Select Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley

ENGLISH CLÀSSICS The vignette, representing Shelleÿs house at Great Mar lou) before the late alterations, is /ro m a water- colour drawing by Dina Williams, daughter of Shelleÿs friend Edward Williams, given to the E ditor by / . Bertrand Payne, Esq., and probably made about 1840. SELECT LETTERS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD GARNETT NEW YORK D.APPLETON AND COMPANY X, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET MDCCCLXXXIII INTRODUCTION T he publication of a book in the series of which this little volume forms part, implies a claim on its behalf to a perfe&ion of form, as well as an attradiveness of subjeâ:, entitling it to the rank of a recognised English classic. This pretensión can rarely be advanced in favour of familiar letters, written in haste for the information or entertain ment of private friends. Such letters are frequently among the most delightful of literary compositions, but the stamp of absolute literary perfe&ion is rarely impressed upon them. The exceptions to this rule, in English literature at least, occur principally in the epistolary litera ture of the eighteenth century. Pope and Gray, artificial in their poetry, were not less artificial in genius to Cowper and Gray ; but would their un- their correspondence ; but while in the former premeditated utterances, from a literary point of department of composition they strove to display view, compare with the artifice of their prede their art, in the latter their no less successful cessors? The answer is not doubtful. Byron, endeavour was to conceal it. Together with Scott, and Kcats are excellent letter-writers, but Cowper and Walpole, they achieved the feat of their letters are far from possessing the classical imparting a literary value to ordinary topics by impress which they communicated to their poetry. studious élaboration and precise nicety of expres sion, without at the same time sacrificing the Much less is this the case with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, or Landor. If that age had familiar ease without which letters become rhe- any master of epistolary composition among its torical exercises. Such an achievement demanded wonderful poets, it was Shelley: Shelley or none. more leisure and less absorbing émotion than fell Was Shelley such a master? The examples in to the lot of the succeeding age. this little volume will cnable every one to judge In the nineteenth century, accordingly, this for himself. Meanwhile the reader may be fairly artificial style of epistolary composition fell into asked to assume the fait as at least probable upon disuse ; letter-writing ceased to be an art among the testimony of an eminent modem critic, very men of culture, and became more of the earnest refined indeed ; fastidiously “ jealous of dead praftical thing which it had always been among leaves in the bay-wreath crown ; ” and, as will men of business. It was now to be seen whether be seen, in most cases indisposed to dance to this gain in simplicity and sincerity was consistent Shelley’s piping. Mr. Matthew Arnold, in the with a high standard of epistolary polish. That préfacé to liis “ Seleâions from Byron’s Poetry,” age possessed many poets infinitely superior in 2 “ doubts whether Shelley’s delightful Essays and kind of excellence ; but, like the latter, they hâve Letters, which deserve to be far more read than a high, rare, and peculiar excellence of their own. they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of They hâve not the frankness of Byron’s, the time better, and finally corne to stand higher, than urbanity of Gray’s, or the piquancy of Horace his poetry.” This remarkable and, under present Walpole’s. These merits, admirable as they are, circumstances, highly seasonable deliverance will are not charaderistically poetical ; the poet who be weighed by those to whose lot it may fall to displays them must for the time divest himself of determine Mr. Arnold’s own place as a critic ; but his distindive charader as a poet ; and of this need not be the subjed of discussion here. Shelley was incapable. The peculiar virtue of his It will be sufficient to observe that, as a matter epistles is to express the mind of the poet as of fad, the general estimate of Shelley’s prose perfedly as Macaulay’s express the mind of the will always conform nearly to the general estimate man of letters, or Wellington’s the mind of the of his poetry. There is no such solution of con- general. Leaving disputable opinions out of ac- tinuity between the two as exists in the case of count, and taking a comprehensive view of their his illustrious contemporaries. Byron, for instance, general scope and spirit, they may be defined as a writes verse like a poet, and prose like a man of représentation of the manner in which the poet, the world. Shelley’s letters are essentially and as such, contemplâtes life and nature ; and a very unmistakably the production of a poet, and compare great part of the pleasure to be derived from them with other celebrated letters precisely as his poems is the observation of their intímate correspondence compare with other poetry. They do not, any with the delibérate poetical achievement upon more than his metrical compositions, represent every which they are an undesigned commentary. They prove that Shelley’s ideal world was a real in a land whcre the works of man vie with the world to Shelley himself; and contain nothing works of nature ; where the description of inani- to suggest that the man habitually lived on a mate beauty may be relieved by constant reference lower level than the author. to the produdions of human genius, and nature Most of the qualities of a good letter-writer and art alike are endeared to the cultivatcd ob were combined in Shelley, and Fortune also server or reader by a thousand associations and favourcd the development of his genius in this recolledions. diredion. Such a writer must love his occupa A person gifted like Shelley could not write ill tion for its own sake, irrespedive of the quality where Byron and De Staël had written well ; but of his correspondent. He must be genial and the truest charm of his letters is, after ail, rathcr expansive, and not take the pen in hand with moral than literary. It is not so much the élo a misgiving that he may be wasting his time. It quence of the didion as the genuineness of the is even more important that he should be free informing enthusiasm, the effusiveness of an opu from egotism, and capable, even while he writes lent soûl delighting in giving, and eager to impart about himself, of merging his own afFairs in the pleasure it has received. When not writing general interests and sympathies. Shelley com on Italy, Shelley is still most commonly fortúnate plies with both these requisites in an unusual in the subjed of his letter, which derives interest degree. It is further necessary that the writer either from something in the charader or situa should, as Mr. Arnold expresses it, hâve laid hold tion of the person to whom it is addressed, or of the right subjed-matter ; and here again Shelley from its reference to some adventure, or opinion, was fortúnate. Fate had made him a sojourner or produdion of his own. He is armed against triviality by never writing without a legitímate The main purpose of a seledion adapted to the motive. He was by no means a regular or principie of a miniature library of masterpieces systematic correspondent, and before taking the musí be to reproduce whatever is most choice in pcn in hand required the visitation of an emer- the general body of Shelley’s correspondence ; an gency or an impulse. But such didates of the objed involving the reprodudion of nearly all spirit were frequent, and affeded him like the im the descriptions of Italian scenery and works of pulses that prompt to poetical composition : ñor art addressed to Peacock, and those later letters, was the produd less distindly an émanation of principally to Gisborne, which, if only by ñtful the intelled and the heart. glimpses, reveal a subtlety of mental introspedion Such passages as the description of the Pro more exccptional than any brilliancy of word- testant cemetery (p. 81 of tliis colledion), or the painting. The former exhibit his powers of sus- subtle interweaving of pleasurable feeling with tained éloquence în prose composition at their even sweeter sadness in the last paragraph of the highest ; the latter represent the development ot last letter Shelley wrote (p. 221), are lyrics in his prose style, corresponding with that of his everything but strudure. The former, indeed, has later lyrics, in the diredion of intensity and trans- been expanded into a magnificent passage of the parency. The letters to Leigh Hunt and Horace “ Adonais;” and although to compare its sweet, Smith, less interesting psychologