leave
England. J. C. Jeafferson maintains that Miss Clairmont persuaded Shelley
to accompany her to Geneva, where she was to meet Lord Byron. It is quite
certain though that Mary and Shelley were ignorant of Byron's intrigue
with Miss Clairmont. The most that can be said is that Jane's
solicitations may have hastened their departure.

In September, 1816, the Shelleys returned to London. About a month
afterwards news reached them that Fanny Imlay (Mary's half-sister) had
committed suicide. It is said that love for Shelley drove her to despair.
In December Shelley was seeking for Harriet, of whom he had lost trace
some time previously. On December 10, her body was found in the
Serpentine. Very little is known of the life she led after her separation
from Shelley. Rumor had it that she drank heavily and became the mistress
of a soldier, who deserted her.

It may be that "in all Shelley did, he, at the time of doing it, believed
himself justified to his own conscience," but surely that conscience is
warped which finds no cause for remorse in Shelley's treatment of his
first wife. No one can view his self-complacency and assumption of
righteousness at this time without feelings of detestation. On the day he
heard the news of his wife's suicide he wrote to Mary: "Everything tends
to prove, however, that beyond the shock of so hideous a catastrophe
having fallen on a human being once so nearly connected with me, there
would in any case, have been little to regret." "Little to regret" save
the shock to his nerves. What about the suffering of the poor woman that
forced her to commit such a terrible deed?

Shelley claimed his children from the Westbrooks, but the claim was
denied. The children were committed to the care of a Dr. Hume, of Hanwell.
Lord Eldon gave his judgment against Shelley on the ground that Shelley's
opinions led to immoral conduct. Shelley gave vent to his rage in sixteen
vitriolic stanzas, which he addressed to the Lord Chancellor.

During his residence at Marlow on the Thames in 1817, Shelley wrote _The
Revolt of Islam_, which was first published under the title _Laon and
Cythna_. In its first form it contained violent attacks on theism and
Christianity; and the hero and heroine were brother and sister. Ollier
refused to publish it unless everything indicating such a relationship
were removed, and Shelley reluctantly consented to make the necessary
alterations.

_The Revolt of Islam_ opens with an allegorical myth in which the strife
between a serpent and an eagle--good and evil--is described. While the
poet sympathizes with the snake, a mysterious woman (Asia in Prometheus
Unbound) suddenly appears and conducts him to heaven. There he meets Laon
and Cythna who recount the sufferings which made them worthy of this
heavenly place. First of all, Laon tells about his love for Cythna, who is
described as a shape of brightness moving upon the earth. She mourned with
him over the servitude--

  In which the half of humankind were mewed,
  Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves,
  She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food
  To the hyena lust, who, among graves,
  Over his loathed meal, laughing in agony raves.[48]

Cythna determines to make all good and just. By the force of kindness she
will "disenchant the captives," and "then millions of slaves shall leap in
joy as the benumbing cramp of ages shall leave their limbs." The happiness
of the lovers was rudely interrupted. Cythna is taken away by the
emissaries of the tyrant Othman; and Laon, who killed three of the king's
slaves while defending her, is cast into prison. A hermit sets him free,
conveys him to an island, and supports him there for seven years. During
all of this time Laon's mind is deranged. He recovers, however, and then
they both embark to help overthrow the tyrant Othman. The revolutionists
are successful principally because of the influence of their leader, who
is a woman, Laone. Such is the strength of her quiet words that none dare
harm her. Tyrants send their armed slaves to quell--

  Her power, they, even like a thundergust
  Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell
  Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel.[49]

Some of the revolutionists demand that Othman be put to death for his
crimes. Laon interposes and tells them that if their hearts are tried in
the true love of freedom they should cease to dread this one poor lonely
man. Here is Godwin's doctrine again:

                                  The chastened will
  Of virtue sees that justice is the light
  Of love, and not revenge and terror and despite.[50]

That same night the tyrant with the aid of a foreign army treacherously
attacks the revolutionists. In the midst of the carnage

  A black Tartarian horse of giant frame
  Comes trampling o'er the dead; the living bleed
  Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed
  On which like to an angel robed in white
  Sate one waving a sword.[51]

Needless to say, this is Cythna who comes to rescue Laon. They both flee
to a lonely ruin where they recount to each other the stories of their
sufferings. Cythna tells that she was carried to a submarine cavern by
order of the tyrant, and that she was fed there by an eagle. She became a
mother, and was comforted for a while by the caresses of her child until
it mysteriously disappeared. An earthquake changed the position of the
cavern, and Cythna is rescued by some passing sailors. She is taken to the
city of Othman, where she leads the revolutionists as described in the
previous cantos. Want and pestilence follow in the wake of massacre, and
cause awful misery. An Iberian priest in whose breast "hate and guile lie
watchful" says that God will not stay the plague until a pyre is built and
Laon and Cythna burned upon it. An immense reward is offered for their
capture. The person who brings them both alive shall espouse the princess
and reign with the king. A stranger comes to the tyrant's court and tells
them that they themselves have made all the desolation which they bewail.
However, he cannot expect them to change their ways so he promises to
betray Laon if they will only allow Cythna to go to America. The tyrant
agrees to the stranger's terms, who then tells them that he is Laon
himself. He is placed upon the altar, and as the torches are about to be
applied to it Cythna appears on her Tartarian steed. The priest urges his
comrades to seize her, but the king has scruples about breaking his
promise. She is set on the pyre, however, and both perish in the flames.
They wake reclining--

                            On the waved and golden sand
  Of a clear pool, upon a bank o'ertwined
  With strange and star-bright flowers, which to the wind
  Breathed divine odour.[52]

A boat approaches them with an angel (Cythna's child) in it. They are all
carried in this "curved shell of hollow pearl" to a haven of rest and joy.

This disconnected story serves as a vehicle to convey exhortations
regarding liberty and justice. Thus, during the voyage from the cavern to
Othman's city, Cythna delivers an address to the sailors which contains
some of the best passages in the poem. She tells them for example:

  To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot,
  To own all sympathies, and outrage none,
  And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought,
  Until life's sunny day is quite gone down,
  To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone
  To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of woe;
  To live as if to love and live were one;
  This is not faith or law, nor those who bow
  To thrones on Heaven or Earth such destiny may know.[53]

The poem aims at kindling a virtuous enthusiasm for the doctrines of
liberty and equal rights to all. "It is a series of pictures illustrating
the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after excellence" and
the regeneration of humanity. Laon is the expression of ideal devotion to
the happiness of mankind; and Cythna is a type of the new woman, "the
free, equal, fearless companion of man." The poem depicts "the awakening
of an immense nation from their slavery and degradation to a true sense of
moral dignity and freedom; the tranquillity of successful patriotism and
the universal toleration and benevolence of true philanthropy." It
concludes by showing that the triumph of oppression is temporary and a
sure pledge of its inevitable fall.

So much attention is here given to _The Revolt of Islam_ because of the
influence on it of a love story--_The Missionary_, by Miss Owenson--an
influence which up to the present has escaped the notice of Shelley
students.[54] In a letter to Hogg, dated June 27, 1811, Shelley writes
"the only thing that has interested me, if I except your letters, has been
one novel. It is Miss Owenson's _Missionary_, an Indian tale; will you
read it? It is really a divine thing; Luxima, the Indian, is an angel.
What a pity we cannot incorporate these creatures of fancy; the very
thoughts of them thrill the soul! Since I have read this book, I have read
no other."[55] This tale is a very striking one, and it is not strange
that Shelley made its philosophy his own. The descriptions are so vivid,
the tale so simple, and the experiences recorded apparently so true, that
it takes a maturer mind than Shelley's to lay bare the fallacies of the
work and to unmask its half truths. No outline of the story can give an
idea of its strength. In the beginning of the seventeenth century Hilarion
Count d'Acugna of the royal house of Braganza joins the Franciscans, and
on account of his zeal and piety is known as "the man without a fault." He
is full of zeal for the salvation of souls and goes to India to convert
pagans to Christianity. "Devoted to a higher communion his soul only
stooped from heaven to earth, to relieve the sufferings he pitied, or to
correct the errors he condemned; to substitute peace for animosity ... to
watch, to pray, to fast, to suffer for all. Such was the occupation of a
life, active as it was sinless." Passages like the above serve as sugar
coating for the following: "Hitherto the life of the young monk resembled
the pure and holy dream of saintly slumbers, for it was still a dream;
splendid indeed, but unsubstantial, dead to all those ties which
constitute at once the charm and the anxiety of existence, which agitate
while they bless the life of man, the spring of human affection lay
untouched within his bosom and the faculty of human reason unused within
his mind.... Yet these feelings though unexercised were not extinct; they
betrayed their existence even in the torpid life he had chosen, etc." The
missionary spends some time at Lahore studying the dialects of Upper India
under the tutelage of a Pundit. During his stay there the Guru of Cashmere
comes to Lahore for the ceremony of Upaseyda. He is accompanied by his
beautiful and accomplished granddaughter, Luxima, the Prophetess and
Brachmachira of Cashmere.

The Pundit tells the missionary about the wonderful influence that the
Guru's granddaughter, Luxima, has over the people of the place, just as
the old man of _The Revolt of Islam_, who represents Shelley's teacher,
Dr. Lind, tells Laon about the extraordinary influence of Cythna on the
people she meets. "The Indians of the most distinguished rank drew back as
she approached lest their very breath should pollute that region of purity
her respiration consecrated, and the odour of the sacred flowers, by which
she was adorned, was inhaled with an eager devotion, as if it purified the
soul it almost seemed to penetrate." The Pundit says that "her beauty, her
enthusiasm, her graces, and her genius, alike capacitate her to propagate
and support the errors of which she herself is the victim." The old man
tells Laon that Cythna--

  Paves her path with human hearts, and o'er it flings
  The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.

At the ceremony of Upaseyda, which the Guru holds, disputants of various
sects put forth the claims of their respective religions. "A devotee of
the Musnavi sect took the lead; he praised the mysteries of the Bhagavat,
and explained the profound allegory of the six Ragas.... A disciple of the
Vedanti school spoke of the transports of mystic love, and maintained the
existence of spirit only; while a follower of Buddha supported the
doctrine of matter, etc." The missionary takes advantage of this
opportunity to tell them about Christianity. "The impression of his
appearance was decisive, it sank at once to the soul; and he imposed
conviction on the senses, ere he made his claim on the understanding....
He ceased to speak and all was still as death. His hands were folded on
his bosom, to which his crucifix was pressed; his eyes were cast in
meekness on the earth; but the fire of his zeal still played like a ray
from heaven on his brow." This reminds one at once of Canto IX, of _The
Revolt of Islam_:

  And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,
  Moses and Buddah, Zerdhust and Brahm and Foh,
  A tumult of strange names, which never met
  Before, as watchwords of a single woe,
  Arose; each raging votary 'gan to throw
  Aloft his armed hands, and each did howl
  "Our God alone is God!"--And slaughter now
  Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl
  A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.

  'Twas an Iberian priest from whom it came
  A zealous man, who led the legioned west,
  With words which faith and pride had stopped in flame,
  To quell the unbelievers....

                      He ceased, and they
  A space stood silent, as far, far away
  The echoes of his voice among them died;
  And he knelt down upon the dust, alway
  Muttering the curses of his speechless pride.

There is a striking resemblance between this cowled Iberian priest and the
Iberian Franciscan of _The Missionary_.

The missionary looked to the conversion of the prophetess as the most
effectual means of accomplishing the conversion of the nation. With this
end in view he goes to Cashmere, and unexpectedly comes upon Luxima one
morning, praying at a shrine. "Silently gazing in wonder upon each other,
they stood finely opposed, the noblest specimens of the human species...;
she, like the East, lovely and luxuriant; he, like the West, lofty and
commanding; the one, radiant in all the luster, attractive in all the
softness which distinguishes her native regions; the other, towering in
all the energy, which marks his ruder latitudes." They meet again and
again, and the result is they fall in love with each other. It is
significant from the point of view of the influence of the _Missionary_
that in Alastor Shelley meets his ideal love "in the vale of Cashmire."
The way the novelist develops the progress of this sentiment, which both
the priest and the priestess had vowed to suppress, can scarcely be
surpassed. She describes how their new mode of feeling was opposed by
their ancient habits of thinking, and how their minds "struggling between
a natural bliss and a religious principle of resistance, between a
passionate sentiment and an habitual self-command, become a scene of
conflict and agitation."

                  Old age with its gray hair,
  And wrinkled legends of unworthy things
  And icy sneers is nought; it cannot dare
  To burst the chains which life forever flings
  On the entangled soul's aspiring wings.[56]

Luxima succumbed to the warfare. She overcame the traditions and laws by
which she was bound; and hence Shelley's great admiration for her. She
embraced Christianity less in faith than in love. She did not feel guilty
because she thought her sentiments of love were true to all life's natural
impulses. The missionary, on the other hand, must have excited in Shelley
pity for the man and hatred for the institutions which stood in the way of
their happiness. "He had not, indeed, relinquished a single principle of
his moral feeling--he had not yet vanquished a single prejudice of his
monastic education; to feel, was still with him to be weak; to love, a
crime; and to resist, perfection." Luxima is excommunicated, deprived of
caste and declared a wanderer and an outcast upon the earth. They both
elude their pursuers and join a caravan which is on its way to Tatta. On
their journey the missionary tells her that they must soon separate, as
duty demands that he continue the work of his ministry. He will see to it
that she is well cared for in a convent at Tatta. Luxima upbraids him for
his selfishness. He replies that it is not the prospect of his degradation
and humiliation which deters him from staying with her, but the thought
that by so doing he will commit a crime--break his vows. "Pity then," the
missionary says, "and yet respect him who, loving thee and virtue
equally, can never know happiness without nor with thee--who thus
condemned to suffer without ceasing submits not to his fate, but is
overpowered by its tyranny, and who alike helpless and unresigned opposes
while he suffers and repines while he endures." Continency was
unintelligible to Shelley, and he criticizes it in Canto XII as follows:

                                ... that sudden rout
  One checked who never in his mildest dreams
  Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams
  Of his rent heart so hard and cold a creed
  Had seared with blistering ice; but he misdeems
  That he is wise whose wounds do only bleed
  Only for self; thus thought the Iberian priest indeed

  And others too thought he was wise to see
  In pain and fear and hate something divine;
  In love and beauty no divinity.

Shelley believed that "the worthiness of every action is to be estimated
by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce,"[57]
that the ideal of man was to love and to be loved. Luxima says: "Be that
heaven my witness that I would not for the happiness I have abandoned and
the glory I have lost, resign that desert whose perilous solitudes I share
with thee. Oh! my Father, and my friend, thou alone hast taught me to know
that the paradise of woman is the creation of her heart; that it is not
the light or air of heaven, though beaming brightness and breathing
fragrance, nor all that is loveliest in Nature's scenes, which form the
sphere of her existence and enjoyment! It is alone the presence of him she
loves; it is that mysterious sentiment of the heart which diffuses a finer
sense of life through the whole being; and which resembles, in its
singleness and simplicity, the primordial idea which in the religion of my
fathers is supposed to have preceded time and worlds, and from which all
created good has emanated."[58]

In the preface to _The Revolt of Islam_ Shelley writes that he "sought to
enlist the harmony of metrical language ... and the rapid and subtle
transitions of human passion in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive
morality." For this purpose he chose "a story of human passion in its most
universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures and
appeal, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions to the
common sympathies of every human breast. What is the _Missionary_ but "a
story of human passion appealing in contempt of all artificial opinions or
institutions to the common sympathies of every human heart?" When _The
Revolt of Islam_ first appeared, Laon and Cythna were brother and sister.
Their love like that of the missionary and priestess is considered
illicit. Not only are the motifs of both very similar, but many of the
incidents are identical. The influence of the _Missionary_ on the _Revolt_
will perhaps appear more clearly if we put these incidents in parallel
columns. In the second canto--

  Laon and Cythna must part that they    When the missionary tells Luxima
  may spread their doctrines among       that they must separate, in order
  men.                                   that he may continue the work of
                                         his ministry, Luxima says she
  Cythna says:                           will not long endure the agony of
                                         separation. "Thinkest thou," she
    "We part! O Laon, I must dare,       exclaims, "that I shall long
          nor tremble                    survive his loss for whom I have
    To meet those looks no more!         sacrificed all?"
    Oh heavy stroke
    Sweet brother of my soul! can I
          dissemble
    The agony of this thought?"

         *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

  Laon and Cythna are seized by the      The missionary and Luxima are
  officers of the State, and during      seized by the officers of the
  the struggle Laon overcomes three      Inquisition, and the missionary
  of the tyrant's soldiers in            overcomes three soldiers in
  defense of Cythna.                     defense of Luxima.

            "--a feeble shriek           "But the _feeble_ plaints of
    It was a feeble shriek, faint,       Luxima, who was borne away in
          far, and low                   the arms of one of the assailants
    _Arrested me_--my _mien grew         _recalled to his bewildered mind_
          calm and meek_--               a consciousness of their mutual
    'Twas Cythna's cry."                 sufferings and situations."

  After the overthrow of the tyrant      Their fellow travelers boldly
  Othman the people demand               advanced to rescue the missionary
  that he be put to death.               and Luxima, and awaiting his
                                         orders, asked: "Shall we throw
                                         those men under the camels' feet
                                         or shall we bind them to those
                                         rocks and leave them to their
                                         fate?"

  Laon answers:                          "The missionary cast on them a
                                         glance of pity and contempt and
    "'What do ye seek? What fear         looking round him with an air at
          ye,' then I cried,             once dignified and grateful, he
    Suddenly starting forth,             said: 'My friends, my heart is
          'that ye should shed           deeply touched by your generous
    The blood of Othman? If your         sympathy; good and grave men
          hearts are tried               ever unite, of whatever religion
    In the true love of freedom          or whatever faith they may be;
          cease to dread                 but I belong to a religion whose
    This one poor lonely man.'"          spirit is to save, not to destroy;
                                         suffer these men to live; they are
                                         but the agents of a higher power
                                         whose scrutiny they challenge me
                                         to meet.'"

  From his prison Laon sees a ship       On the way to Goa the missionary
  sailing by in which he thinks          notices a covered conveyance
  Cythna is imprisoned.                  going by in which he feels sure
                                         Luxima is imprisoned. "He
    "I knew that ship bore Cythna        shuddered and for a moment the
          o'er the plain                 heroism of virtue deserted him.
    Of waters, to her blighting          He doubted not that she would be
          slavery sold                   conveyed in the same vessel with
    And watched it with such             him to Goa."
          thoughts as must remain
          untold."

  Cythna is imprisoned in a cavern,      Luxima is imprisoned in a convent
  and her mind is deranged for a         at Lahore. The exciting incidents
  time.                                  of their arrest and separation
                                         had deranged her mind for a time.

    "The fiend of madness which had
          made its prey
    Of my poor heart was lulled to
          sleep awhile."

  The part taken by Laon and Cythna      The natives are on the point of
  in the insurrection of the people      rebelling, and Spanish authority
  has already been explained.            in India is on the brink of
                                         extinction. The missionary is
  Laon and Cythna are condemned to       condemned to death, by the
  death through the instigation of       Inquisition. The morning of the
  the priests.                           missionary's execution has
                                         arrived.
  The morning of Laon's execution
  has arrived.                           "The secular judges had already
                                         taken their seats on the
    "And see beneath a sun-bright        platform, the Grand Inquisitor
          _canopy_,                      and the Viceroy had placed
    Upon a platform level with the       themselves beneath their
          pile,                          respective _canopies_." The
    The anxious Tyrant sit enthroned     Christian missionary is led to
          on high                        the pile, "_the silence which
    Girt by the chieftans of the         belongs to death reigned on
          host.                          every_ side; thousands of persons
        .      .      .      .           were present;... Nature was
    There _was silence through the       touched on the master spring of
          host_ as when                  emotion, and betrayed in the
    An earthquake trampling on some      looks of the multitude feelings
          populous town,                 of _horror_, of _pity_, and of
    Has crusht ten thousand with one     admiration, which the bigoted
          tread, and men                 vigilance of an inhuman zeal
    Expect the second.                   would in vain have sought to
        .      .      .      .           suppress.
    _Tumult_ was in the soul of all
          beside,
    Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but
          those who saw
    Their tranquil victim pass felt
          wonder glide,
    Into their brain, and became
          calm with awe."

  As burning torches are about to be     On the day of the execution
  applied to the pyre on which Laon      Luxima noticed a procession
  is to die, a steed bursts through      moving beneath her window and her
  the rank of the people on which a      eyes rested on the form of the
  woman sits.                            missionary. "She beheld the
                                         friend of her soul; love and
    "Fairer, it seems than aught         reason returned together." She
          that _earth can breed_,        escapes the vigilance of her
    Calm, radiant, like a phantom        guardian, and seeks the place
          of the dawn.                   where her beloved is to die.
    A spirit _from the caves_ of         While officers were binding the
          _daylight_ wandering gone.     missionary to the stake "a form
    All thought it was _God's            _scarcely human_ darting with the
          Angel_ come to sweep           velocity of lightning through the
    The lingering guilty to their        multitude reached the foot of the
          fiery grave.                   pile and stood before it in a
                                         grand and aspiring attitude ...
                                         thus _bright and aerial_ as it
                                         stood, it looked like a spirit
                                         _sent from heaven_ in the awful
                                         moment of dissolution to cheer
                                         and to convey to the regions of
                                         the blessed, the soul which would
                                         soon arise pure from the ordeal
                                         of earthly sufferings. The sudden
                                         appearance of the singular
                                         phantom struck the imagination of
                                         the credulous and awed multitude
                                         with superstitious wonder....

                                         The Christians fixed their eyes
                                         upon the cross, which glittered
                                         on a bosom whose beauty scarcely
                                         seemed of mortal mould, and
                                         deemed themselves the witnesses
                                         of a miracle wrought for the
                                         salvation of a persecuted martyr,
                                         whose innocence was asserted by
                                         the firmness and fortitude with
                                         which he met a dreadful death."

  Cythna has come not to save Laon       Luxima springs upon the pyre to
  but to die with him.                   die with the missionary.

  At the sight of Cythna                 At the sight of Luxima the people
                                         rise in rebellion.
    "They pause, they blush, they
          gaze--a gathering shout        "The timid spirits of the Hindus
    Bursts like one sound from the       rallied to an event which touched
          ten thousand streams           their hearts, and roused them
    Of a tempestuous sea."               from the lethargy of despair--the
                                         sufferings, the oppression, they
  (All through the poem Cythna           had so long endured, seemed now
  exerts a wonderful influence           epitomized before their eyes in
  over the people.)                      the person of their celebrated
                                         and distinguished prophetess ...
    "The tyrants send their armed        they fell with fury on the
          slaves to quell                Christians, they rushed upon the
    Her power; they, even like a         cowardly guards of the
          thunder-gust                   Inquisition who let fall their
    Caught by some forest, bend          arms and fled in dismay."
          beneath the spell
    Of that young maiden's speech,
          and to their chiefs
          rebel."

  It did not suit Shelley's purpose      The officers of the Inquisition
  to have the people use force           called on by their superiors
  against the tyrants, so he makes       sprang forward to seize the
  Cythna persuade the people             missionary; "for a moment the
                                         timid multitude were still as
    "--though unwilling her to bind      _the pause of a brooding storm_."
    Near me among the snakes."

  A priest commands the multitude
  to seize Cythna,

    "Slaves to the stake
    Bind her, and on my head the
          burden lay
    Of her just torments ...
    They trembled, but replied not
          nor obeyed
    _Pausing in breathless silence_.

  Laon escaped from his first prison     During the confusion caused by
  in a boat which belonged to an old     the insurrection the missionary
  man who represents Shelley's tutor     and Luxima escape in a boat which
  at Eton, Dr. Lind.                     was provided by his old tutor,
                                         the Pundit.

The missionary and Luxima reach a cavern which bears a slight resemblance
to the caverns of _The Revolt_. He discovers that the priestess is dying
from a wound received during the melee at Lahore. "Answering the eloquence
of her languid and tender looks, he exclaims, 'Yes, dearest, and most
unfortunate, our destinies are now inseparably united! Together we have
loved, together we have resisted, together we have erred, and together we
have suffered; lost alike to the glory and the fame which our virtues and
the conquest of our passions obtained for us; alike condemned by our
religions and our countries, there now remains nothing on earth for us but
each other.'" This recalls to mind the dedication of _The Revolt of
Islam_--

  There is no danger to a man that knows
  What life and death is; there's not any law
  Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful
  That he should stoop to any other law.

As the end of Luxima approaches she bids her beloved live and preach peace
and mercy, and love to Brahmin and Christian. "But should thy eloquence
and thy example fail, tell them my story! tell them how I have suffered,
and how even thou has failed--thou, for whom I forfeited my caste, my
country and my life; for 'tis too true, that still more loving than
enlightened, my ancient habits of belief clung to my mind, thou to my
heart; still I lived thy seeming proselyte, that I might still live thine;
and now I die as Brahmin women die; a Hindoo in my feelings and my
faith--dying for him I loved and believing as my fathers believed."[59]

This bears some resemblance to that part of Cythna's speech in the cavern,
Canto IX, where she glories in the triumph of their love over the
opposition of the world.

                              I fear nor prize
  Aught that can now betide unshared by thee.

Cythna thinks that she _will soon die_ and believes like Luxima that the
story of their love will be a source of inspiration to mankind

  Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,
  Our happiness, and all that we have been
  Immortally must live and burn and move
  When we shall be no more.

There are, of course, some differences between the two stories, especially
in the conclusions (Cythna and Laon are burned, while Luxima alone dies
and the Missionary is never heard of again); but many of the incidents of
both are so alike as to justify us in believing that those in _The Revolt_
were derived from _The Missionary_. This is confirmed by the fact that
Shelley makes more attacks in this poem on priests and the celibacy of the
clergy than in any other. In the preface to the poem, Shelley says that
"although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the
thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years." It is
suggestive that the idea of composing the poem came to him in 1811, the
year in which he first read the _Missionary_. In this same year he wrote a
little poem entitled an _Essay on Love_, no copy of which is now
extant.[60] Should one ever come to light, it may show remarkable
similarity to the love poem _The Revolt of Islam_, where "love is
celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral
world."[61]

It has been said that Shelley was a libertine, but there seems to be no
proof for this assertion. Hogg, who was his most intimate friend at
Oxford, says the purity and sanctity of Shelley's life were most
conspicuous. "He was offended, and indeed more indignant than would appear
to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature at a coarse and
awkward jest, especially if it were immodest and uncleanly; in the latter
case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasiness preeminent." With the
exception of his elopement with Mary Godwin there is nothing in his life
to indicate that he was licentious. "Die ruhe, klarheit, sicherheit und
staerke seines geschlechtlichen empfuendens, das frei ist von aller
luesternheit oder unnatuerlichkeit ist bei seiner feinfuehligen, nervosen
koerperanlage besonders bemerkenswert."[62]

True, Shelley loved many women, but this does not prove that he was
immoral. His love is platonic and not sensual. Platonic love is described
by Howell as "a love abstracted from all corporeal gross impressions and
sensual appetites, but consists in contemplations and ideas of the
mind."[63] It is a passion having its source in the enjoyment of beauty
and goodness.

"What is love or friendship?" Shelley asks. "Is it capable of no
extension, no communication?" Lord Kaimes defines love to be a
particularization of the general passion, but this is the love of
sensation, of sentiment--the absurdest of absurd vanities; it is the love
of pleasure, not the love of happiness. The one is a love which is
self-centered, self-devoted, self-interested ... selfishness, monopoly in
its very soul; but love, the love which we worship--virtue, heaven,
disinterestedness--in a word."[64] Love seeks the good of all, not because
its object is a minister to its pleasures, but because it is really
worthy.

Platonism, laying emphasis upon the function of the soul as opposed to the
senses, treats "love as a purely spiritual passion devoid of all sensuous
pleasure."[65] Beauty is a spiritual thing, the splendor of God's light
shining in all things. It is that quality of an object which draws us to
it and makes us love it. Man should love everything and everybody because
they are all beautiful. Shelley says:

  True love in this differs from gold and clay,
  That to divide is not to take away
  Love is like understanding, that grows bright
  Gazing on many truths;[66]

In another place he says "the meanest of our fellow beings contains
qualities, which, developed, we must admire and adore." Beauty is
something more than outward appearance. The source of its power lies in
the soul. "The platonic theory of beauty teaches that the beauty of the
body is a result of the formative energy of the soul." According to the
Platonist Ficino the soul has descended from heaven and has framed a body
in which to dwell. True lovers are those whose souls have departed from
heaven under the same astral influences and who, accordingly, are informed
with the same idea in imitation of which they frame their earthly
bodies."[67] "We are born," writes Shelley, "into the world, and there is
something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more
thirsts after its likeness.... The discovery of its antitype; the meeting
with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own ... with a
frame whose nerves like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung to the
accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our
own;... this is the invisible and unattainable point to which love
tends."[68] According to Plato wisdom is the most lovely of all ideas and
the human being who has the greatest amount of wisdom is the most lovable.
Platonic love then concerns only the soul, and the union of lover and
beloved is simply a union of their souls. "I am led to love a being,"
Shelley says, "not because it stands in the physical relation of blood to
me but because I discern an intellectual relationship."[69] Whenever
Shelley sees one possessing beauty and virtue he cannot help loving that
person.

  I never was attached to that great sect
  Whose doctrine is that each one should select
  Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend
  And all the rest though fair and wise commend
  To cold oblivion;[70]

Again

                                    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.

This is the doctrine of Diotima in Plato's _Symposium_, which Shelley has
translated as follows: "He who aspires to love rightly, ought from his
earliest youth to seek an intercourse with beautiful forms.... He ought
then to consider that beauty in whatever form it resides is the brother of
that beauty which subsists in another form; and if he ought to pursue that
which is beautiful in form it would be absurd to imagine that beauty is
not one and the same thing in all forms, and would therefore remit much of
his ardent preferences towards one, through his perception of the
multitude of claims upon his love."

In the preface to _Alastor_ Shelley says that the poem represents a youth
(himself) of uncorrupted feelings led forth to the contemplation of the
universe. "But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His
mind is at length awakened, and thirsts for intercourse with an
intelligence similar to himself. He images to himself the Being whom he
loves." This image unites all of wonderful or wise or beautiful which the
poet could depict. Shelley sought this ideal all through life, and when he
thought he found it went into raptures. Disillusionment, however, soon
followed, and _Alastor_ is the expression of his despair at not finding an
embodiment of his ideal.

If we keep in mind that Shelley was a platonist, we shall be able to form
a more intelligent estimate of his love lyrics and his relations with
women. In his first wife, Harriet, he saw courage, a desire for freedom,
and a willingness to learn his doctrines.

  Thou art sincere and good, of resolute mind
  Free from heart-withering customs' cold control,
  Of passion lofty, pure and subdued.

As soon as she ceased to take interest in his studies, his love for her
began to wane. "Every one must know," he tells Peacock, "that the partner
of my life should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy." A
month or two after his first marriage he tells Elizabeth Hitchener that he
loves her. Seeing that she possessed high intelligence, great love of
mankind, and a tendency to oppose existing institutions, he straightway
calls her the "sister of his soul."

Later on he meets a beautiful, sentimental Italian girl, Emilia Viviani,
imagines she is the perfect ideal which he had formed in his youth, and
writes the _Epipsychidion_. "Emilia," says Professor Dowden, "beautiful,
spiritual, sorrowing, became for him a type and symbol of all that is most
radiant and divine in nature, all that is most remote and unattainable,
yet ever to be pursued--the ideal of beauty, truth, and love."[71]
_Epipsychidion_ is the poetic embodiment of the feelings awakened in
Shelley by this supposed discovery of the incarnation of the ideal. Emilia
turned out to be an ordinary human creature, and then Shelley wished to
blot out the memory of her entirely. In a letter to Mr. Gisborne, June,
1822, Shelley says: "I think one is always in love with something or
other; the error--and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh
and blood to avoid it--consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness
of what is, perhaps eternal." "Such illusions," says Dowden, "may be of
service in keeping alive within us the aspiration for the highest things,
but assuredly they have a tendency to draw away from real persons some of
those founts of feeling which are needed to keep fresh and bright the
common ways and days of our life."[72]

Some of Shelley's views on women and the family were derived from Mary
Wollstonecraft's _Vindication of the Rights of Women_. "According to the
prevailing opinion," says Mrs. Wollstonecraft, "women were made for men."
All their cares and anxieties are directed towards getting husbands. They
deck themselves out with artificial graces that enable them to exercise a
short lived tyranny. "Love in their bosoms, taking place of every nobler
passion, their sole ambition is to look fair, to raise emotion instead of
inspiring respect; and this ignoble desire, like the servility in absolute
monarchies, destroys all strength of character."[73] Women then should not
depend on their charms alone, because these have little effect on their
husband's heart "when they are seen every day when the summer is past and
gone." Her first care should be to improve her mind, to exercise her
God-given faculties, assert her individuality. This can never be, though,
as long as she is the plaything of man. If one may contest the divine
right of kings one may also contest the divine right of husbands. Women
should bow only to reason and cease being the modest slaves of opinion. It
is a violation of the sacred rights of humanity to exact blind obedience
and meek submission of women. "The being who patiently endures injustice
will soon become unjust."

In _The Revolt of Islam_, Cythna says:

  Can man be free if woman be a slave?
  Chain one who lives and breathes this boundless air,
  To the corruption of a closed grave!
  Can they whose mates are beasts condemned to bear
  Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare
  To trample their oppressors?

According to Pope "every woman is at heart a rake." "Rendered gay and
giddy by the whole tenor of their lives, the very aspect of wisdom or the
severe graces of virtue must have a lugubrious appearance to them." "Till
women are led to exercise their understandings they should not be
satirized for their attachment to rakes."[74]

Shelley's opinion of women is even less complimentary:

  Woman! she is his slave, she has become
  A thing I weep to speak--the child of scorn,
  The outcast of a desolated home.
  Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn
  Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn,
  As calm decks the false ocean....[75]

"The parent," Mrs. Wollstonecraft writes, "who pays proper attention to
helpless infancy has a right to require the same attention when the
feebleness of age comes upon him. But to subjugate a rational being to the
mere will of another, after he is of age to answer to society for his own
conduct, is a most cruel and undue stretch of power, and perhaps as
injurious to morality as those religious systems which do not allow right
and wrong to have any existence, but in the Divine will." Children should
be taught early to submit to reason, "for to submit to reason, is to
submit to the nature of things, and to that God who formed them so, to
promote our real interest."[76]

  But children near their parents tremble now
  Because they must obey ...
  ... and life is poisoned in its wells.[77]

"Obedience (were society as I could wish it) is a word which ought to be
without meaning."[78]

Another book that interested Shelley very much was the "_Memoires
relatives a la Revolution Francaise_" of Louvet. Louvet was a licentious
novelist and ardent Republican. He strongly opposed the tyranny of Marat
and of Robespierre and the work of the commune of Paris. He was very
courageous and often endangered his life by his opposition to the
arbitrary measures of the Council. In 1793 he was obliged to flee for his
life and the _Memoirs_ contains interesting details of this flight. He and
his wife were very devoted to each other, and this together with the man's
courage made a strong impression on Shelley. "Je te laissai, mon cher
Barbaroux; maix tu me le pardonnes; tu sais quelle passion j'avais pour
elle, et comme elle en etait digne!" He goes to Paris in spite of the
fact that he runs the risk of being seized and guillotined. "Quiconque
n'epouvva point un pariel supplice ne saurait en avoir une juste idee. O
Ladoiska! sans le souvenir de ton amour, qui donc aurait pu m' empecher de
terminer mes peines?"[79]

Louvet and Ladoiska are reunited again, but only to be arrested soon
afterwards. This causes her to exclaim, "Non, je jure que sans toi, la vie
m'est tourment, un insupportable tourment, seule, je perirais bientot, je
perirais desesperee. Ah! permets, permets que nous mourions ensemble."[80]

This work may have suggested to Shelley the idea of making Laon and Cythna
die together. Cythna tells Laon

  Darkness and death, if death be true, must be
  Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed with thee.[81]




CHAPTER III

POLITICS


Someone has said that if Shelley had not been a poet he would have been a
politician. Certain it is that he gave to politics a great deal of thought
and study. On January 26, 1819, Shelley wrote to Peacock: "I consider
poetry very subordinate to political science, and, if I were well,
certainly I would aspire to the latter, for I can conceive a great work
embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing the contending
creeds by which mankind have been ruled."[82] Shelley was not one who

                        beheld the woe
  In which mankind was bound, and deem'd that fate
  Which made them abject, would preserve them so.

On the contrary, he firmly believed in man's capacity to work out his own
regeneration. His tuneful lyre was ever at the service of the Goddess of
Freedom; and he took occasion often to pour forth music calculated to
rouse the nations from their apathy.

Very many of Shelley's views on political and social questions can be
traced to Godwin's _Political Justice_. Godwin doubts that one can be said
to have a mind. It may still be convenient to use the word "mind," but in
fact what we know by that name is merely a chain of "ideas." Since man's
mind is but an aggregate of ideas, man himself is capable of indefinite
modification. Differences in men result wholly from differences of
education. Feed a sinner on syllogisms and you can transform him into a
saint. It is impossible for one to resist a clear exposition of the
advantages of virtue. It follows, too, that we can easily abolish existing
institutions and rearrange the whole structure of society on new
principles infallibly correct. The force which is to spur us on to do this
is reason. It is "omnipotent."

Volney, Rousseau, Holbach, and the rest of this stamp, although condemning
past systems of government, admitted that some form of government was
necessary for the well-being of mankind. Godwin, on the other hand,
denounced all government as "an institution of the most pernicious
tendency." There is only one power to which man should yield obedience and
that is the decision of his own understanding. Conditions being such as
they are, government may be required for a while to restrain and direct
men, but as soon as men will learn to follow reason, government will
disappear altogether.

Godwin taught that every voluntary action flows solely from the decision
of one's judgment. "Voluntary actions of men originate in all cases in
their opinions," _i. e._, in the state of their minds immediately previous
to those actions. The nature of a man's actions, therefore, depends on the
nature of his opinions. If he has just and true opinions his actions will
be good; if erroneous ones, his actions will be bad. But "sound reasoning
and truth adequately communicated must be victorious over error."[83] Man
will always accept the truth if presented to him properly. It follows,
then, that "reason and conviction appear to be the proper instruments for
regulating the actions of mankind." Man's conduct should not conform to
any other standard but reason. Obedience to law then is immoral, unless of
course its mandates correspond to the decision of our own judgments.
Shelley has the same idea

                         The man
  Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys,
  Power, like a devastating pestilence
  Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience
  Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
  Make slaves of men, and of the human frame
  A mechanized automaton.[84]

Again and again he exclaims against kings and autocracy. His sonnet,
"England in 1819," is a terrible castigation of the Hanoverian Kings:

  An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king;
  Princes the dregs of their dull race, who flow
  Through public scorn--mud from a muddy spring,
  Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
  But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
  Till they drop blind in blood without a blow, etc., etc.

To aid republicanism he espoused the cause of the unhappy Caroline of
Brunswick and on her account wrote "A New National Anthem," and the
satirical piece, "Swellfoot the Tyrant." In "Hellas" we find him
advocating the cause of Greece, and it is believed that this poem moved
his friend Byron to take up arms in defense of that country.

"A king," writes Godwin, "is necessarily and unavoidably a despot in his
heart." With him the words "ruler" and "tyrant" are synonymous. A king
from the very nature of his office cannot be anything but vicious. Shelley
expresses his opinion of kings as follows:

  The king, the wearer of a gilded chain
  That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
  Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave
  Even to the basest appetites.[85]

One wonders at first why Shelley should have represented evil as an eagle
in _The Revolt of Islam_. The reason for this becomes clear when one
considers that the eagle is often called a king among birds and is used as
a symbol for authority.

Shelley, however, did not believe in violent revolutions. In _The Revolt
of Islam_, Irish pamphlets, &c., he advocates reformation without recourse
to force. A change must take place; kings must be done away with, but not
until the people are prepared for the change. "A pure republic," he
writes, "may be shown, by inferences the most obvious and irresistible, to
be that system of social order the fittest to produce the happiness and
promote the genuine eminence of man. Yet nothing can less consist with
reason or afford smaller hopes of any beneficial issue than the plan which
should abolish the regal and the aristocratical branches of our
constitution, before the public mind, through many gradations of
improvement, shall have arrived at the maturity which shall disregard
these symbols of its childhood."

Godwin and Shelley maintain that the state should make as little use as
possible of coercion and violence. "Criminals should be pitied and
reformed, not detested and punished." The punishment of death is
particularly obnoxious to them. Shelley argues against it in his essay on
_The Punishment of Death_. He claims that the punishment of death defeats
its own end. It is a triumphant exhibition of suffering virtue, which may
inspire some with pity, admiration and sympathy. As a consequence it may
incite them to emulate their works, especially the works of political
agitators. Punishment of death, again, excites those emotions which are
inimical to social order. It strengthens all the inhuman and unsocial
impulses of man. The contempt of human life breeds ferocity of manners and
contempt of social ties. Hence it is, Shelley believes, that those nations
in which the penal code has been particularly mild have been distinguished
from all others by the rarity of crime.

Neither should the citizens of a state use violence in putting down
oppression. In his address to the Irish he tells them that violence and
folly will serve only to delay emancipation. "Mildness, sobriety, and
reason are the effectual methods of forwarding the ends of liberty and
happiness." Violence and falsehood will produce nothing but wretchedness
and slavery and will make those who use them incapable of further
exertion. Violence will immediately render their cause a bad one. Godwin
likewise maintains that "force is an expedient the use of which is much to
be deplored. It is contrary to the nature of intellect which cannot be
improved but by conviction and persuasion. It corrupts the man that
employs it and the man upon whom it is employed."[86] In _The Revolt of
Islam_ Shelley says:

  Oh wherefore should ill ever flow from ill,
  And pain still keener pain forever breed?
  We are all brethren--even the slaves who kill
  For hire are men; and to avenge misdeed
  On the misdoer doth but misery feed
  With her own broken heart![87]

Godwin would reform society by means of education, so also would Shelley.
They seem to differ though in their views with regard to the relations
that exist between institutions and individuals. Godwin holds that
tyrranical institutions must be abolished before men can become free.
Shelley, on the contrary, says that the freedom and enlightenment of
individuals should come first, and it is only when that is accomplished
that tyrannical institutions will disappear. Godwin writes: "The only
method according to which social improvements can be carried on is when
the improvement of our institutions advances in a just proportion to the
illumination of the public understanding."[88] While Shelley writes in his
address to the Irish people that reform "is founded on the reform of
private men and without individual amendment it is vain and foolish to
expect the amendment of a state or government." Although Godwin says in
the first book of _Political Justice_ that it is futile to attempt to
change morals without first changing our institutions, still, later on, he
seems to forget this and to advocate the reform of individuals. "Make men
wise," he writes, "and by that very operation you make them free. Civil
liberty follows as a consequence of this."[89] Shelley, unlike Plato,
would give to poets the first place in his plan for the reform of society.
He calls them "the acknowledged legislators of the world."[90]

Godwin's principle of justice is that each should do to others all the
good that is in his power. It is an impartial treatment of every man in
matters that relate to his happiness--a treatment which is to be measured
solely by a consideration of the properties of the receiver and the
capacity of him who bestows. Everything should be so disposed--material
comforts so distributed as to give the same amount of pleasure to all.
Personal and private feelings such as gratitude and parental affection
should be destroyed. A just man will consider the general good only. Hence
if my father and a stranger who is of more benefit to society than my
father are both in danger of death, I am bound to try to save the stranger
first.[91] Shelley has something similar to this in his _Essay on
Christianity_: "I love my country, I love the city in which I was born, my
parents, my wife and the children of my care, and to these children, this
woman, this nation, it is incumbent on me to do all the benefits in my
power.... You ought to love all mankind, nay every individual of mankind.
You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to
love those who exist beyond it more." Godwin says that one principle of
justice is "to be no respecter of persons."[92] In a letter to Miss
Hitchener, October, 1811, Shelley writes: "I ... set myself up as no
respecter of persons." "The end of virtue," says Godwin, "is to add to the
sum of pleasurable sensation." In the _Essay on Christianity_ Shelley
writes: "This and no other is justice: to consider under all circumstances
and consequences of a particular case how the greatest quantity and purest
quality of happiness will ensue from any action; this is to be just; and
there is no other justice." Godwin[93] attempts to tell how we can find
out whether an action would be just or not. He warns us against measuring
the morality of an action according to existing laws. We can determine its
morality only by trying to estimate the amount of happiness or pain it
will cause others. "One of the best practical rules of morality," he
writes, "is that of putting ourselves in the place of another.... It is by
this means only that we can form an adequate idea of his pleasures and
pains."[94] Shelley expresses the same thought in his _Defense of Poetry_:
"A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he
must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and
pleasures of his species must become his own."

For Shelley laws are "obscure records of dark and barbarous echos," "tomes
of reasoned wrong glozed on by ignorance."[95] Lawyers are those who,
skilled to snare

  The feet of justice in the toils of law
  Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still.[96]

"Government," he says, "cannot make a law, it can only pronounce that
which was the law before its organization, _viz._: the moral result of the
imperishable relations of things;"[97] and in his _Address to the Irish_:
"No act of a national representation can make anything wrong which was not
wrong before: it cannot change virtue and truth." All this is merely a
repetition of Godwin's principles. "Immutable reason," he says, "is the
true legislator, and her decrees it behooves us to investigate. The
functions of society extend, not to the making, but the interpreting of
law; it cannot decree, it can only declare that which the nature of things
has already decreed."[98]

Godwin was a communist rather than a socialist. Every kind of cooperation
was repugnant to him. With regard to the distribution of wealth he taught
that any given article belonged to him to whom it will give the greatest
sum of benefit or pleasure. A loaf of bread, _v. g._, belongs to the man
who needs it most. Shelley holds that if the properties of the aristocrats
were resolved into their original stock, and if each earned his own
living, each would be happy and contented, and crime and the temptation to
crime would scarcely exist. "If two children," he writes, "were placed
together in a desert island and they found some scarce fruit, would not
justice dictate an equal division? If this number is multiplied to any
extent of which number is capable, if these children are men, families--is
not justice capable of the same extension and multiplication? Is it not
the same, are not its decrees invariable?"[99] Again in his _Essay on
Christianity_: "With all those who are truly wise, there will be an entire
community not only of thoughts and feelings but also of external
possessions." Both Shelley and Godwin put the rent-roll of lands in the
same class as the pension-list which is supposed to be employed in the
purchase of ministerial majorities.

It is a calculation of Godwin, says Shelley, "that all the conveniences of
civilized life might be produced if society would divide the labor equally
among its members, by each individual being employed in labor two hours
during the day."[100] Godwin says that the means of subsistence belong
entirely to the owner. The fruits of labor belong to the laborer, but he
is only the steward of them. He can consume only what he needs, and must
preserve and dispense the rest for the benefit of others. In his _Essay on
Christianity_, Shelley writes "every man in proportion to his virtue
considers himself, with respect to the great community of mankind, as the
steward and guardian of their interests in the property which he chances
to possess."[101] When Shelley proposed to share his income with Elizabeth
Hitchener he said that he was not doing an act of generosity, but one of
justice--"bare, simple justice." Godwin says that new inventions and the
refinements of luxury are inimical to the welfare of society. These mean
more work for the poor while only the rich are benefited.[102] "The poor,"
writes Shelley, "are set to labor--for what? Not the food for which they
famish; not the blankets for want of which ... no; for the pride of power,
for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the
hundredth part of society." Godwin says that the direct pleasure which
luxuries give is very small. They are prized because of the love of
distinction which is characteristic of every human mind. Fine bonnets and
wealth would not be desired by a family living on a desert island. Why not
let the acquisition of learning and the practice of virtue instead of
wealth be the road to fame. Shelley writes--

               And statesman boasts
  Of wealth.... How vainly seek
  The selfish for that happiness denied
  To aught but virtue.[103]

Again: "the man who has fewest bodily wants approachest nearest to the
Divine Nature. Satisfy these wants at the cheapest rates and expend the
remaining energies of your nature in the attainment of virtue and
knowledge.... Ye can spend no labor on mechanism consecrated to luxury and
pride."[104] "There is no wealth in the world," says Godwin, "except this,
the labor of man."[105] Every new luxury is a new weight thrown on the
shoulders of the laborer, for which they receive no benefit. In the
_Notes to Queen Mab_, Shelley writes: "there is no real wealth but the
labor of man." "What is misnamed wealth," writes Godwin, "is merely a
power vested in certain individuals by the institutions of society to
compel others to labor for their benefit."[106] "Wealth," says Shelley,
"is a power usurped by the few to compel the many to labor for their
benefit."[107]

Shelley during his sojurn in Ireland, in the spring of 1813, published the
_Declaration of Rights_. This pamphlet afterwards led to the arrest of his
Irish servant, Daniel Hill, for distributing the same without authority.
Many propositions of the _Declaration of Rights_ bear considerable
resemblance to some of the proposals of the _Declaration of Rights_
adopted by the Constitutional Assembly of France in August, 1789.

No. 3 of Shelley's _Declaration_ reads as follows: "Government is devised
for the security of rights. The rights of men are liberty and an equal
participation in the commonage of nature." Proposition No. 2 of the
_Constituent Assembly_ is: "The object of every political association is
the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These
rights are liberty, security, resistance to oppression."

In No. 4 Shelley says: "As the benefit of the governed is, ought to be,
the origin of government, no man can have any authority that does not
expressly emanate from their will." The corresponding constituent
proposition is: "The principle of all authority resides essentially in the
nation; no body, no individual can exercise any authority that does not
expressly emanate from it."

Compare Shelley's No. 6 with Nos. 1 and 17. No. 6: "All have a right to an
equal share in the benefits and burdens of the government. Any
disabilities for opinions imply, by their very existence, barefaced
tyranny on the side of the government, ignorant slavishness on the side of
the governed." No. 1 of the _Assembly_: "Men are born and remain free and
equal. Social distinctions can only be founded on the common good." No.
17: "Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived
of it, unless public necessity evidently demands it, and then only on
condition that indemnity be made."

No. 7 of the _Declaration_ resembles the constituent Nos. 8 and 9. Shelley
says: "The rights of man in the present state of society are only to be
secured by some degree of coercion to be exercised on their violator. The
sufferer has a right that the degree of coercion employed be as light as
possible."

No. 8: "The law should establish only those punishments that are strictly
and evidently necessary, &c."

No. 9: "... all unnecessary severity should be repressed by law."

Shelley's No. 9 and the constituent No. 7 declare that no man has the
right to resist the law.

No. 15 of the _Declaration_ resembles No. 5 of the _Constituent Assembly_.
No. 15: "Law cannot make what is in its nature virtuous or innocent to be
criminal, any more than it can make what is criminal to be innocent.
Government cannot make a law; it can only pronounce that which was the law
before its organization, _viz._, the moral result of the imperishable
relation of things." No. 5: "Law has only the right to prohibit those
actions which are injurious to society. Anything that is not forbidden by
the law cannot be prevented, and no one can be constrained to do that
which is not ordained by law."

Shelley's No. 21 is: "The government of a country ought to be perfectly
indifferent to every opinion. Religious differences, the bloodiest and
most rancorous of all, spring from partiality." This corresponds to
constituent No. 10: "No one should be disturbed on account of his
opinions, even religious ones, provided their manifestation does not
endanger the public order established by law."

Finally compare Shelley's No. 27 with constituent No. 6. No. 27: "No man
has a right to be respected for any other possessions but those of virtue
and talents. Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and
excessive wealth a libel on its possessor." No. 6: "All citizens, being
equal in the eyes of the law, are equally admissable to every dignity,
position, and public employment according to their capacity, and without
any other distinction but those of virtue and talents."

Shelley's political views were somewhat modified by the influence of Leigh
Hunt. The two friends probably met for the first time in January, 1814.
Both were sensitive and of a retiring disposition, dwelling in a world of
books and dreams. Hunt, like Shelley, advocated Catholic emancipation,
freedom of the press, and reform of parliamentary representation. He
differed from Shelley in this, that he was more practical, and had more
faith than his friend in the advantages of such partial reforms as the
abolition of child labor and of the slave trade, the reduction and
equalization of taxes, and the education of the poor. Hunt advocated the
reform of military discipline, while Shelley claimed that standing armies
should be abolished altogether. Hunt carried on his attacks against the
evils of the time in the pages of _The Examiner_, which everybody read in
those days. In 1813 the Hunt brothers were fined and imprisoned for an
offensive article on the Prince Regent which appeared in their paper.
Shelley must have offered to pay this fine, as Hunt records in his
autobiography that Shelley made him a princely offer. In December, 1816,
the Shelleys, after their return from the continent, were the guests of
Hunt at Hampstead and received his support and sympathy during the
Chancery suit. Through Hunt, Shelley made the acquaintance of the Cockney
circle, including Keats, Hazlitt, Reynolds, Novello, Brougham and Horace
Smith. In return for all this Shelley gave freely of his money to Hunt.

One acquainted with the Englishman's sense of honor may wonder at the
unusual way Hunt and Godwin accepted money from Shelley and others. It
must be remembered though that these men believed no man had exclusive
ownership in superfluous wealth. They received what Shelley could spare as
if they were taking what belonged to themselves.

Early in 1817 Shelley wrote _A Proposal for Putting Reform to a Vote_, a
pamphlet which today in England would be considered conservative. It
suggested that a meeting be held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern "to take
into consideration the most effectual measures for ascertaining whether or
no a reform in Parliament is the will of the majority of the individuals
of the British nation." It disclaimed any design of sanctioning the
revolutionary schemes which were imputed to the friends of reform, and
declares that its object is purely constitutional. The pamphlet advocates
annual parliaments, but not universal suffrage. In it Shelley expresses
himself in favor of retaining the regal and aristocratical branches of our
constitution until the public mind "shall have arrived at the maturity
that can disregard these symbols of its childhood." "Political
institutions," he there writes, "are undoubtedly susceptible of such
improvement as no rational person can consider possible as long as the
present degraded condition to which the vital imperfections in the
existing system of government has reduced the vast multitude of men shall
subsist. The securest method of arriving at such beneficial innovations is
to proceed gradually and with caution."

In February, 1817, the Shelleys went to live at Marlow. There was much
suffering among the lacemakers of that town and Shelley went continually
among the unfortunate population, relieving the most pressing cases of
distress to the best of his ability. He had a list of pensioners to whom
he made a weekly allowance. One day he returned home without shoes, having
given them away to a poor man.

On March 11, 1818, Shelley, accompanied by his family, quitted England,
never again to return. In Italy, as in England, he continually changed his
place of abode. During the year 1818 he wrote _Lines Written among the
Euganean Hills_, _Julian and Maddalo_, and also began _Prometheus
Unbound_. This last work was completed in Rome during the summer and fall
of 1819. "The poem," he says in the preface, "was chiefly written upon the
mountainous ruins of the baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and
thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees which are extended in everwinding
labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the
air." _Prometheus Unbound_ is considered by many to be Shelley's most
important work. Mr. J. A. Symonds declares that "a genuine liking for it
may be reckoned the touchstone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric
poetry." Mr. Rossetti waxes eloquent over "The immense scale and boundless
scope of the conception; the marble majesty and extra-mundane passions of
the personages; the sublimity of ethical aspiration; the radiance of
ideal and poetic beauty which saturates every phase of the subject."

Prometheus, according to W. Rossetti, is the mind of man. In his preface
to the poem Shelley writes: "But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of
the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the
purest and truest motives to the best and noblest ends." At the opening of
the drama Prometheus is discovered bound to an icy precipice in the Indian
Caucasus. He is kept there by the tyrant Jupiter, whom he helped to
enthrone in place of Saturn. Mercury is sent to Prometheus and offers him
freedom from torture on condition that he reveal the secret of averting
the fall of Jupiter. This Prometheus refuses to do because it would seat
the tyrant more securely on his throne. He is then left to the untender
mercies of the Furies. These torture him by making him contemplate all the
misery of the world and the futility of hoping for any release from it.
They expose to view the wrecks of all the schemes ever advanced for the
regeneration of society, and especially the hate, bloodshed, and misery
which followed in the wake of the most promising of them all, the French
Revolution. They remind him that Christ's mission is a failure; that His
followers are persecuted; and that Christianity has not lessened the
deceit and selfishness of man. The anguish of Prometheus is mental rather
than physical. He cries out to the Furies

  Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes,
  And yet I pity those they torture not.

His hope and optimism, however, triumph over all; and the Furies vanish. A
chorus of spirits come to console him and promise that he shall overcome
Death. Prometheus feels, nevertheless, that all hope is vain without love.
Conditions will remain as they are until Asia, the spirit of love in
nature, will be freed. At the end of the first act one of the nymphs,
Panthea, departs to seek Asia. She is found in a lovely vale and is
described as a being of exquisite beauty, "whose footsteps pave the world
with loveliness." Panthea then conducted Asia to the cave of Demogorgon.
This being has neither limb, nor form, nor outline; yet it is felt to be a
living spirit. Asia asks it when will the destined hour arrive for the
release of Prometheus. The answer is "Behold!" and just then the roof of
the cave bursts asunder, and the chariots of the Hours are seen passing
by. One of them stops and tells Asia that nightfall "will wrap heaven's
kingless throne in lasting night." Asia is transformed before them. Misery
gives place to love and joy. Another spirit with "dove-like eyes of hope"
conducts Asia to the throne of Jupiter.

The third act presents the catastrophe. It opens with a long speech of
Jupiter in which he exults over what he believes to be the approaching
conquest of man's soul. Little does he realize, however, that his fall is
at hand. The car of the Hour arrives with Demogorgon. At this sight
Jupiter is filled with terror and exclaims, "Awful shape, what art thou?"
Demogorgon answers, "Eternity. Demand no direr name. Descend and follow me
down the abyss." The secret is now revealed. Jupiter has just married
Thetis and the child of this union is to destroy his father. The curse is
fulfilled; Jupiter falls into the abyss. Prometheus is then released by
Hercules. Strength ministers to wisdom, courage, and long-suffering Love,
as a slave to its master. Prometheus is united with Asia; mankind with
love. The Golden Age has at last arrived. Henceforth there is to be no
tyranny nor evil of any kind. Love is to be supreme and is to make all
wise and happy. Man is released from bondage and is now free to do as
reason directs.

  The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains,
  Scepterless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
  Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
  Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
  Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man,
  Passionless? no, yet free from guilt or pain,
  Which were, for his will made or suffered them,
  Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like slaves,
  From chance, and death, and mutability,
  The clogs of that which else might oversoar
  The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
  Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

The drama should end here. The tyrant is overthrown and man is happy. In a
note on the play Mrs. Shelley says that it originally had but three acts.
Later on a fourth act was added, a sort of hymn of rejoicing over the
fulfillment of the prophecies with regard to Prometheus. In it specters of
the dead hours bear time to tomb in eternity. The spirits of the mind
reappear and chant their hymns of praise and thanksgiving.

Prometheus represents mankind. He is oppressed by the very being, Jupiter,
to whom he himself has given power. Jupiter must not be considered as the
abstract power of moral evil. He represents those institutions, political
and religious, which man himself has created. Jupiter's downfall is
brought about by his own offspring; man himself can overthrow tyranny. In
the marriage of Jupiter and Thetis, Shelley seems to portray the
overweening arrogance through which a political tyranny invests itself
with the pomp of a false glory and which always precedes its downfall. The
form of Demogorgon assumed by the child of this union undoubtedly means
Revolution, that Revolution which follows the marriage of unrighteous
power to arrogant display.[108] Demogorgon may be looked upon, too, as
Reason; Asia, the Spirit of Love, comes in contact with Demogorgon,
Reason, and moves it to action. The poet here means to image to us the
profound truth, that it is only through contact with emotion that abstract
thought can become roused to action and be a vital and dynamic power in
the sphere of practical life. It is only after having met Demogorgon that
the power of Asia is set free. If reason must be inspired by passion
before it can prevail, "love on the other hand must become instinct with
wisdom before it can be made manifest in that glory which shall save the
world."

After the interview with Demogorgon, Asia, love, is transfigured, "its
rosy warmth pervades the whole creation, and its power is revealed
triumphantly supreme. This is the act through which, in the secret mystery
of creation, the redemption of Prometheus is achieved. Thus through a
double process, destructive and constructive--by revolution and by
love--is set free the human soul."[109] Rossetti regards Prometheus as the
anthropomorphic God, created by the mind of man, and tyrannizing over its
creator; but surely, as Miss Scudder says, the myth is quite as much
political as theological.

_Prometheus Unbound_ was fiercely attacked in the _Quarterly_, and
Shelley, thinking that Southey was the author of the article, wrote to him
about it. Southey answered him that he did not write the article in
question, and at the same time read him a lecture on the necessity of
giving up his evil principles. Shelley felt that he was being misjudged
and wrongfully accused by one whom he could not suspect of ill-will, and
this no doubt helped to keep him a radical, even if he were inclined at
this time to become more conservative.

During 1819, meetings were held all over the country by the laboring
classes to consider ways and means of bettering their condition. On August
16, 1819, a huge one was held at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, with the
view of urging parliamentary reform. The magistrates had previously
declared that such a meeting would be illegal and the city authorities had
made extensive preparations for the preservation of the peace. After an
enormous crowd had gathered around the speakers, forty of the yeomanry
cavalry attempted to make their way through the multitude to arrest the
ringleaders. When it was found that they could not reach the platform a
hasty order was given to three hundred hussars to disperse the crowd. They
made a terrific charge, which resulted in the killing of six people and in
the wounding of fifty or sixty others. The news of this affair roused in
Shelley violent emotions of indignation and compassion. Writing to his
publisher, Mr. Ollier, he thus comments on the affair: "The same day that
your letter came, came the news of the Manchester work, and the torrent of
my indignation has not yet done boiling in my veins. I wait anxiously to
hear how the country will express its sense of this bloody, murderous
oppression of its destroyers. Something must be done. What, yet, I know
not." He calls it "an infernal business" and says that it is but the
distant thunders of the terrible storm which is fast approaching. "The
tyrants here, as in the French Revolution, have first shed blood."

The Manchester "massacre" inspired Shelley to write the _Mask of Anarchy_.
Leigh Hunt was asked to print it in _The Examiner_, but he refused. "I did
not insert it," Hunt wrote, "because I thought that the public at large
had not become sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and
kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse."
In this poem Shelley is not so vague and indefinite as he is in
_Prometheus Unbound_. He shows there that he has a grasp of the practical
wants of men. "What art thou, Freedom?" Shelley asks, and he replies:

  Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
  For the trampled multitude--
  No--in countries that are free
  Such starvation cannot be
  As in England now we see.

Even here Shelley exhorts his countrymen to seek reform through peaceful
methods. He tells them to oppose meekness and resoluteness to violence and
tyranny; and then the tyrants

             will return with shame
  To the place from which they came
  And the blood thus shed will speak
  In hot blushes on their cheek.

There is very little recorded concerning the relations that existed
between Robert Owen (England's first socialist of note) and Shelley. One
of Owen's biographers states that Shelley's spirit appeared to Owen at a
spiritualistic seance, and that Owen exclaimed, "Oh, there is my old
friend, Shelley." It is certain at any rate that Owen was a close friend
of Godwin, and consequently had at least an indirect influence on Shelley.
_Queen Mab_, moreover, was the gospel of the Owenites.

For Shelley's later views we are indebted to his _Philosophical View of
Reform_ which Professor Dowden discusses in his volume _Transcripts and
Studies_. Shelley wrote to Leigh Hunt on May 26, 1820, and enquired if he
knew any bookseller who would publish an octavo volume, entitled a
_Philosophical View of Reform_. The plan of the work was to include
chapters on: (1) The sentiment of the necessity of change; (2) its causes
and its objects; (3) practicability and necessity of change; (4) state of
parties as regards it; (5) probable, possible, and desirable mode in which
it should be effected. The work was never published, however, and it is
said that the manuscript cannot now be found.[110]

The treatise opens with a brief historical survey of the chief movements
on behalf of freedom which have taken place since the beginning of the
Christian era. He describes historical Christianity as a perversion of the
utterances and actions of the great reformer of Nazareth. "The names
borrowed from the life and opinions of Jesus Christ were employed as
symbols of domination and imposture; and a system of liberality and
equality, for such was the system preached by that great reformer, was
perverted to support oppression." He eulogizes the philosophers of the
eighteenth century and sees in the Government of the United States the
first fruits of their teaching. Two conditions are necessary to a perfect
government: first, "that the will of the people should be represented as
it is"; secondly, "that that will should be as wise and just as possible."
The former of these obtains in the United States; and, in so far as the
people are represented, "America fulfills imperfectly and indirectly the
last and most important condition of perfect government."

He then condemns "the device of public credit" and the new aristocracy
which arose with it. This new order has its basis in fraud, as the old had
its basis in force. It includes attorneys, excisemen, directors,
government pensioners, usurers, stock jobbers, with their dependents and
descendants.

What are the reforms that he advocates? Today some of them would be
considered too mild by even a conservative. He would abolish the national
debt, the standing army, and tithes, due regard had to vested interests.
He would grant complete freedom to thought and its expression, and make
the dispensation of justice cheap, speedy and attainable by all.

A reform government should appoint tribunals to decide upon the claims of
property holders. True, political institutions ought to defend every man
in the retention of property acquired through labor, economy, skill,
genius or any similar powers honorably and innocently exerted. "But there
is another species of property which has its foundation in usurpation or
imposture, or violence." "Of this nature is the principal part of the
property enjoyed by the aristocracy and the great fundholders." "Claims to
property of this kind should be compromised under the supervision of
public tribunals."

From an abstract point of view, universal suffrage is just and desirable,
but since it would lead to an attempt to abolish the monarchy and to civil
war some other measure must be tried instead. Mr. Bentham and other
writers have urged the admission of females to the right of suffrage.
"This attempt," Shelley writes, "seems somewhat immature." The people
should be better represented in the House of Commons than they are at
present. He would allow the House of Lords to remain for the present to
represent the aristocracy.

All reform should be based upon the principle of "the natural equality of
man, not as regards property, but as regards rights."

"Whether the reform, which is now inevitable, be gradual and moderate or
violent and extreme depends largely on the action of the government." If
the government refuse to act, the nation will take the task of reformation
into its own hands and the abolition of monarchy must inevitably follow.
"No friend of mankind and of his country can desire that such a crisis
should arrive." "If reform shall be begun by the existing government, let
us be contented with a limited beginning with any whatsoever opening.
Nothing is more idle than to reject a limited benefit because we cannot
without great sacrifices obtain an unlimited one." "We shall demand more
and more with firmness and moderation, never anticipating but never
deferring the moment of successful opposition, so that the people may
become capable of exercising the functions of sovereignty in proportion as
they acquire the possession of it."

The struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors will be merely
nominal if the oppressed are enlightened and animated by a distinct and
powerful apprehension of their object. "The minority perceive the
approaches of the development of an irresistible force, by the influence
of the public opinion of their weakness on those political forms, of which
no government but an absolute despotism is devoid. They divest themselves
of their usurped distinctions, and the public tranquillity is not
disturbed by the revolution." The true patriot, then, should endeavor to
enlighten the nation and animate it with enthusiasm and confidence. He
will endeavor to rally round one standard the divided friends of liberty,
and make them forget the subordinate objects with regard to which they
differ by appealing to that respecting which they are all agreed.

Shelley seems to think that revolutionary wars are seldom or never
necessary. A vigilant spirit of opposition, together with a campaign of
enlightenment, will usually suffice to bring about the desired reforms. It
is better to gain what we demand by a process of negotiation which would
occupy twenty years than to do anything which might tend towards civil
war. "The last resort of resistance is undoubtedly insurrection."

The work ends with a consideration of the nature and consequences of war.
"War waged from whatever motive extinguishes the sentiment of reason and
justice in the mind."

Shelley, following Godwin and Condorcet, was a firm believer in the
perfectibility of human nature. "By perfectible," Godwin writes, "it is
not meant that man is capable of being wrought to perfection. The idea of
absolute perfection is scarcely within the grasp of human understanding."
"The wise man is satisfied with nothing. Finite things must be perpetually
capable of increase and advancement; it would argue, therefore, extreme
folly to rest in any given state of improvement and imagine we had
attained our summit."[111] In a letter to E. Hitchener, July 25, 1811,
Shelley writes: "You say that equality is unattainable; so, will I observe
is perfection; yet they both symbolize in their nature, they both demand
that an unremitting tendency towards themselves should be made; and the
nearer society approaches towards this point the happier it will be."

The development of the race, they believe, has been along the following
lines: Man emerged from the savage state under the attraction of pleasure
and the repulsion of pain. Self-love, his only motive of action, made him
at once social and industrious, led him to confound happiness with
unregulated enjoyment, made him avaricious and violent, and caused the
strong to oppress the weak and the weak to conspire against the strong.
Slavery and corruption have consequently followed on the liberty and
innocence of primitive times. But as man is perfectible this condition of
things cannot last. The diffusion of knowledge together with the
discoveries and inventions recently made, have already been productive of
great progress. Humanity is now fairly started on a career of conquest;
the emancipation of the mind is rapidly advancing. Soon morality itself
will come to be rationally viewed; it will be universally acknowledged
that there is only one law, that of nature; only one code, that of reason;
only one throne, that of justice; and only one altar, that of
concord.[112] Shelley had unbounded faith in human nature and believed
that the downfall of tyranny must soon take place. He believed that the
world would resolve itself into one large communistic family, where every
man would be independent and free.

Godwin says that "there will be no war, no crime, no administration of
justice, as it is called, and no government. Besides this there will be
neither disease, anguish, melancholy or resentment."[113] The sun of
reason will of itself disperse all the mists of ignorance and the
pestilential vapors of vice. It will bring out all the beauty and goodness
of man. Love will be universal; everybody will seek the good of all.
Earth, Shelley thinks, will soon become a garden of delight.

  O Happy Earth, reality of Heaven
  Of purest Spirits thou pure dwelling-place
  Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime
  Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come.[114]




CHAPTER IV.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY


We now come to that part of our subject which is the most difficult to
handle--Shelley's religion. There are so many seeming contradictions in
his utterances on this subject that it would appear impossible at first
sight to reconcile them and bring out of them a consistent form of belief.
Before he went to Oxford he had attacked Christianity, still on his
entrance to that university he made the required profession of belief in
the doctrines of the Church of England as by law established. How are we
going to reconcile this with his love for truth? One cannot get away from
the difficulty by saying that this profession was a mere formality.
Thousands of non-conformists throughout the land denied themselves the
benefits of a university education because they scorned to play the
hypocrite.

Shelley's views were fairly orthodox up to the time of his going to
Oxford. _Zastrozzi_, printed in 1810, contains a bitter attack on atheism:
and in a letter to Stockdale Shelley disclaims any intention of advocating
atheism in _The Wandering Jew_. He, no doubt, was unorthodox in his views
regarding the nature of God; but his belief in the immortality of the soul
and in the existence of a First Cause is clearly shown in a letter to Hogg
dated January 3, 1811. He writes: "I may not be able to adduce proofs, but
I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample,
are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be
advanced, that some vast intellect animates infinity. If we disbelieve
this, the strongest argument in support of the existence of a future state
instantly becomes annihilated.... Love, love, infinite in extent, eternal
in duration, yet allowing your theory in that point, perfectible, should
be the reward; but can we suppose that this reward will arise,
spontaneously, as a necessary appendage to our nature, or that our nature
itself could be without cause--a God? When do we see effects arise without
causes?" From this point a rapid change takes place in his opinions. This
is the work of the sceptic Hogg, who sported with him, now arguing for,
now against Christianity, with the result that Shelley himself became
sceptical. His disbelief is due also to the influence of the works of
Godwin and the French materialists, Helvetius, Holbach, Condorcet and
Rousseau.

In his _System of Nature_ Helvetius makes an eloquent plea for atheism. He
denies that any kind of spiritual substance exists. In the universe there
is nothing but matter and motion. Man is the result of certain
combinations of matter; his activities are matter in motion. God, the
soul, and immortality are the inventions of impostors to lash men into
obedience and submission. In _Queen Mab_ Shelley represents God and
religion as the cause of evil, and scoffs at the idea of creation.

  From an eternity of idleness
  I, God, awoke.[115]

A blasphemous caricature of our Savior and of the doctrine of redemption
is also there exhibited. Later on he grew to love Christ, although he
declaimed against Christianity as long as he lived. In _Prometheus
Unbound_ he treats our Savior more reverently than he did in _Queen Mab_.
He is there in sympathy with the spirit of Christ, and denounces
Christianity only in so far as it has abandoned "the faith he kindled."
This change, no doubt, is due to the influence of his residence in Italy
and of his love for the New Testament. Regarding the character of Christ
he writes: "They (the evangelists) have left sufficiently clear
indications of the genuine character of Jesus Christ to rescue it forever
from the imputations cast upon it by their ignorance and fanatacism. We
discover that He is the enemy of oppression and falsehood";[116] that He
was just, truthful, and merciful; "that He was a man of meek and majestic
demeanor; of natural and simple thought and habits; beloved by all,
unmoved, solemn and serene."

One of the greatest obstacles that prevented Shelley from understanding
Christianity was his belief in Godwin's doctrine that sin is but an error
of judgment. His wife writes that "he believed mankind had only to will
that there should be no evil and there would be none." To one believing
that mediation is superflous in the work of sanctification, Christianity
is almost meaningless. Three months before his death Shelley expressed his
views with regard to Christianity as follows: "I differ with Moore in
thinking Christianity useful to the world; no man of sense can think it
true.... I agree with him that the doctrines of the French and material
philosophy are as false as they are pernicious; but still they are better
than Christianity, inasmuch as anarchy is better than despotism; for this
reason, that the former is for a season, and the latter is eternal."[117]

The question whether Shelley was an atheist or not must not be decided on
one or two extracts from his writings or even on any one work. True he
argued against theism, but to call him an atheist on that account would be
as logical as to say St. Thomas was an atheist because he advanced
objections against the existence of God. One reason for the opinion that
he was an atheist lies in the fact that he had a conception of the Deity
which differed from the Puritanical one then in vogue. When he attempted
to show the nonexistence of God his negation was directed against the
notions of God which exhibited Him as a Being with human passions, as an
autocratic tyrant. In his letter to Lord Ellenborough he writes: "To
attribute moral qualities to the spirit of the universe ... is to degrade
God into man." He denied the existence of the God represented as "a
venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, His breast the theater of
various passions analogous to those of humanity, His will changeable and
uncertain as that of an earthly king."[118] Even in _Queen Mab_ we find a
vague picture of his conception of God:

  Spirit of Nature! all sufficing power
  Necessity! thou mother of the world!
  Unlike the God of human error, thou
  Requirest no prayers or praise, the caprice
  Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
  Than do the changeful passions of his breast
  To thy unvarying harmony.[119]

But in the next canto does he not say explicitly, "There is no God"? In a
note, though, he explains that "this negation must be understood solely to
affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit coeternal
with the universe remains unshaken." Elsewhere he writes: "The thoughts
which the word 'God' suggest to the human mind are susceptible of as many
variations as human minds themselves. The stoic, the platonist, and the
epicurean, the polytheist, the dualist, and the trinitarian differ
entirely in their conceptions of its meaning. They agree only in
considering it the most awful and most venerable of names, as a common
term to express all of mystery, or majesty, or power which the invisible
world contains. And not only has every sect distinct conceptions of the
application of this name, but scarcely two individuals of the same sect,
which exercise in any degree the freedom of their judgment, or yield
themselves with any candor of feeling to the influences of the visible,
find perfect coincidence of opinion to exist between them.... God is
neither the Jupiter who sends rain upon the earth; nor the Venus through
whom all living things are produced; nor the Vulcan who presides over the
terrestrial element of fire; nor the Vesta that preserves the light which
is enshrined in the sun, the moon, and the stars. He is neither the
Proteus, nor the Pan of the material world. But the word 'God' unites all
the attributes which these denominations contain and is the (inter-point)
and over-ruling spirit of all the energy and wisdom included within the
circle of existing things."[120]

But did he not write _The Necessity of Atheism_ for which he was expelled
from Oxford? Even if he did, this does not prove that he was an atheist.
We saw already that he loved to advance objections and propound
difficulties to people who thought they knew everything that can be known
about a subject. Many stoutly maintained that a valid _a priori_ proof
(usually called the ontological) can be advanced for the existence of God
and it was against these that Shelley directed his artillery. "Why,"
Trelawny asked him once, "do you call yourself an atheist?" "It is a word
of abuse," Shelley replied, "to stop discussion; a painted devil to
frighten the foolish; a threat to intimidate the wise and good. I used it
to express my abhorrence of superstition. I took up the word as a knight
took up a gauntlet in defiance of injustice."[121]

Leigh Hunt said that Shelley "did himself injustice with the public in
using the popular name of the Supreme Being inconsiderately. He identified
it solely with the most vulgar and tyrannical notions of a God made after
the worst human fashion." Southey told him also that he ought not to call
himself an athiest, since in reality he believed that the universe is
God.[122] "I love to doubt and to discuss," Shelley writes, and it is for
this reason that he adopted the arguments of Locke, Hume, and Holbach. He
does not doubt the existence of God; he simply doubts that it is capable
of proof. In January 12, 1811, it seemed to him that he had hit upon the
long-sought-for-proof. In a letter to Hogg he writes: "Stay, I have an
idea. I think I can prove the existence of a Deity--a First Cause. I will
ask a materialist, how came this universe at first? He will answer by
chance. What chance? I will answer in the words of Spinoza: 'An infinite
number of atoms had been floating from all eternity in space, till at last
one of them fortuitously diverged from its track, which dragging with it
another, formed the principle of gravitation and in consequence the
universe.' What cause produced this change, this chance. For where do we
know that causes arise without their corresponding effects; at least we
must here, on so abstract a subject, reason analogically. Was not this
then a cause; was it not a first cause? Was not this first cause a Deity?
Now nothing remains but to prove that this Deity has a care or rather that
its only employment consists in regulating the present and future
happiness of its creation.... Oh that this Deity were the soul of the
universe, the spirit of universal, imperishable love! Indeed, I believe it
is." "The Deity must be judged by us from attributes analogical to our
situation." In a letter of June 11, 1811, he says God is "the existing
power of existence." It is another word for the essence of the universe.
True he makes use of expressions which would seem to contradict the above,
but it seems to me that these should always be interpreted in the light of
his more explicit utterances as already explained.

There was a kind of discrepancy between his interior thought and his
exterior attitude. Apostle of reason though he was, he felt the necessity
of appealing to other sources to quench the thirst for higher things. His
fidelity to the doctrine of Locke, that all knowledge originates in the
senses, did not allow him to proclaim this necessity. "Negateur d'un Dieu
personnel dont les attributs seraient des reflets des pauvres attributs
humains, il desirait pourtant pouvoir les supporter et les croire, mais
cette obscure tendance, il ne sut on n'osa la traduire publiquement."[123]
In his poetry where he lays bare his soul his belief in God is manifest.
It is only when he argues that he would seem to be an atheist. This
discrepancy looks like deceit, but it is not. It is honesty rather than
duplicity. He advanced only those statements which he thought he could
prove, which he could demonstrate by the aid of reason. "It does not," he
writes, "prove the nonexistence of a thing that it is not discoverable by
reason; feeling here affords us sufficient proof.... Those who really feel
the being of a God, have the best right to believe it."[124] (True he goes
on to say that he does not feel the being of God, and must be content with
reason; but by this he may mean that he does not feel the existence of the
God of the Christians.)

After all, this position with regard to the proof of God's existence is
not so very different from that of Newman. "Logic," says Newman, "does not
really prove." It enables us to join issues with others ... it verifies
negatively.[125] Newman, contrary to Locke, would inject an element of
volition into logic. "He does not, indeed, deny the possibility of
demonstration; he often asserts it; but he holds that the demonstration
will not in fact convince."[126] We have really to desert a logical ground
and to take our stand upon instinct.

According to Shelley anything that could not be demonstrated should not be
given to others as gospel truth.[127] Now, feelings cannot be
demonstrated, and hence it is that one may feel one thing and at the same
time see that the senses and even unaided reason show that the contrary
is true. "Feelings do not look so well as reasonings on black and white."
Later on he said that materialism "allows its disciples to talk and
dispenses them from thinking."[128] The opposition which Shelley
experienced forced him to argue.

When Shelley wrote _The Necessity of Atheism_ he was at most only an
agnostic. This word was first used by Huxley in 1859 and if it had been in
use in 1811 it may be that Shelley's pamphlet _The Necessity of Atheism_
would have had for its title "The Necessity of Agnosticism." No doubt
agnostics are often atheists, but they are not necessarily so. "A man may
be an agnostic simply or an agnostic who is also an atheist. He may be a
scientific materialist and no more, or he may combine atheism with his
materialism; consequently while it would be unjust to class agnostics,
materialists or pantheists as necessarily also atheists, it cannot be
denied that atheism is clearly perceived to be implied in certain phases
of all these systems. There are so many shades and gradations of thought
by which one form of a philosophy merges into another, so much that is
opinionative and personal woven into the various individual expositions of
systems, that, to be impartially fair, each individual must be classed by
himself as atheist or theist. Indeed more upon his own assertion or direct
teaching than by reason of any supposed implication in the system he
advocates must this classification be made. The agnostic may be a theist
if he admits the existence of a being behind and beyond nature even while
he asserts that such a being is both unprovable and unknowable."[129]

With regard to the sources of Shelley's views on religion there is
considerable difference of opinion. S. Bernthsen maintains that nothing
contributed so much to the development of his genius and of his world-view
as Spinoza's philosophy.[130] Professor Dowden, on the other hand, holds
that although Shelley worked at a translation of Spinoza's _Tractatus
Theologico Politicus_ several times, still "we find no evidence that he
received in youth any adequate or profound impression, as Goethe did, from
the purest and loveliest spirit among philosophical seekers after God. Of
far greater influence with Shelley than Spinoza or Kant were those
arrogant thinkers who prepared the soil of France for the ploughshare of
revolution."[131] And Helen Richter in two articles in _English Studies_,
vol. 30, shows that some of the quotations from Shelley used by Miss
Bernthsen may be traced to other sources besides Spinoza.

Shelley's notions on belief can be traced to Locke and not to Spinoza. In
the first book of the _Essay_ concerning the human understanding, Locke
attempts to prove that there are no innate ideas. To the objection that
the universal acceptance of certain principles is proof of their
innateness, he replies that no principles are universally accepted. You
cannot point to one principle of morality, he says, that is accepted by
all peoples. Standards of morality differ in different nations and at
different times. How then are our ideas acquired? The second book of the
_Essay_ is devoted to showing that they originate in experience.
Experience, Locke teaches, is two-fold: _Sensation_, or the perception of
external phenomena; and _Refection_, or the perception of the internal
phenomena, that is, of the activity of the understanding itself. These two
are the sources of all our ideas. In the _Essay_, II, 1-2, we read: "All
ideas come from sensation and reflection.... Whence has it (mind) all the
materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from
experience; on that all our knowledge is founded and from that it
ultimately derives itself." In Book IV, 2, Locke says: "Rational knowledge
is the perception of the connection and agreement or disagreement and
repugnancy of any of our ideas.... Probability is the appearance of
agreement upon fallible proofs.... The entertainment the mind gives this
sort of proposition is called _belief_, assent, or opinion."

In his notes to _Queen Mab_, Shelley writes: "When a proposition is
offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or disagreement of the
ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termed
_belief_.... Belief then is a passion the strength of which, like every
other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement. The
degrees of excitement are three. The senses are the sources of all
knowledge to the mind; consequently their evidence claims the strongest
assent. The decision of the mind founded upon our experience, derived from
these sources, claims the next degree. The experience of others which
addresses itself to the former one, occupies the lowest degree." This
reminds one of Locke's division of knowledge into three parts--intuitive,
demonstrative, and sensitive.

In the same note to _Queen Mab_, Shelley says: "The mind is _active_ in
the investigation in order to perfect the state of perception of the
relation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to each, which
is _passive_." And in Locke, II, 22, we read: "The mind in respect of its
simple ideas is wholly _passive_ and receives them all from the experience
and operations of things.... The origin of _mixed modes_ is, however,
quite different. The mind often exercises an _active_ power in making
these several combinations called notions."

According to Spinoza, judgment, perception, and volition are one and the
same thing. "At singularis volitio et idea unum et idem sunt."[132]
Shelley, on the other hand, says that many falsely imagine "that belief is
an act of volition in consequence of which it may be regulated by the
mind."[133] Here we find reflected the philosophical ideas of Sir William
Drummond, in whose _Academical Questions_, Shelley writes, "the most clear
and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be found."[134]

According to Drummond, reasoning is entirely independent of volition. No
man pretends that he can choose whether he shall feel or not. It is not
because the mind previously wills it that one association of ideas gives
place to another. It is because the new ideas excite that attention which
the old no longer employ. Trains of ideas may be always referred to one
principal idea. "Whatever be the state of the soul, we always find it to
result from some one prevailing sentiment, or idea, which determines the
association of our thoughts and directs for a time the course which they
take."[135] We are impelled to action by the influence of the stronger
motive. In his letter to Lord Ellenborough, Shelley holds that "belief and
disbelief are utterly distinct from and unconnected with volition. They
are the apprehension of the agreement or disagreement of the ideas which
compose any proposition. Belief is an involuntary operation of the mind,
and, like other passions, its intensity is purely proportionate to the
degrees of excitement."[136] There is no certainty that Shelley was
acquainted with the works of Spinoza when he wrote _Queen Mab_. It is
likely that he obtained his Spinozan views from William Drummond.

"It is necessary to prove," Shelley wrote, "that it (the universe) was
created; until that is clearly demonstrated we may reasonably suppose that
it has endured from all eternity.... It is easier to suppose that the
universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a being (beyond
its limits) capable of creating it."[137] Again in his _Essay_ on a future
state: "But let thought be considered as some peculiar substance which
permeates, and is the cause of, the animation of living things. Why should
that substance be assumed to be something essentially distinct from all
others and exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other
substance is exempt." To Shelley everything was God.

  Spirit of Nature! here!
  In this interminable wilderness
  Of worlds, at whose immensity
  Even soaring fancy staggers
  Here is thy flitting temple.
  Yet not the slightest leaf
  That quivers to the breeze
  Is less instinct with thee;
  Yet not the meanest worm
  That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead
  Less shares thy eternal breath.[138]

With Spinoza, Drummond maintains that two substances having different
attributes can have nothing in common between them; and that there cannot
be two or more substances of the same nature. Infinite, immaterial,
eternal, substance has nothing in common with substance which is material,
finite, and perishable. How is it possible, then, that the former produced
the latter? "An immaterial substance is necessarily without extension, or
solidity, and never could have bestowed what it never possessed. God is
infinite and consequently his substance is the sole, universal and eternal
substance. Of this eternal substance there are two modifications--mind and
extension. Human mind is part of the infinite mind of God. By body is
meant the mode which expresses the essence of God, inasmuch as it is
contemplated as extended substance, in a certain limited way, consequently
though we do not call the Deity corporeal, as that would express what is
finite, yet we say that all extended substance is contained in God, since
extension and mind are the eternal attributes of his essence."[139]

Matter moves and acts according to its own laws; it preserves what we term
the fair order of the universe, and it guides the motions of those worlds
that are constituted out of it, by the properties which are inherent in
it. "Why then should we not say that it feels, thinks and reasons in man.
Thoughts and sentiments proceed from peculiar distributions of atoms in
the human brain." The same necessity which gives us a peculiar form and
constitution also gives us a peculiar disposition and character. From
these observations we may conclude with certainty that all bodies are
capable of being affected by attraction and repulsion, of making
combinations, of suffering dissolution, and that they always strive to
persevere in that state in which they are while it is suitable to
them."[140]

Shelley has the same thought:

  Throughout this varied and eternal world
  Soul is the only element; the block
  That for uncounted ages has remained
  The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight
  Is active living spirit. Every grain
  Is sentient both in unity and part
  And the minutest atom comprehends
  A world of loves and hatreds.[141]

Again in a letter to Miss Hitchener, November 24, 1811: "Yet that flower
has a soul; for what is soul but that which makes an organized being to be
what it is?... I will say then that all nature is animated; that
microscopic vision, as it has discovered to us millions of animated
beings, so might it, if extended, find that nature itself was but a mass
of organized animation."

Southey told Shelley that he was a pantheist and not an atheist. He
(Southey) says: "I ought not to call myself an atheist, since in reality I
believe that the universe is God." "Pantheism in its narrower and proper
philosophic sense is any system which expressly (not merely by
implication) regards the finite world as simply a mode, limitation, part
or aspect of the one eternal being; and of such a nature, that from the
standpoint of this Being no distinct existence can be attributed to
it."[142] In so far as Shelley gives to nature the attributes of God he is
a pantheist. This he often does. Thus, in _Julian and Maddalo_, "sacred
nature"; in _The Revolt of Islam_, V, II, "dread nature"; and in the
_Refutation of Deism_ he speaks of "divine nature." Often though he
distinguishes between God and Nature; and in this respect differs from
Spinoza and those who are pantheists in the stricter use of the term. Thus
in _The Revolt of Islam_, IX, 14, "by God and nature and necessity."

There is another difference between the pantheism of Shelley and that of
Spinoza. Shelley does not make any difference between men, animals and
plants. They are all about on the same level. Spinoza on the other hand
makes man the king and center of the Universe.

Shelley may have gotten his pantheistic views from Volney and Holbach as
well as from Drummond. In the _Systeme de la Nature_, II, c. VI, we read:
"Tout nous pronne donc que ce n'est pas hors de la nature que nous devons
chercher la Divinite. Quand nous voudrons en avoir une idee, disons que
la nature est Dieu."

A characteristic of his later pantheism is that it identifies God with
love. "Great Spirit, deepest love! Which rulest and dost move all things
which live and are."[143] Again, "O Power!... thou which interpenetratest
all things and without which this glorious world were a blind and formless
chaos. Love, author of good, God, King, Father."[144]

Plato mounts up from sensuous love to intellectual love, and so does
Shelley. In the _Defence of Poetry_, III, s. 125, he shows us how another
great poet accomplished this. "His (Dante's) apotheosis of Beatrice in
Paradise and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness, by which
as by steps he feigns himself to have ascended to the throne of the
Supreme cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry." One
would be in this highest stage, according to Spinoza, when one has
attained the intellectual love of God. "This intellectual love of God is
the highest kind of virtue and it not only makes man free, but it confers
immortality."[145]

Shelly makes all things love one another. Thus in _Adonais_:

  All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst;
  Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight,
  The beauty and the joy of their renewed might (st. 19).

This harmonizes with his earlier views concerning inanimate objects. We
saw he believed that they all had life, that they were all possessed of
the "Spirit of Nature." In _Prometheus Unbound_ he speaks of "this true,
fair world of things a sea reflecting love." Love draws man to man. It is
the _sine qua non_ of man's existence. His love is founded in beauty as
perceived by the senses. The Spirit of Beauty and the Spirit of Love are
one.

  Great Spirit, _deepest Love_!
    Which rulest and dost move
  All things which live and are
  ... Who sittest in thy star o'er Ocean's western floor
  Spirit of Beauty.[146]

We love that which is beautiful. "Love is a going out of one's own nature,
or an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in
thought, action or person not our own."[147] The beauty of the world leads
us step by step to the love of pure Beauty, Love itself. In the
_Symposium_, Diotima explains how the love of beautiful objects leads on
to the conception of perfect abstract beauty, "eternal unproduced,
indestructible.... All other things are beautiful through a participation
of it ... When any one ascending from the correct system of Love begins to
contemplate this supreme beauty he already touches the consummation of his
labor."[148] The earth is not Beauty, Love, Divinity itself; it is but the
shadow of God.

  How glorious are thou, Earth! And if thou be
  The shadow of some spirit lovelier still.[149]

Again

  The awful shadow of some unseen Power
  Floats unseen amongst us.[150]

This reminds us of platonism. The "Spirit" is the Idea, and the "shadow"
is the earth. Plato's Idea transcends the world of concrete existence. The
two functions of the Idea are to cause things to be known and to
constitute their reality. It is at the same time one and many.[151] It
stood out most prominently in the mind of Plato as the Idea of Good or
Beauty by which he meant God Himself. He says that the shadow of the power
of intellectual Beauty inspires us and not intellectual Beauty itself. We
could not endure that. Intellectual Beauty is God.

Since then Shelley's Great Spirit, Spirit of Nature, Light, Beauty, Love,
resembles the "Ideas" of Plato very closely, and since these Ideas have
been identified by St. Augustine and other Christian platonists with the
"mind of God," it is doubtful that Shelley was an atheist in the strict
sense of the term. His poetry at least will tend to imbue us with a
realization of God's Presence.

  That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,
  That Beauty in which all things work and move,
  That Benediction which the eclipsing curse
  Of birth can quench not, 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; now beams on me,
  Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.[152]

In his later years Shelley became more and more of an idealist. Towards
the beginning of 1812 he became acquainted with Berkeley's writings at the
instance of Southey. Ideas, according to Berkeley, are communicated to the
mind through the immediate operation of the Deity without the intervention
of any actual matter. All our ideas are words which God speaks to us.
Matter is only a perception of the mind.

                          ----this Whole
  Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,
  With all the silent or tempestuous workings
  By which they have been, are, or cease to be,
  Is but a vision; all that it inhabits
  Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;
  Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less
  The future and the past are idle shadows
  Of thoughts eternal flight--they have no being:
  Nought is but that which feels itself to be.[153]

When Panthea, in _Prometheus Unbound_, describes to Asia a mysterious
dream, suddenly Asia sees another shape pass between her and the "golden
dew" which gleams through its substance. "What is it?" she asks. "It is
mine other dream," replies Panthea. "It disappears," exclaims Asia. "It
passes now into my mind," replies Panthea. To Shelley dreams are as
visible as the dreamers, and our minds are simply a collection of dreams.
Reality is reduced to the unsubstantiality of a dream, and dreams are the
only reality.

With regard to his belief in the immortality of the soul, we have the same
difficulty and the same solution. All that we see or know, he says,
perishes, and although life and thought differ from everything else, still
this distinction does not afford us any proof that it survives that
period beyond which we have no experience of its existence. The
quotations, though, which can be twisted into an expression of disbelief
in the immortality of the soul[154] are less numerous than those
expressing disbelief in the existence of God. His writings teem with
expressions of belief in existence after death. "You have witnessed one
suspension of intellect in dreamless sleep ... you witness another in
death. From the first, you well know that you cannot infer any diminution
of intellectual force. How contrary then to all analogy to infer
annihilation from death."[155] Again, "Whatever may be his true and final
destination there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothing and
dissolution."[156]

Plato claimed that the soul preexisted long before it was united to the
body. In its supercelestial home "the soul enjoyed a clear and unclouded
vision of ideas; and that, although it fell from that happy state and was
steeped in the river of forgetfulness it still retains an indistinct
memory of those heavenly intuitions of the truth."[157] Shelley was so
impressed with the truth of this theory that he once walked up to a woman
who was carrying a child in her arms and asked her if her child would tell
them anything about preexistence. He believed that after death the soul
returns to Plato's world of Ideas whence it came.

  Whilst burning through the inmost veil of heaven
  The soul of Adonais, like a star
  Beacons from the abode where the eternal are.[158]

As to the nature of the soul his early views reflect the influence of Dr.
G. Aberthney, who believed in a kind of universal animism. On January 6,
1811, he writes to Hogg: "I think we may not inaptly define _soul_ as the
most supreme, superior and distinguished abstract appendage to the nature
of anything." Again, "I conceive (and as is certainly capable of
demonstration) that nothing can be annihilated, but that everything
appertaining to nature, consisting of constituent parts infinitely
divisible, is in a continual change, then do I suppose--and I think I have
a right to draw this inference--that neither will soul perish."[159]

In _Queen Mab_ we find Shelley believing in the doctrine of necessity.
There he denies the freedom of the will. Later on he exempted the will
from the law of necessity, but not the intelligence or reason of man. His
views on this subject were derived principally from Godwin. "Every human
being," says Godwin, "is irresistably impelled to act precisely as he does
act. In the eternity which preceded his birth a chain of causes was
generated, which, operating under the name of motives, make it impossible
that any thought of his mind and any action of his life should be
otherwise than it is."[160]

The actions of every human being are determined by the dictates of reason;
and, like the operations of nature, are subject to the law of necessity.
This idea of necessity is obtained from our experience of the uniformity
of the phenomena of nature. Similar causes invariably produce the same
effect. In the material world an immense chain of causes and effects
appears, the connection between which we cannot understand. The same thing
is true of the moral world. There, motive is to voluntary action what
cause is to effect in the physical order. A man cannot resist the
strongest motive any more than a stone left unsuspended can remain in the
air. Will is simply an act of the judgment determined by logical
impressions. The murderer is no more responsible for his deed than the
knife with which the crime was committed. Both were set in motion from
without; the knife, by material impulse; the man, by inducement and
persuasion. To hate a murderer, then, is as unreasonable as to hate his
weapon. Educate him, but do not punish. In the material world

  No atom of this turbulence fulfills
    A vague and unnecessitated chance,
  Or acts but as it must and ought to act.[161]

In the same way

            Not a thought, a will, an act,
  No working of the tyrant's moody mind,
  Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast
  Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel,
  Nor the events enchaining every will,
  That from the depths of unrecorded time
  Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass
  Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee,
  Soul of the Universe![162]

In his notes to _Queen Mab_, Shelley admits that the doctrine of necessity
tends to introduce a great change into the established notions of
morality, and utterly to destroy Religion. It teaches that no event could
happen but as it did happen; and that if God is the author of good He is
also the author of evil.

Shelley soon broke away from the teaching of Godwin and Spinoza with
regard to the freedom of the will. He maintained that the will is
unrestrainedly free and that man is his own master. Thus, "Man whose will
has power when all beside is gone" (_The Revolt_, VIII, 16). "Such intent
as renovates the world a will omnipotent" (Ibid., II, 41). "Who if ye
dared might not aspire less than ye conceive of power" (Ibid., XI, 16).

Man can obtain freedom if he really desires it. Godwin held that freedom
from external restraints leads to freedom of the mind, whereas Shelley
sees in external political freedom the blossoming forth of already
obtained freedom of the soul. The interior freedom is obtained through
self-abnegation and the determination of the will. Mrs. Shelley says in
the introduction to _Prometheus Unbound_ that Shelley believed mankind had
only to will that there should be no evil and there would be none. Evil is
not something inherent in creation, but an accident that may be expelled.
"But we are taught," writes Shelley, "by the doctrine of necessity, that
there is neither good nor evil in the universe, otherwise than as the
events to which we apply these epithets have relation to our own peculiar
mode of being."[163]

This view is very similar to that of Drummond. He held that order and
disorder have no place but in our own imagination, and are the modes in
which we survey the eternal and necessary series of things. Ideas of
right and wrong depend upon the circumstances in which people are placed.
They vary so much that we do not find the standard of morality to be
precisely the same in any two countries of the world. Good and evil are
modes of thinking; and what appears good to one person may appear bad to
another, and neither good nor bad to a third. This is Spinoza's doctrine:
"Bonum et malum quod attinet, nihil etiam positivum in rebus, in se
scilicet consideratis, indicant, nec aliud sunt praeter cogitandi modos,
seu motiones, quas formamus ex eo, quod res ad invicem comparamus nam una
eademque res potest eodem tempore bona et mala, et etiam indiffereus
esse." _Ethics_, IV.

Shelley has two versions of the origin of good and evil. The first is
manichean and represents them as twin genii of balanced power and opposite
tendencies ruling the world. "This much is certain: that Jesus Christ
represents God as the fountain of all goodness, the eternal enemy of pain
and evil.... According to Jesus Christ, and according to the indisputable
facts of the case, some evil spirit has dominion in this imperfect
world."[164] Good is represented by the morning star and evil by a comet.
According to the second version, which is Shelley's own view, evil has not
the same power that good has, and came later into the world. Evil is
strong because man permits it to exist, and must disappear as soon as man
wills this. Since it could be entirely eliminated, it is not an integral
part of the world.

Man is naturally good. His vices are the result of bad education. They are
nothing but errors of judgment. Let truth prevail; educate men properly,
and then vice will entirely disappear. Shelley also writes:

  Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man
  Inherits vice and misery, when force
  And falsehood hang even over the cradled babe
  Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.

Godwin thinks that the influence of the emotions and passions has been
overestimated. It is not true that they can force one to act in opposition
to the dictates of one's reason. They maintain their hold on men but by
the ornaments with which they are decked out; and these are the things
which compel a man to yield. Reduce sensual acts to their true nakedness
and they would be despised. Whatever power the passions have to incline
men to act will, in future, be offset by consideration of justice and
self-interest. Many have overcome the influence of pain and pleasure in
the past by the energies of intellectual resolution, and what these
accomplished can be done by all. Reason and truth, then, are sufficient to
change the whole complexion of society. They will ultimately prevail; and
then all will be wise and good. The following from Shelley is an echo of
this.

              And when reason's voice
  Loud as the voice of nature shall have waked
  The nations; and mankind perceive that vice
  Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue
  Is peace and happiness and harmony


  XX

  How sweet a scene will earth become!
  Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place,
  Symphonious with the planetary spheres.

Godwin went so far as to say that eventually all sickness would disappear;
and even in this Shelley follows his master. Shelley finds this view of
evil in the teaching of Christ. "According to Jesus Christ," he writes,
"some evil spirit has dominion in this imperfect world. But there will
come a time when the human mind shall be visited exclusively by the
influence of the benignant power."[165]

All the philosophists who influenced Shelley agreed in this that virtue
leads to happiness. The purpose of virtuous conduct, says Godwin, "is the
production of happiness." So with Shelley "virtue is peace, and happiness,
and harmony." Virtue, says Godwin, is the offspring of the understanding;
and vice is always the result of narrow views. "Selfishness," writes
Shelley, "is the offspring of ignorance and mistake;... disinterested
benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination, and has an
intimate connection with all the arts which add ornament or dignity or
power, or stability to the social state of man."[166]

Shelley does not believe in the existence of hell. He thinks that this
doctrine is incompatible with the goodness of God. "Love your enemies,
bless those who curse you, that ye may be the sons of your Heavenly
Father, Who makes the sun to shine on the good and the evil, and the rain
to fall on the just and unjust." How monstrous a calumny have not
impostors dared to advance against the mild and gentle author of this just
sentiment, and against the whole tenor of his doctrines and his life
overflowing with benevolence and forbearance and compassion."[167] God, he
says, would only be gratifying his revenge under pretence of satisfying
justice were he to inflict pain upon another for no better reason than
that he deserved it.




CHAPTER V

RADICALISM IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY


A poet is the product of his time. Shelley observes that there is a
resemblance, which does not depend on their own will, between the writers
of any particular age. They are all subjected to a common influence "which
arises out of a combination of circumstances belonging to the time in
which they live, though each is in a degree the author of the very
influence by which his being is thus pervaded." Hence it is that the works
of any poet cannot be thoroughly appreciated unless the spirit that
pervaded the life of the period be understood. This is particularly true
of the poetry of Shelley. It embodies the aspirations and ideals of the
philosophers of his time. Its themes are liberty, justice and revolt. On
every side are heard protests against conventionality, against government,
and against religion. The philosophers of the French Revolution are hailed
as the saviors of society and their theories put forth as a panacea for
all human ills. Shelley is the high water mark of the waves of revolt
which threatened to inundate the country. A brief investigation, then, of
the poetical atmosphere of the end of the eighteenth century will help us
in our study of the sources of his radicalism.

There can be no doubt but contemporary literature had some influence on
his sensitive nature. "The writings of the future laureate (Southey) as
likewise of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and Landor's _Gehir_ were among
those for which Shelley in early youth had a particular
predilection."[168] Since the influence of Southey soon began to decline
on account of his fulsome praise of George III, we shall confine our
attention to Wordsworth and Coleridge. "One word in candor," Shelley
writes, "on the manner in which the study of contemporary writing may have
modified my composition. I am intimately persuaded that the peculiar style
of intensive and comprehensive imagery in poetry which distinguishes
modern writers has not been as a general power the product of the
imitation of any particular one. It is impossible that any one
contemporary with such writers (Wordsworth and Coleridge were specified at
first) as stand in the front ranks of literature of the present day can
conscientiously assure themselves or others that their _language_ and
_tone of thought_ may not have been modified by the study of the
productions of these extraordinary intellects."[169]

Radicalism, we said, was the characteristic of this period and this
extended both to the form and the matter of poetry. Byron characterizes
one eminent poet as "the mild apostate from poetic rule."[170]

During the greater part of the eighteenth century conservatism and
classicism were in the ascendant. After the Revolution of 1688 everything
medieval and Catholic was looked upon with suspicion. Old customs and
festivities were allowed to fall into disuse. Compared with the past it
was a material age. In the early part of the century agriculture and
commerce flourished and with this advance in material prosperity came the
decline of romanticism. "Correctness" in form and thought is the guiding
light of prince and peasant, of poet and philosopher. Imagination is
concerned almost entirely with society and fine manners. Pope's themes are
beaux and belles, pomatum, billets-doux, and patches. He preferred the
artificial to the natural. Form, imitation of the classics, is to him and
the men of that period, the all important matter in literature. In his
_Essay on Criticism_ he tells us again and again

  Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem
  To copy nature is to copy them.

"To his immediate successors Pope was the grand exemplar of what a poet
should be,"[171] but unfortunately he was followed by a horde of imitators
whose only claim on the muse of poetry was ability to turn out heroic
couplets. As a consequence poetry became a cold, lifeless affair, devoid
of imagination and "divorced from living nature and the warm spontaneity
of the heart."[172]

A reaction against this pseudo-classicism was inevitable. That small but
constantly flowing stream of romanticism which is found in the works of
Thomson, Blake, Warton and Gray, increased in size until it broke loose in
the _Lyrical Ballads_ of 1798. This was the joint work of Coleridge and
Wordsworth. The two poets met for the first time in 1796. Coleridge was
then 24 years of age and Wordsworth but two years his senior. In July,
1797, Wordsworth and his sister moved to Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, that
they might be near Coleridge, who was living with his wife at
Nether-Stowey. They were, as Coleridge has said somewhere, three people
but one soul. A good description of the relationship between them is given
in Dorothy Wordsworth's _Alfoxden Journal_, and in Coleridge's _The
Nightingale_; a conversation poem. Their most frequent topic of
conversation was "the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a
faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the
interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination."[173] From
these conversations originated the plan of the _Lyrical Ballads_. The work
was divided into two parts. Coleridge was to direct his attention to
romantic and supernatural characters and to enshroud these with a human
interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to engage our interest and
attention. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to produce the same effect
by giving the charm of novelty to objects chosen from ordinary life. It
seemed to them that the beauty of a landscape often depended on the
accidents of light and shade; that moonlight or sunset sometimes
transformed an uninviting scene into one of entrancing beauty; and so they
believed that they could diffuse the glow of their imagination over any
object and make it attractive. As might be expected the publication of the
_Ballads_ did not meet with success. The change from the stereotyped verse
of the age to these carelessly formed effusions was too much for the
critics. Some scoffed at them; others thought they were being hoaxed. The
subjects dealt with in these poems were long considered as unfit for
poetry; and of course the conservative felt it his bounden duty to protest
against the innovation. In the second edition of the _Ballads_, which was
entirely Wordsworth's own work, an attempt is made to justify this radical
departure from the beaten path. A poet, he explains, is a genius, and
should not be hampered by any conventions of art or traditions of society.
His imagination is the purifying fire which transmutes the rough ore of
the commonplace into the choice gold of literature. "Good poetry," he
writes, "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." "He (the poet)
is a man speaking to men; a man, it is true, endowed with more lively
sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge
of human nature and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be
common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions,
and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him;
delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in
the goings of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where
he does not find them."[174] This is a good picture of Shelley. "With a
spiritual gaze turned first inward, on his own passions and volitions, and
then turned outward upon the universe, Shelley looked in vain for external
objects answering to the forms generated by his dazzling
imagination."[175]

Meter and poetic diction, Wordsworth says, are something altogether
accidental to poetry, and consequently there is no essential difference
between the language of poetry and that of prose. "The distinction,"
Shelley writes, "between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. Plato
was essentially a poet."[176] Wordsworth contends, too, that the proper
language of poetry is the ordinary language of the rustic. The excellence
of poetry depends not so much on the dignity of the words used as on their
capacity to arouse emotions. "The language of poets," Shelley writes, "is
vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before-unapprehended relations
of things and perpetuates their apprehension; until words which represent
them, become, through time, signs for portions or classes of thought
instead of pictures of integral thoughts.... Every original language near
to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem."[177]

Not only Shelley's principles as regards "the use of language" but also
his "tone of thought" was influenced by Wordsworth. Coleridge and
Wordsworth removed the sphere of poetry from social action to
philosophical reflection; they exchanged the ancient method, consisting in
the ideal imitation of external objects, for an introspective analysis of
the impressions of the individual mind.[178] Many of Wordsworth's poems
are records of the moods of his own soul, and of phases of his life; so
also are Shelley's. A brief examination of some of Wordsworth's works will
serve to make this clear.

Wordsworth planned an epic poem, _The Recluse_, of which _The Prelude_, or
introduction, and _The Excursion_ are the only parts extant. In these two
poems we can trace out the history of his radicalism. _The Prelude_ is his
autobiography; and _The Excursion_ supplements what is lacking to a
thorough revelation of the workings of his mind. He begins _The Prelude_
by telling about his childhood and schooltime, his residence at Cambridge,
vacation and love for books. He then treats of his first trip to the
Continent and his residence in London. Book IX is concerned with his
second visit to France in 1791. While there he mixed up with all classes

                           ... and thus ere long
  Became a patriot; and my heart was all
  Given to the people, and my love was theirs.[179]

It was natural for him to do so, because he lived from boyhood among those
whose claims on one's respect did not rest on accidents of wealth or
blood. He describes his friend General Beaupis, who inoculated him with
enthusiasm for the cause of the Revolution. In _The Revolt of Islam_
Shelley describes Dr. Lind, who taught him to curse the king. Hatred of
absolute rule, where the will of one is law for all, was becoming stronger
in Wordsworth every day. After the September massacres and the
imprisonment of the king he returned to Paris.

  And ranged with ardor heretofore unfelt
  The spacious city.[180]

He was about to cast in his lot with the Revolutionists when he was forced
to return to England. The excesses of the Revolution, however, deprived
him of some of the hopes that he placed in it. At that time his "day
thoughts" were most melancholy. When news came of the fall of Robespierre
his hopes began to revive. The earth will now march firmly towards
righteousness and peace.

  Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
  For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
  Upon our side, us who were strong in love;
  Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
  But to be young was very Heaven.[181]

In Canto V of _The Revolt of Islam_ Shelley describes how oppressors and
oppressed are persuaded to forego revenge. Love has conquered and a new
era of peace and happiness is about to begin.

    To hear, to see, to live, was on that morn
  Lethean joy.

Although Shelley does not dwell on details as Wordsworth does, still there
is a striking similarity between the spirit of parts of _The Excursion_
and that of many of Shelley's poems. An extract from _The Revolt of Islam_
will help to verify this.

  Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first
  The clouds that wrapt me from this world did pass.
  I do remember well the hour which burst
  My spirit's sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,
  When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
  And wept, I know not why; until there rose
  From the near schoolroom voices that, alas!
  Were but one echo from a world of woes,
  The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

  And then I clasped my hands and looked around--
  But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
  Which poured their drops upon the sunny ground--
  So without shame I spoke: "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.

Wordsworth's joy, however, was short-lived. In 1796 Napoleon started on a
campaign of conquest and this completely shattered Wordsworth's faith in
the Revolution. When he saw that the French were changing a war of
self-defense into one of subjugation, losing sight of all which they
themselves had struggled for, he became "vexed with anger and sore with
disappointment." About the year 1793 he fell under the influence of
Godwin, and it is to his doctrines that he now turned for solace. Godwin,
as we have seen, makes reason the sole guide and rule of conduct. Custom,
law, and every kind of authority are inimical to the well-being of
humanity. Wordsworth then at this time began dragging all precepts,
creeds, etc., "like culprits to the bar of reason, now believing, now
disbelieving,"

            till, demanding formal proof
  And seeking it in everything, I lost
  All feeling of conviction, and, in fine,
  Sick, wearied out with contrarieties,
  Yielded up all moral questions in despair.[182]

He had sounded radicalism to its lowest depths and found it wanting.

                      I drooped
  Deeming our blessed reason of the least use
  Where wanted most.

In _The Prelude_ Wordsworth records how he had in youth moments of supreme
inspiration, and had taken vows binding himself to the service of the
spirit he felt in nature.

                        To the brim
  My heart was full, I made no vows but vows
  Were made for me; bond unknown to me
  Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly
  A dedicated spirit.

So with Shelley in _Alastor_:

  Mother of this unfathomable world!
  Favor my solemn song! for I have loved
  Thee ever and thee only.

The sense of life and the sense of mystery are seen in _Alastor_ and these
are due to the influence of Wordsworth.

During all this time Wordsworth wrote very little poetry embodying his
radical sentiments. The only important work of this kind which appeared is
his drama, _The Borderers_. Even this cannot be called a radical word as
it marks his rejection of Godwinism. Marmaduke loves Idonea, Herbert's
daughter, and is told that she is about to be sacrificed by her father to
the lust of a neighboring noble. Oswald, the Godwinian, persuades
Marmaduke, by dint of reasoning, to disregard the musty command of
tyrants, to obey the only law "that sense submits to recognize," and kill
blind Herbert. This Marmaduke does, but later on finds out his mistake and
tells Idonea towards the end that

  Proof after proof was pressed upon me; guilt
  Made evident, as seemed, by blacker guilt,
  Whose impious folds enwrapped even thee.[183]

He realizes that he has committed a crime; that it is the height of folly
to ignore instinct and tradition, and so he wanders over waste and wild

                 till anger is appeased
  In heaven, and mercy gives me leave to die.

Although the radicalism of his early years does not reveal itself to any
great extent in his poetry of that time, still it is responsible for his
largest work, _The Excursion_. This poem is an attempt to reconstruct a
new theory of life out of the ruins of the French Revolution. According to
Wordsworth, the poet is a teacher. "I wish," he says, "to be considered as
a teacher or as nothing." Shelley says that "poets are the unacknowleged
legislators of the world."[184] His _Revolt of Islam_ and other poems
attempt to inculcate "a liberal and comprehensive morality." What
particularly distinguishes Wordsworth and Shelley from preceding poets is
that they moralize and draw lessons from their own experiences. The two
principal characters in _The Excursion_--the Solitary and the
Wanderer--represent Wordsworth the radical and Wordsworth the
conservative. The Wanderer, who has had a long experience of men and
things, derives from nature moral reflections of various kinds. In his
walks he meets the Solitary, a gloomy, morose sceptic. This man tells
about his desire to find peace and contentment; his delight in nature; and
the happiness of his wedded life. The death of his wife and children
filled him with despair. He then begins to question the ways of God to men
and exclaims

                        Then my soul
  Turned inward--to examine of what stuff
  Times fetters are composed; and life was put
  To inquisition, long and profitless![185]

He is aroused from these abstractions by the report that the dread Bastile
has fallen; and from the wreck he sees a golden palace rise

  The appointed seat of equitable law
  The mild paternal sway
  ... from the blind mist issuing
                    I beheld
  Glory, beyond all glory ever seen.

In _Queen Mab_ Shelley has a somewhat similar phrase:

  Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear.

He thus becomes interested once more in life; and joins in the chorus of
Liberty singing in every grove.

                             War shall cease
  Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured?
  Bring garlands, bring forth choicest flowers, to deck
  The tree of Liberty.[186]

Society then became his bride and "airy hopes" his children. Although no
Gallic blood flows in his veins, still not less than Gallic zeal burns
among "the sapless twigs of his exhausted heart." He is in entire sympathy
with the plans and aspirations of the revolutionists, and he feels that a
progeny of golden years is about to descend and bless mankind. All the
hopes of the Solitary, though, are blasted. He is disgusted with the way
in which the revolution is progressing and sets sail for America, where he
expects to find freedom from the restraints of tyranny. Shelley writes
about America as follows:

  There is a people mighty in its youth.
  A land beyond the oceans of the west
  Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth
  Are worshipped.[187]

The Solitary's expectations are not fulfilled, and so he returns,
despondent, to his own country. He is in this frame of mind when he meets
the Wanderer, who tells him that the only adequate support for the
calamities of life is belief in Providence. Victory, the Wanderer says, is
sure if we strive to yield entire submission to the law of conscience. He
compares the force of gravity, which constrains the stars in their
motions, to the principle of duty in the life of man. In Act IV of
_Prometheus Unbound_ Shelley compares the force of gravity to the impulse
of love. There is no cause for despair, and "the loss of confidence in
social man." The beginning of the revolution had raised man's hopes
unwarrantably high. As there was no cause then for such exalted
confidence, so there is none now for fixed despair.

  The two extremes are equally disowned
  By reason.

One should have patience and courage. It is folly to expect the
accomplishment in one day of "what all the slowly moving years of time
have left undone." In the preface to _The Revolt of Islam_ Shelley writes:
"But such a degree of unmingled good was expected (from the revolution) as
it was impossible to realize.... Could they listen to the plea of reason
who had groaned under the calamities of a social state according to the
provisions of which one man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for
want of bread? Can he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly
become liberal-minded? This is the consequence of the habits of a state of
society to be produced by resolute perseverance and indefatigable hope,
and long-suffering and long-believing courage, and the systematic efforts
of generations of men of intellect and virtue." The Wanderer exhorts the
Solitary to engage in bodily exercise and to study nature. He contrasts
the dignity of the imagination with the presumptuous littleness of certain
modern philosophers. At this point the Solitary remarks that it is
impossible for some to rise again; that the mind is not free. It is as
vain to ask a man to resolve as bid a creature fly "whose very sorrow is
that time hath shorn his natural wings." The Wanderer replies that the
ways of restoration are manifold

              fashioned to the steps
  Of all infirmity, and tending all
  To the same point, attainable by all
  Peace in ourselves and union with our God.

The Wanderer calls upon the skies and hills to testify to the existence of
God. Wordsworth the Wanderer finds an answer for Wordsworth the Solitary
in Nature. He sees that there is a Living Spirit in Nature; a spirit which
animates all things, from "the meanest flower that blows" to the glorious
birth of sunshine; a spirit which pervades matter and gives to each its
distinctive life and being. He sees God in everything.

  To every form of being is assigned
  An _active principle_ ...
  ... from link to link
  It circulates the soul of all the worlds.[188]

Shelley, in a letter to Hogg, January 3, 1812, speaks about "the soul of
the Universe, the intelligent and necessarily beneficent _actuating
principle_."

Wordsworth's treatment of nature is original in this that nature is no
longer viewed as a garden or laboratory where man's processes are carried
on, but she is recognized as being over and above him and penetrating his
whole life by impulses that emanate from her. Wordsworth spiritualizes
nature. He views her phenomena as so many "varying manifestations of one
life sacred, great, and all-pervading. "This life of nature is felt more
when man is alone with her and hence the love of solitude which marks the
Wordsworthian habit of mind."[189] Other characteristics of Wordsworth
besides the love for Nature's seclusion are "the reverence which sees in
her a revelation of infinity and the recognition in her of a mysterious
and poetic life." These are also characteristics of Shelley. His love of
solitude is inspired by the desire to know nature in her inmost heart; "he
has the same feeling for infinite expanse and the same perception of an
underlying life." He also insists, like Wordsworth, on "the education of
nature."

In the preface to _Alastor_, Shelley says that the subject of the poem
represents a youth "led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified
through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the
contemplation of the universe.... The magnificence and beauty of the
external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions and
affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted." In the
introductory stanzas, Shelley asks this great parent, Nature, to inspire
him that his "strain may modulate with murmurs of the air." He tells us,
too, "that every sight and sound from the vast earth and ambient air sent
to his heart its choicest blessings." Wordsworth says, in _Lines on
Tintern Abbey_, that

            Nature never did betray
  The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
  Through all the years of this our life to lead
  From joy to joy; for she can so inform
  The mind that is within us, so impress
  With quietness and beauty, and so feed
  With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
  Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
  Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
  The dreary intercourse of daily life,
  Shall e'er prevail against us or disturb
  Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
  Is full of blessings.

In the Prelude, Wordsworth speaks of the influence of nature as follows:

  Wisdom and spirit of the universe!
  That soul that art the eternity of thought.
  That givest to forms and images a breath
  And everlasting motion, not in vain
  By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
  Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
  The passions that build up our human soul.

This and the _Intimations of Immortality_ remind us of the following
passage in _Queen Mab_:

  Soul of the Universe! eternal spring
  Of life and death, of happiness and woe,
  Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene
  That floats before our eyes in wavering light,
  Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,
  Whose chains and massy walls
  We feel, but cannot see.

Wordsworth goes into the woods and hears a thousand notes all making sweet
music, all in harmony. Furthermore, he feels that all living things,
flowers and animals, are possessed of conscious life.

  And 'tis my faith that every flower
  Enjoys the air it breathes.
                          (_Lines written in early spring._)

Nature is throbbing not only with life but with the spirit of love, a
spirit that knits the whole world of living things together.

  Love, now a universal birth,
  From heart to heart is stealing,
  From earth to man, from man to earth.
                          (_To my sister._)

The same thought runs through many of Shelley's poems. In _The Sensitive
Plant_ the flowers live, love, and die.

  But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
  In the garden, the field, or the wilderness,
  Like a doe in the noontide, with love's sweet want,
  As the companionless sensitive plant.

The beauty and loveliness of nature will do us more good "than all the
sages can." They will inspire us as nothing else will.

Dr. Ackermann draws attention to the kindness of Wordsworth and Shelley
for animals, and notes the similarity between the two following
passages.[190] Thus Wordsworth in _The Excursion_, II, 41-47:

                     Birds and beasts
  And the mute fish that glances in the stream
  And harmless reptile coiling in the sun
  ... he loved them all:
  Their rights acknowledging he felt for all.

And Shelley in _Alastor_, 13-15:

  If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast
  I consciously have injured, but still loved
  And cherished these my kindred.

Wordsworth concludes _The Excursion_ and Shelley the _Alastor_ with the
desire for death.

With the name of Wordsworth, the name of that greater genius, Coleridge,
will always be linked. Although they were life-long friends still no two
could be more unlike in character and temperament. Wordsworth was moody
and determined. He, like Shelley, worked out his plans unmindful of the
opinion of others. Neglect and ridicule did not trouble him in the least.
He was an excellent type of _mens sana in corpore sano_. Coleridge, on the
other hand, was without ambition and steadiness of purpose. He drifted on
through life in a listless manner, "sometimes committing a golden thought
to the blank leaf of a book, or to a private letter, but generally content
with oral communication."[191] At an early age he had accomplished great
things and it was felt that these were but "the morning giving promise of
a glorious day." He was scarcely thirty when he won distinction as a poet,
journalist, lecturer, theologian, critic and philosopher. The "glorious
day," however, never matured. Sickness and opium were the clouds that
obscured the brightness of his genius. His married life was not a happy
one. As in the case of Shelley, jealousy and irritation on the part of the
wife, and disenchantment on the part of the husband made home-life
intolerable.

One of the earliest manifestations of Coleridge's radicalism is his _Ode
on the Destruction of the Bastile_, written in 1789. In it he rejoices at
the overthrow of tyranny and the success of Freedom. Liberty with all her
attendant virtues will now be the portion of all.

  Yes! Liberty the soul of life shall reign,
  Shall throb in every pulse, shall flow thro' every vein!

He hopes that she will extend her influence wider and wider until every
land shall boast "one independent soul." In his _Ode to France_ he
writes:

  With what deep worship I have still adored
  The spirit of divinest Liberty.

Shelley may have had this in mind when he wrote in _Alastor_

  And lofty hopes of divine liberty
  Thoughts the most dear to him.

Coleridge's most important radical work, which Lamb considered to be more
than worthy of Milton, is _Religious Musings_. Shelley's _Queen Mab_ bears
so strong a resemblance to it that the _Religious Musings_ has been called
Coleridge's _Queen Mab_. In the first part he lashes his countrymen for
joining the coalition against France under pretence of defending religion.
Further on he gives his views on society, its origin and progress. It is
to private property that we must attribute all the sore ills that desolate
our mortal life. Unlike many radicals, however, Coleridge can see the good
in an institution as well as the evil. Thus he holds that the rivalry
resulting from our present economic condition has stimulated thought and
action

  From avarice thus, from luxury and war,
  Sprang heavenly science; and from science freedom.

The innumerable multitude of wrongs, continues Coleridge, by man on man
inflicted, cry to heaven for vengeance. Even now (1796) the storm begins
which will cast to earth the rich, the great, and all the mighty men of
the world. This will be followed by a period of sunshine, when Love will
return and peace and happiness be the portion of all.

  As when a shepherd on a vernal morn
  Through some thick fog creeps timorous with slow foot,
  Darkling with earnest eyes he traces out
  The immediate road, all else of fairest kind
  Hid or deformed. But lo! the bursting Sun!
  Touched by the enchantment of that sudden beam
  Straight the black vapor melteth, and in globes
  Of dewy glitter gems each plant and tree:
  On every leaf, on every blade it hangs;
  And wide around the landscape streams with glory!

So we will fly into the sun of love, impartially view creation, and love
it all. We will then see that God diffused through society makes it one
whole; that every victorious murder is a blind suicide; that no one
injures and is not uninjured. This change will be brought about by a
return to pure Faith and meek Piety. He differs from Shelley in this, that
he does not look for reformation through the overturning of thrones and
churches. The existing frame-work of society is all right; it needs only
to be freed from some of its barnacles.

The first stanza of Coleridge's _Love_ reminds one of the following
passage from Shelley's _Prometheus Unbound_ (Act IV, 406):

  His will, with all mean passions, bad delights
  And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,
  A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,
  Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm
  Love rules.

Coleridge's stanza runs as follows:

  All thoughts, all passions, all delights
  Whatever stirs this mortal frame
  All are but ministers of Love
  And feed his sacred flame.[192]

Shelley's sonnet to Ianthe is little more than a transposition of
Coleridge's sonnet to his son. Shelley says:

  I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake:
  Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled cheek,
  Thy tender frame, so eloquently weak,
  Love in the sternest heart of hate might wake;
  But more when o'er thy fitful slumber bending
  Thy mother folds thee to her wakeful heart,
  Whilst love and pity, in her glances blending,
  All that thy passive eyes can feel impart:
  More, when some feeble lineaments of her,
  Who bore thy weight beneath her spotless bosom,
  As with deep love I read thy face, recur,--
  More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blossom;
  Dearest when most thy tender traits express
  The image of thy mother's loveliness.[193]

Coleridge's runs as follows:

  Charles! my slow heart was only sad when first
  I scanned that face of feeble infancy:
  For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst
  All I had been, and all my child might be!
  But when I saw it on its mother's arm,
  And hanging at her bosom (she the while
  Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile),
  Then I was thrilled and melted, and most warm
  Impressed a father's kiss; and all beguiled
  Of dark remembrance and presageful fear.
  I seemed to see an angel's form appear--
  'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!
  So for the mother's sake the child was dear
  And dearer was the mother for the child.

Coleridge and Shelley made a universal application of a few metaphysical
principles acquired in their early years; and on them ground their
political and religious views. Poetry, metaphysics, morals and politics
mixed themselves forever in their imagination.[194]




CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION


The radical, when theorizing, considers man in the abstract. He forgets
about actual conditions--man with his inequalities. The only thing
necessary, in his view, for the reformation of society is to lay before
mankind some logical plan of action. He loses sight of the fact that other
influences, besides logic, play a part in the moulding of man's conduct.
Newman says teach men to shoot around corners and then you may hope to
convert them by means of syllogisms. "One feels," Emerson writes, "that
these philosophers have skipped no fact but one, namely, life. They treat
man as a plastic thing, or something that may be put up or down, ripened
or retarded, molded, polished, made into solid or fluid or gas at the will
of the leader."[195] The radical sees the millenium dawning upon the land
every time a new scheme is proposed for the amelioration of society. They
do not apply any tests to determine its adaptability to the needs of the
people. It satisfies the rules of logic and for them this is sufficient.
Burke considers this point in his speech, "On Conciliation with America."
"It is a mistake to imagine that mankind follow up practically any
speculative principle as far as it will go in argument and in logical
illation. All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every
virtue and every prudent act is founded on compromise and barter. We
balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights that we may
enjoy others. Man acts from motives relative to his interests; and not on
metaphysical speculations."

Shelley could not understand how it is that evils continue so
pertinaciously to exist in society. He believed that men had but to will
that there would be no evil and there would be none. It seemed to him that
he could construct inside twenty-four hours a system of government and
morals that would be perfect. "The science," Burke writes, "of
constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like
every other experimental science not to be taught _a priori_. Nor is it a
short experience that can instruct us in that practical science.... The
science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended
for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even
more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however
sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any
man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in
any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on
building it up again without having models and patterns of approved
utility before his eyes."[196]

The radical does not distinguish between essentials and non-essentials. He
sees some evils in connection with an institution and forthwith would wipe
that institution out of existence. Garrison thought there was something in
the constitution of the United States that sanctioned slavery and so he
described the constitution as "a league with death and a covenant with
hell." As late as 1820 Shelley believed that "the system of society as it
exists at present must be overthrown from the foundations with all its
superstructures of maxims and of forms."[197] He sees the evil and misses
the good. The radical and the conservative both sin in this, that they
take the cause of their adversaries not by its strong end, but by its
weakest.

Imaginative people see a few things clearly, and on that account do not
see the whole. Their attention is entirely taken up with a few details.
Shelley had no connected view of the world. He has brilliant, perhaps
exaggerated, pictures of parts of it. He picks out some misery here and
some injustice there, and condemns the whole. Again, he does not offer a
complete philosophy of life for us to follow. He takes a truth here and
another there and deifies them, exaggerates them as he does pictures of
the world. His thoughts were so vivid that they outshone the counsels of
the more conservative. They impressed him so much that he could not see
their limitations. Single views, a simple philosophy suited him. For this
reason he made his guides and leaders those philosophers of the
eighteenth century who discarded the tortuous philosophy of the past and
put forward a simple recipe which was to bring light and happiness to the
world.

Radicals do a great deal of good by shaking off our social torpor and
disturbing our self-sufficient complacency. But they very often cause a
great deal of harm, and then society has a perfect right to defend itself
against them. If they ignore the past, if they disregard the wisdom of
centuries, if they tend to subvert all that has been already done, they
are not effecting the betterment of society, but its destruction. True
reformers link themselves with the good already existing in society and
war only against its evils. They will start with things as they are. Burke
says that "the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of
conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all
excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free; but it
secures what it acquires.... By preserving the method of nature in the
conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what
we retain we are never wholly obsolete." True, progress in all the arts
and sciences requires a certain readiness to experiment with the unknown
and try something new. Yet if that readiness be reckless, disaster will
surely be the result. Desire to move forward must be moderate, must be
harmonized with distrust of the unknown if real progress is to ensue.

To improve society we must understand it, and to do this we must recognize
its positive value. The work of social reformers would be more effective
if they had a better knowledge of existing laws and institutions. As a
rule soap-box orators declaim against things about which they know little
or nothing. A clear consciousness then of the good in the world, a clear
understanding of the principles which bind this social world together is
indispensable to the social reformer. To understand an object is to see
through its defects to the positive qualities that constitute it; for
nothing is made up of its own shortcomings. Hence we must place our faith
in evolution rather than revolution. Any reform that is to be made must be
founded in the good at present working in the world.

It cannot be said that Shelley had a clear consciousness of the social
forces at work in society or of the good being done by the institutions of
his time. He admitted himself that he detested history, and one cannot
form a just estimate of institutions without knowing something about their
history. Had he known something about the real history of Christianity or
of the development of constitutional government in England he would not
probably have been the radical that he was. He did not see that the
institutions of his time were the product of the efforts of generations of
men; he did not realize that the social structure is the most complicated
and delicate of all the products of human nature, and consequently did not
appreciate the folly of some of the radical changes he proposed.

Shelley had a horror of tradition and prejudice; yet a certain amount of
prejudice is necessary. A man who would solve all the problems of life
without falling back on tradition would be obliged, in each of the
decisions that he would make, to follow a line of thought or argumentation
which would impose an intolerable burden on him. According to Shelley, the
morality of an act is to be measured by the utilitarian standard, "the
greatest good of the greatest number." How though can we measure the
pleasure and the pain that flows from an action? In many cases we must
take the judgment of the race; we must be guided by prejudice or
tradition. "Prejudice," writes Burke, "is of ready application in the
emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and
virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision,
sceptical, puzzled and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his
habit and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his
duty becomes a part of his nature."[198]

The radical lays too much stress on the influence of institutions. Shelley
ascribed to them all the evils of society. He was confident that a
remodelling of them would bring about a complete reformation of society.
Social wrongs are caused by men and men alone can cure them.

The radical is so taken up with his own ideas that he soon becomes
eccentric. He loses, too, all sense of humor. He sees nothing but tragedy
confronting him at every turn. At Leghorn, Shelley, accompanied by a
friend, visited a ship which was manned by Greek sailors. "Does this
realize your idea of Hellenism, Shelley?" his friend asked. "No! but it
does of hell," he replied. Almost every radical is lacking in tact, in
moderation and in the sense of practical life.

The radical is apt to think that everybody is against him. He does not
credit his opponents with honest convictions, and so he imagines that he
is being unjustly persecuted. Shelley thought that even his father sought
to injure him. "The idea," Peacock writes, "that his father was
continually on the watch for a pretext to lock him up haunted him through
life."

This brings us to several of Shelley's traits which are characteristic of
genius or insanity rather than of radicalism. In his _Man of Genius_
Professor Lombroso says that the characteristics of insane men of genius
are met with, though far less conspicuously, among the great men freest
from any suspicion of insanity. "Between the physiology of the man of
genius," he writes, "and the pathology of the insane, there are many
points of coincidence; there is even actual continuity."

One of the most important of these characteristics is hallucination.
Examples of geniuses who were subject to hallucinations are Caesar,
Brutus, Cellini, Napoleon, Dr. Johnson, and Pope. Shortly before his death
Shelley saw a child rise from the sea and clap its hands. At Tanyralt, on
the night of February 26, 1813, Shelley imagined that he heard a noise
proceeding from one of the parlors and immediately went downstairs armed
with two pistols. There, he said, he found a man who fired at him but
missed. The report of Shelley's pistol brought the rest of the family on
the scene, but none of them could find any trace of the intruder. It is
generally conceded that this attack took place only in Shelley's fertile
imagination. At another time Shelley imagined that he was afflicted with
elephantiasis. One day towards the close of 1813 he was traveling in a
coach with a fat old lady, who, he felt sure, must be a victim of this
disease. Later on at Mr. Newton's house as "he was sitting in an arm
chair," writes Madame Gatayes, "talking to my father and mother, he
suddenly slipped down on the ground, twisting about like an eel. 'What is
the matter?' cried my mother. In his impressive tone Shelley announced 'I
have the elephantiasis.'... After a few weeks this hallucination left him
as suddenly as it came.

"He took strange caprices," writes Hogg, "unfounded frights and dislikes,
vain apprehensions and panic terrors and therefore he absented himself
from formal and sacred engagements." It is well to keep this in mind when
reading some of the criticism of Shelley. J. C. Jeafferson cites a long
list of facts to prove that Shelley was a wilful prevaricator. Almost all
of these can be explained away through the assumption that Shelley himself
was deceived when he told something that did not square with the known
facts of the case. "Had he," writes Hogg, "written to ten different
individuals the history of some proceeding in which he was himself a party
and an eye-witness each of his ten reports would have varied from the rest
in essential and important circumstances."

"Genius," says Lombroso, "is conscious of itself, appreciates itself, and
certainly has no monkish humility." Shelley often expressed regret that
the rest of mankind was not as good as himself and his soulmate, Miss
Hitchener. He thought that he had no faults.

Another characteristic of the genius is that he must be continually
traveling from one place to another. This is certainly true of Shelley. He
seldom remained longer than a year in one place.

Shelley in common with most sane men of genius was much preoccupied with
his own ego. He loved to talk and write about himself and his opinions.
The most important of his poems contain pictures of himself.

"These energetic intellects," writes Lombroso, "are the true pioneers of
science; they rush forward regardless of danger, facing with eagerness the
greatest difficulties--perhaps because it is these which best satisfy
their morbid energy." Shelley was always embarking on some foolish
enterprise. He ran away with a school girl without having in sight any
means of support. He went to Ireland to emancipate the whole race; and
after this failed he set about reclaiming a large tract of land from the
sea at the little town of Tremadoc, Wales. He finally lost his life
through venturing out to sea in stormy weather with an undermanned
boat.[199]

Matthew Arnold's dictum, then, that Shelley was not sane is a gross
exaggeration. The characteristics of his life which would seem to uphold
Arnold's assertion are found in sane men of genius. That he was abnormal
in some ways cannot be denied. In a letter which Mrs. Shelley wrote to Sir
John Bowring when she sent him the holograph manuscript of the _Mask of
Anarchy_, there is the following reference to her husband: "Do not be
afraid of losing the impression you have concerning my lost Shelley by
conversing with anyone who knows about him. The mysterious feeling you
experience was participated by all his friends, even by me, who was ever
with him--or why say even I felt it more than any other, because by
sharing his fortune, I was more aware that any other of his wondrous
excellencies and the strange fate which attended him on all occasions....
I do not in any degree believe that his being was regulated by the same
laws that govern the existence of us common mortals, nor did anyone think
so who ever knew him. I have endeavored, but how inadequately, to give
some idea of him in my last published book--the sketch has pleased some of
those who best loved him--I might have made more of it, but there are
feelings which one recoils from unveiling to the public eye."[200]

Shelley always remained a child. This was the opinion of one of his
greatest admirers, Francis Thompson. "The child appeared no less often in
Shelley the philosopher than in Shelley the idler. It is seen in his
repellant no less than in his amiable weaknesses." To this fact, perhaps,
may be ascribed the luxuriance of his imagination; it is freer in
childhood than in old age.

    Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
  Shades of the prison-house begin to close
    Upon the growing boy.
  But he beholds the light and whence it flows
    He sees it in his joy.[201]

He has been described as "a beautiful spirit building his many-colored
haze of words and images." For him idealism was more than a need of the
spirit; it was the principal element of his being.[202] Anyone who cleared
away obstacles from the path of his imagination had all the attraction of
a kindred spirit. This helps to explain Godwin's influence over him. His
father-in-law advocated the entire abolition of existing institutions, and
left the work of reconstruction to man's imagination. Here it was that
Shelley found full scope for the exercise of his faculties. He cannot be
said to have contributed many original ideas to nineteenth century
literature. "He merely familiarizes the highly refined imagination of the
more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral
excellence."

Radicalism is a characteristic of youth. Almost every person who is of any
importance in his community will be found to have started out in life,
boiling over with enthusiasm and eager to help on reform by advocating a
change in this or that institution. Very often this interferes with their
judgment. Bacon had this in mind when he wrote: "Is not the opinion of
Aristotle worthy to be regarded wherein he saith that young men are not
fit auditors of moral philosophy, because they are not settled from the
boiling-heat of their affections nor tempered with time and
experience."[203] Shakespeare endorses this in _Troilus and Cressida_, Act
II, scene 2.

            not much
  Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
  Unfit to hear moral philosophy.

That Shelley, had he lived, would have followed in the footsteps of
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey and become a conservative may well be
doubted. However, his life shows some progress in that direction. He had
learned to become more tolerant of various types of men; and Stopford
Brooke maintains that there are indications in Shelley's works to show
that he would have become a Christian.

It is unfortunate that Shelley never came into close personal contact
with a Burke who could take him out of the region of imagination and make
him appreciate the beauty of order and institutions. Had Shelley met such
a one he might have been influenced in the way that the Greek Augustine
was benefited by the Roman Ambrose. Southey might have helped Shelley if
he had shown more consideration for our poet's extremely sensitive
feelings. Southey's pet argument was that Shelley was too young to
understand the question they were discussing. "When you are as old as I
am," he would say, "then you will see things in a different light." Such a
line of reasoning has no influence on men of Shelley's stamp.

Aubrey De Vere, in a letter to Henry Taylor, December 12, 1882, states
that Shelley's character had two great natural defects. The first was a
want of robustness which took away from him stability and self-possession.
The second was his want of reverence. "There is," he writes, "an insolence
of audacity in some passages of Shelley on religious subjects which admits
only of two interpretations, viz., something in his original cerebral
organization doubtless augmented by circumstances that hindered proper
development in some part of it or else pride in quite an extraordinary
degree." Lest this should appear to give De Vere's complete view of
Shelley I quote further from the same letter. "Something angelic there was
certainly about him, something that I recognized from the first day that I
read his poetry. His intelligence had also a keen logic about it."

The radical is gifted with a powerful constructive imagination. He feels
keenly the failures of institutions and is led to construct an ideal state
of society. He takes all the good he knows, joins the pieces together,
beautifies and adorns the picture until he has formed an earthly paradise.
This has its advantages as only those whose imaginations are fired by fine
ideals will ever stir the world with noble deeds. To succeed you must, as
Emerson expresses it, "hitch your wagon to a star."

Imagination has, of course, its dangers. Some are content to day dream; to
live in the world of their imagination. They are impatient of the
failures, of the slow, steady toil that precedes success. They forget that
change works slowly. "He who has a clear grasp of a concrete ideal and a
clear insight into the conditions, realization, and the difficulties in
the actual world by which it is beset will be the true social reformer of
the world."[204] Shelley had a good grasp of the ideal, but he did not
know how to cross over from the ideal to the real. This journey is a long
and tedious one. "All progress," MacKenzie writes, "which is guided by an
ideal must be more or less of the nature of a stumble."[205] "Our very
walking," as Goethe puts it, "is a series of falls." Bacon writes,
"certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity,
rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of the earth." Shelley's mind
moved in charity, but turned anywhere except upon the poles of the earth.

Notwithstanding all its shortcomings radicalism fulfils a very useful
purpose in society. It keeps before our eyes the ideal. "It emphasizes the
moral over the material; man over property. Its prominence in society
insures progress and gives promise that ideals shall not perish; that hope
shall not wane, and that society shall long for perfection and peace,
without which longing no progress is possible."[206] Radicalism emphasizes
the ideal; conservatism the real. Out of the two springs progress. "One is
the moving power; the other the steadying power of the state. One is the
sail without which society would make no progress; the other the ballast
without which there would be small safety in a tempest."[207]

It is strange that the experience of centuries has not taught men to be
more tolerant towards the radical. We see how blind was the generation
behind us in resisting the obvious reforms which it was asked to approve;
yet it never enters our heads to suspect that the next generation will
consider as obvious reforms what we consider subversive proposals, and
will wonder at our stupidity in having offered any resistance to them.

Shelley was a "sentimental" rather than a "philosophical"[208] radical.
He inflamed wills rather than enlightened minds. He roused men to action
instead of solving difficult problems.

Man is influenced more by his emotions than by his intellect and hence the
importance of the position which the sentimental radical holds in the
history of society. If the radical arouses helpful emotions the amount of
good he does is incalculable, so too is the amount of harm an unwise
radical is responsible for.

The emotions which Shelley's poetry arouse are on the whole helpful. True
a few of the details of one or two of his works should be condemned, but
these usually serve to bring out the main idea of the work which is always
an inspiring one. Nobody thinks of condemning "Lear" because of the
vileness of Goneril. If we would interpret any writer's meaning and
message the first thing to attend to is to regard the work "as a whole
bearing on life as a whole." Doing this we will grasp what is central, and
at the same time will appreciate the true value of all details. Francis
Thompson does not believe that any one ever had his faith shaken through
reading Shelley. He knows, too, only of three passages to which exception
might be taken from a moral point of view. Shelley extolled Justice,
Freedom and Equality; and he denounced tyranny and injustice. His poetry
should inspire men to be more charitable and tolerant, to seek less after
wealth and the applause of the world, to sympathize more and more with
suffering humanity, to return good for evil and to pursue the common good
of all with more zeal and enthusiasm.

One or more of the faculties of every poet are more highly developed than
those of ordinary people. In some cases it is the senses; in others the
imagination. Tennyson and Wordsworth are good examples of the first class.
They note and describe shades of color--in flowers, in the sky--the music
of waters, and a hundred other things that escape the notice of common
mortals. In Shelley it is his imagination, his faculty for feeling the
sufferings of others that is abnormal. He sees a woman afflicted with
elephantiasis, and straightway imagines that he himself has the same
disease. Shelley keenly feels the misery around him, gives expression to
that feeling, and castigates the causes of that misery.

Shelley's poetry exercises our imagination, takes us away from ourselves
and makes us think about our neighbors. The great trouble with the world
today is that men think only about themselves, their own wants and their
own joys. If we were made to feel the sufferings of the poor one-half of
the evils of society would be eliminated. Anything then that brings home
to us the evils of society is a blessing. "Every grade of culture," writes
Dr. Kerby, "has its own spirit of fellowship, its own code, understanding
and secrets. Hence it is that the imagination has a supreme role in the
neighborly relations of men. As social processes unite men in imagination,
they supply the basis of concord, service and trust.... Reason may talk of
social solidarity, and economic or sociological analysis may show us how
intimately all men are united; the catechism may appeal to intellect and
tell us that mankind of every description is our neighbor. But only they
have entrance to our hearts to whom imagination gives the passport; only
they are neighbors whom imagination accepts and embraces."[209] The work
of reconstructing human brotherhood is in a great measure the work of the
imagination.

The objection may be raised here that although Shelley's imagination was
very strong, still he was guilty of great wrong to Harriet. In reply one
may say that the imagination is only one-half the mould which forms the
perfect man. The other half is made up of reason and revealed religion.
Where these two parts of the mind are found together we get great men.
They exist side by side in the saints. A man may know all about ascetical
theology, or all about his profession, but if he has not imagination he
will always be a plodder. To come more directly to our difficulty, Shelley
had the motive power of imagination and the guiding force of reason, but
not that of revealed religion. The result was that he went off at a
tangent when he dealt with matrimony. His case should be a convincing
argument to women at least that Christianity is necessary for the
happiness and well-being of mankind. In so far as Shelley's imagination
was guided by the light of reason, he was a saint. Trelawny says that
Shelley stinted himself to bare necessities, and then often lavished the
money saved by unprecedented self-denial on selfish fellows who denied
themselves nothing.

Some of Shelley's poetry is calculated to arouse one's anger and hatred of
wrong. A people who are destitute of these emotions are fit subjects for
the yoke. As long as there are men ready to take advantage of another's
weakness; as long as there are selfish men who will advance themselves at
the expense of others, so long will it be necessary to keep alive in men
the spirit of hatred of injustice.

The difficulty with a great many critics of Shelley is that they confound
Shelley's railing at the evils of religion and governments with railing at
religion and government itself. In places, it is true, he would seem to be
a complete anarchist, but then allowance should be made for the sweeping
generalizations that are characteristic of poetry and radicalism. Those
passages in which he would seem to condemn all religion and government
should deceive no one.

No doubt it is wrong to brood too much over the misery of the world. One
misses a great deal if one sees only the evil, and never sees any of the
good nor experiences any of the joy of life. Extreme pessimism is as
harmful as extreme optimism. The pessimism that lets in no ray of hope is
a plague. Such though is not the pessimism of Shelley. His pictures of the
evils of society are illumined by the reflection from the happier state of
society that is about to come to pass.

Shelley would do away with government and authority. Surely, some would
say, that is enough to discredit him as a thinker forever. On the
contrary, it shows how far in advance of his time he was; it shows he had
a good grasp of the sociological principle that the less compulsion and
the more cooperation under direction there is in any state the better it
is. Shelley never meant to say that he would here and now abolish all
authority. No one saw more clearly than he that chaos would result from
the removal of authority from society as at present constituted. When
Shelley writes about freedom from authority he is picturing the ideal
state where men will be just and wise. He very likely doubted that such a
state was possible here below, still he thought it was incumbent on
everybody to strive after this ideal. He wanted men to so perfect
themselves, to so act, that laws and policemen would become less and less
necessary.

Shelley may not have the "sense of established facts," and may be unable
to offer suggestions which will work out well in practice, but he does
infuse a higher and a nobler conception of life into the consciousness of
a people. What Wordsworth said concerning his own poems is true of the
works of Shelley. "They will cooperate with the benign tendencies in human
nature and society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making
men wiser, better, and happier."




BIBLIOGRAPHY


The best critical edition of Shelley's complete work is that by H. B.
Forman in eight volumes, London, 1880. Other useful editions of the
poetical works are: Professor G. E. Woodberry's, four volumes, Boston,
1892; Professor Dowden's, one volume, London, 1900; T. Huchinson's,
Oxford, 1905; and W. M. Rossetti's, three volumes, London, 1881.

For an account of the earlier publications of Shelley's works consult _The
Shelley Library: an Essay in Bibliography_, by H. B. Forman.

The most comprehensive and authoritative life of Shelley is that by
Professor Dowden in two volumes, London, 1886.

The following are the chief authorities, critical and biographical, to be
consulted:

ACKERMANN, R.: (a) _Quellen zu Shelley's Poetischen Werken._ 1890.

               (b) _Shelley's Epipsychidion und Adonais._ 1900.

               (c) _Prometheus Unbound. Kritische textansgabe, etc._ 1908.

ALLEN, EDITH L.: _Shelley Day by Day._ 1910.

ALLEN, LESLIE H.: _Die Personlichkeit P. B. Shelley's._ 1907.

ANGELI, HELEN A.: _Shelley and His Friends in Italy._ 1911.

ALEXANDER, W. J.: _Select Poems of Shelley._

AXON, W. E.: _Shelley's Vegetarianism._ 1891.

BATES, E. S.: _A Study of Shelley's Drama._ The Cenci.

BELFAST, EARL OF: _Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century._ 1852.

BENNETT, D.: _The World's Sages, Infidels and Thinkers._ 1876.

BERNTHSEN, S.: _Der Spinozismus in Shelley's Weltanschauung._ 1900.

BIAZI, GUIDO: _The Last Days of P. B. Shelley._ 1898.

BRAILSFORD, H. N.: _Shelley, Godwin, and Their Circle._

BROWN: _The Prometheus Unbound of Shelley._

BRANDES, G.: _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature._ Vol. IV.

BRANDL, SAMUEL T.: _Coleridge und die Englische Romantik._ 1886.

BROOKE, STOPFORD A.: _Studies in Poetry._ 1907.

BYRON, MAY.: _A Day with the Poet P. B. Shelley._ 1910.

CALVERT, G. H.: _Coleridge, Shelley, Goethe, Biographic Aesthetic
Studies._ 1880.

CARDUCCI, G.: _Prometeo Liberato, Torino Roma._ 1894.

CHEVRILLON, T. A.: _Etudes Anglaises._ 1901.

CHIARINI, GIUSEPPE: _Ombre e Figure Saggi Critici._ 1883.

A. CLUTTON-BROCK: _Shelley; the Man and the Poet._ 1910.

COURTHOPE, W. J.: _The Liberal Movement in English Literature._ 1885.

CHAPMAN, E. M.: _English Literature and Religion._ 1800-1900.

CLARKE, MISS H. A.: _Prometheus Unbound._

COPELAND, C. T.: _Shelley, P. B._, Vol. IV. Gateway Series Texts.

COURTHOPE, W. J.: _A History of English Poetry_, Vol. VI. 1910.

CRASHWAY, ROSE M.: _Byron, Shelley, Keats Prize Essays._ 1893.

DARMESTETER, JAMES: _Essais de Litterature Anglaise._ 1883.

DAWSON, W. J.: _Quest and Vision, Essays in Life and Literature._ 1886.

DELL, E. E.: _Pictures from Shelley._ 1892.

DE QUINCY, THOMAS: _Essays on the Poets._

DIBDIN: _Reminiscences of a Literary Life._ 1836.

DOWDEN, EDWARD: (a) _Transcripts and Studies._ 1896.

                (b) _The French Revolution and English Literature._ 1897.

DREYER, C.: _Studier og Portraeter._ 1901.

DROOP, A.: _Die Belesenheit, P. B. Shelley._ 1906.

DRUSKOWITZ, DR. HELENE: _Shelley._ 1884.

EDGAR, P.: _A Study of Shelley._ 1899.

EDMUNDS, E. W.: _Shelley and His Poetry._ 1911.

ELLIS, F. S.: _Alphabetical table of contents adapted to Forman's._ 1888.

ELSNER: _Shelley's abhangigkeit, V. Godwin's Political Justice._ 1906.

ELTON, C. T.: _An Account of Shelley's Visits to France._ 1894.

GARNETT, R.: _Essays of an ex-Librarian._ 1901.

GILLARDON, H.: _Shelley's einwirkung auf Byron._ 1898.

GRIBBLE, FRANCIS: _Shelley._ 1911.

GUMMERE, FRANCIS B.: _Democracy and Poetry._

GODWIN, PARKE: _Out of the Past._

GUTHRIE, W. N.: _Modern Poet Prophets._ 1897.

HANCOCK, A. E.: _The French Revolution and English Poets._ 1899.

HOGG, T. J.: _The Life of P. B. Shelley._ 1906.

HUNT, LEIGH: (a) _Autobiography._ 1866.

             (b) _Imagination and Fancy._

INGHEN, ROBERT: _The Letters of P. B. Shelley._ 1909.

JACK, A. A.: _Shelley: An Essay._ 1904.

JEAFFERSON, J. C.: _The Real Shelley._ 2 vols. 1885.

JOHNSON C. F.: _Three Americans and Three Englishmen._ 1886.

KINGSLEY, CHARLES: _Works_, Vol. XX. 1880.

KEGAN P. C.: _William Godwin; His Friends, etc._

KNIGHT: _Ausg. V. Wordsworth's Poetischen. Werken._

KOSZUL, A.: _La Jeunesse de Shelley._ 1910.

KRODER, ARMIN: _Shelley's Verskunst dargestellt von Dr. Armin Kroder._
1903.

LOCOCK, C. D.: _An examination of the Shelley manuscript in the Bodleian
Library._ 1903.

MAURER, OTTO: _Shelley und die Frauen._ 1906.

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MANFORD, EIMER: _Die personlichen Bexiehungen zwischen Byron und
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MARSHALL, MRS.: _Life of Mary W. Shelley._ 1890. 3 vols.

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in Italiano, citta di Castelio._ 1892.

MARSHALL, MRS. J.: _Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley_, 2 vols. 1889.

MEDWIN, THOMAS: _The Life of P. B. Shelley_, 1847.

MIDDLETON, C. S.: _Shelley and His Writings_, 2 vols. 1858.

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POLIDORI, J. W.: _The Diary of Polidori Relating to Shelley._

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BIOGRAPHY


The author of this dissertation was born in Glassburn, Nova Scotia,
November 7, 1881. He attended the public school there until the fall of
1896, when he entered St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, N. S. In
November, 1900, he entered the Propaganda College, Rome, and was ordained
a priest in 1904. The years 1908 and 1909 he devoted largely to the study
of English literature, and in July, 1910, passed the preliminary
post-graduate examinations in English at St. Francis Xavier University. In
October of the same year he entered the Catholic University of America,
where he pursued studies in English under Professors Lennox and Hemelt; in
sociology under Dr. Kerby, and in economics under Dr. O'Hara. To these
gentlemen and to the Rt. Rev. Bishop Shahan for kindly encouragement he
wishes to acknowledge a debt of gratitude.




Footnotes:

[1] A dissertation submitted to the Catholic University of America in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy, June, 1912.

[2] Trent, _The Authority of Criticism and Other Essays_.

[3] _English Thought in the Eighteenth Century_, Chap. X.

[4] Cf. Halevy, _La Resolution et la Doctrine de L'Utilite_.

[5] _Queen Mab_, Canto IV.

[6] Samuel Butler, _Hudibras_.

[7] _Open Court._

[8] _Ingpen_, Letter Jan. 26, 1812.

[9] _The Real Shelley_, Vol. I, p. 97.

[10] Hogg: _Life of Shelley_, p. 136.

[11] _Oxford Studies_ (1855), quoted in _Koszul_, p. 59.

[12] _Rights of Woman_, Ch. 12, p. 174.

[13] Hogg, _Life of Shelley_, p. 71.

[14] "Il est vrai que Shelley courait un peu a l'amour de Harriet comme
MacBeth courait au meurtre de Duncan. 'Ce qu'il faisait ressemblait plutot
a un coup de volonte qu' a un elan de passion."--_La Jeunesse de Shelley_,
Koszul, p. 86.

[15] _Ingpen_, Vol. I, p. 155.

[16] _Hogg_, Vol. II, p. 52.

[17] Wordsworth uses this expression in the conclusion of _The Prelude_.

[18] Cf. _The Excursion_, Book VIII.

[19] Leslie Stephen: _English Thought in the Eighteenth Century_. Vol. II.

[20] _Koszul_, p. 340.

[21] Cf. _Social England_, Trail and Mann, p. 825, also _The Political
History of England_, by Broderick and Fotheringham, p. 340.

[22] _Social England_, Trail and Mann, p. 665.

[23] Thackeray, _The Four Georges_.

[24] _The French Revolution and English Literature_, p. 76.

[25] Cf. Hancock. _French Revolution and English Poets_, p. 56.

[26] Chapter XI. p. 66.

[27] Canto VI. p. 23.

[28] missing note

[29] _Queen Mab._

[30] _The Enquirer_, p. 174.

[31] Letter, Oct. 10, 1811. _Ingpen_, p. 142.

[32] _The Real Shelley_, Vol. II, p. 217.

[33] Quoted in _Shelley und die frauen_, Maurer.

[34] _Hogg's Life_, p. 447.

[35] _The Naires_, book 8, p. 130.

[36] Book VI, p. 239.

[37] P. 797.

[38] Book XI cf. _Chardius Travels in Persia_.

[39] _Persian Letters._ Letter 55.

[40] _Naires_, Book X, p. 65.

[41] Book X, p. 86.

[42] _The Naires_, Book VIII, p. 108.

[43] Notes to _Queen Mab_.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Dowden: _Life of Shelley_, Vol. I, p. 472.

[46] _The Revolt of Islam._ Canto XI, st. 15.

[47] Page 74.

[48] Canto II, st. 36.

[49] Canto IV, st. 20.

[50] Canto IV, st. 34.

[51] Canto VI, st. 19.

[52] Canto XII, 18.

[53] Canto VIII, st. 12.

[54] "Toutes les sources de "Laon and Cythna" n'ont pas ete explorees:
celles qui l'ont ete paraissent peu sures et peu importantes: la fete de
la Federation du V e chant rappelle son modele francais, et l'ideale
peinture des Ruines de Volney; la grotte on Cythna est enchainee--comme la
caverne d'Asia dans Promethee peut etre due a un souvenir de The Cave of
Fancy de Mary Wollstonecraft; les echos de Byron, et certains pretendent
de l'Imagination de notre Delille semblent peu discernables."--Koszul, _La
Jeunesse de Shelley_, 1910, p. 366.

[55] Hogg's _Life of Shelley_, ed. 1906, p. 233.

[56] _The Revolt_, Canto II, st. 33.

[57] _Notes to Queen Mab._

[58] P. 210.

[59] P. 273.

[60] Cf. Letter to Godwin, Jan. 16, 1812.

[61] Preface to _The Revolt of Islam_.

[62] Maurer: _Shelley und die frauen_, p. 74.

[63] Howell's Letters, Book I, sect. 6, let. XV.

[64] To E. Hitchener, Nov. 12, 1811.

[65] J. S. Harrison, _Platonism in English Poetry of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries_, p. 104.

[66] _Epipsychidion_, Dowden, p. 408.

[67] _Platonism in English Poetry_, p. 115.

[68] _Essay on Love._

[69] Letter to Miss Hitchener.

[70] _Epipsychidion._

[71] _Dowden's Life_, Vol. II, p. 373.

[72] _Life of Shelley_, Vol. II, p. 378.

[73] _Vindication of the Rights of Women_, ch. II, p. 38.

[74] P. 128.

[75] _The Revolt of Islam_, Canto II, st. 36.

[76] _Vindication of the Rights of Women_, ch. XI.

[77] _The Revolt of Islam_, Canto VIII, st. 13.

[78] Miss Hitchener, Dec. 11, 1811.

[79] P. 200, _Memoirs_.

[80] P. 281.

[81] Canto IX, st. 34.

[82] _Ingpen_, p. 659.

[83] Book I, Ch. V, p. 87.

[84] _Queen Mab_, Canto III.

[85] _Queen Mab_, III, p. 9.

[86] _Political Justice_, IV, 1.

[87] Canto V.

[88] _Political Justice_, I, 273.

[89] Ibid., p. 259.

[90] _Defense of Poetry._

[91] Ibid.

[92] _Political Justice_, Book II, Chap. II, p. 126.

[93] Ibid., I, p. 126.

[94] _Enquirer_, p. 298.

[95] _Prom. Unbound_, III, 4, 167.

[96] _Queen Mab._

[97] _Decl. of Rights_, art. 15.

[98] _Political Justice_, I, p. 221.

[99] Letter to Elizabeth Hitchener, July 26, 1811.

[100] Notes to _Queen Mab_.

[101] Shelley Memorials, _Essay on Christianity_, p. 297.

[102] Book VIII, ch. 2.

[103] _Queen Mab_, V.

[104] _Essay on Christianity_, p. 302.

[105] _The Enquirer_, Part II, essay 2; also _Political Justice_, Book
VIII, ch. 2.

[106] _Political Enquirer_, p. 177.

[107] Notes to _Queen Mab_.

[108] V. D. Scudder: _Introduction to Prometheus Unbound_.

[109] Ibid.

[110] Letter of Prof. Dowden to the author.

[111] _Political Justice_, IV, 2.

[112] Flint: _Philosophy of History_, p. 323.

[113] _Political Justice_, Book 8, 9.

[114] _Queen Mab._

[115] Cf. Volney, Les Ruines, "Dieu apres avoir passe une eternite sans
rien faire prit enfin le dessin de produire le monde."

[116] _Essay on Christianity_, p. 291.

[117] Letter to Horace Smith, April 11, 1822.

[118] Letter to Lord Ellenborough, June, 1812.

[119] _Queen Mab._

[120] _Essay on Christianity. Shelley Memorials_, p. 275.

[121] _Recollections by Trelawny_, p. 40.

[122] Letter to E. Hitchener, Jan. 2, 1812.

[123] Koszul: _La Jeunesse de Shelley_, p. 132.

[124] Letter to E. Hitchener, Oct. 26, 1811.

[125] _Grammar of Assent_, p. 264.

[126] Leslie Stephen: _The Utilitarians_, Vol. III, p. 496.

[127] _Ingpen_, p. 90.

[128] _Essay on Life._

[129] _Catholic Encyclopedia_, Vol. II.

[130] "Doch ist vielleicht nichts fuer die Gestaltung seines eigenartigen
Genius und fuer die Richtung seiner poetischen Weltauschauung von so ma
geliender bedeutung gewesen, wie die Philosophie Spinoza's."

[131] _Dowden's Life_, Vol. I, p. 330.

[132] _Ethics_, II.

[133] _Notes to Queen Mab._

[134] _Essay on Life_, ed. by Mrs. Shelley, Vol. I, p. 226.

[135] P. 17, _Academical Questions_.

[136] _Ingpen_, Vol. I, p. 327.

[137] _Notes to Queen Mab._

[138] _Queen Mab._

[139] _Academical Questions_, p. 241.

[140] Ibid., p. 258.

[141] _Queen Mab_, IV, p. 15.

[142] Baldwin, J. M.: _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_, 1902.

[143] _Ode to Naples_, Epode II. B.

[144] _Colisseum_, III, 6.

[145] Turner: _History of Philosophy_, p. 483.

[146] _Ode to Naples_, Epode II, B.

[147] _Def. of Poetry_, III, 3.

[148] Forman's ed. _Prose Works_, Vol. III, p. 219.

[149] _Prom. Unbound_, Act. II, sc. 3, p. 267.

[150] _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty._

[151] _Turner_, p. 102.

[152] _Adonais_, st. 54.

[153] _Hellas._

[154] Cf. Shelley's _Essay on a Future State_.

[155] Letter to Eliz. Hitchener, June 25, 1811.

[156] _Essay on Life._

[157] Turner: _History of Philosophy_, p. 110.

[158] _Adonais_, st. 55.

[159] June 20, 1811.

[160] _Political Justice_, Book VI. 11.

[161] _Queen Mab_, Canto VI, p. 24.

[162] Ibid.

[163] Notes to _Queen Mab_.

[164] _Shelley Memorials, Essay on Christianity_, p. 283.

[165] _Essay on Christianity._

[166] _Speculations on Morals_, Vol. II, prose works, p. 260.

[167] _Shelley Memorials. Essay on Christianity_, p. 279.

[168] W. M. Rossetti: _Memoir of Shelley_, p. 33.

[169] Shelley's notebook. Printed for W. K. Bixby, St. Louis, 1911.

[170] _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers._

[171] P. J. Lennox in the _Catholic Encyclopedia_, Vol. XII.

[172] T. Arnold; _Manual of English Literature_, p. 304.

[173] Coleridge: _Biographia Literaria_, Ch. XIV.

[174] _Preface to Lyrical Ballads._

[175] _Courthope_, Vol. VI, p. 314.

[176] Shelley's _Defence of Poetry_, p. 9.

[177] Shelley's _Defence of Poetry_, p. 5.

[178] Courthope: _History of Poetry_, Vol. VI, p. 192.

[179] _Riverside Edition_, p. 217.

[180] Ibid., p. 239.

[181] Ibid., Book XI, p. 265.

[182] _The Prelude_, Book XI, p. 272.

[183] Act. V, scene 3.

[184] _Essay on Poetry._

[185] _The Excursion_, Book III, p. 107.

[186] Ibid., p. 108.

[187] _Revolt of Islam_, Canto XI, st. 22.

[188] _The Excursion_, verse 15.

[189] L. Winstanley in _Englische Studien_, V. 34.

[190] Quellen: _Vorbilder, Stoffe zu Shelley's Poetischen Werken_.

[191] Jenkins: _Handbook of Literature_, p. 313.

[192] Dowden's ed., p. 135.

[193] Dowden's _Life of Shelley_, Vol. I, p. 376.

[194] Courthope: _History of Poetry_. Vol. VI, p. 194.

[195] _Essay on Owen._

[196] _Reflections_, Vol. V.

[197] _Letter to Leigh Hunt_, May 1, 1820.

[198] Letter to Leigh Hunt, p. 82.

[199] Guido Biagi: _Gli ultimi giorni di P. Shelley_.

[200] Quoted in _Shelley Society Papers_, Part I, p. 94.

[201] Wordsworth: _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_.

[202] "Tutte le circostanze della vita dello Shelley attestano come in lui
la poesia, la visione, l'idealismo fossero, piu che un bisogno dello
spirito, il principale elemento costitutive dell esser suo." G. Chiarini,
Ombre e figure.

[203] _Advancement of Learning_, Book II.

[204] J. S. McKenzie: _Social Philosophy_. p. 428.

[205] Ibid., p. 42.

[206] _Am. Cath. Quarterly._ Vol. 28, p. 239.

[207] MacAulay: _Essay on the Earl of Chatham_.

[208] Carlyle calls the philosophical radicals "paralytic radicals"
because their theories lead to inaction.

[209] _The Catholic World_, Vol. 87, p. 744.




Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

The following misprints have been corrected:
  "queston" corrected to "question" (page 9)
  "Shelly's" corrected to "Shelley's" (page 17)
  "sacrcely" corrected to "scarcely" (page 52)
  "shiek" corrected to "shriek" (page 55)
  "destines" corrected to "destinies" (page 57)
  "make" corrected to "makes" (page 60)
  "acknowedged" corrected to "acknowledged" (page 86)
  "intellecual" corrected to "intellectual" (page 99)
  "Encylopedia" corrected to "Encyclopedia" (footnote 171)

Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and
hyphenation have been retained from the original.






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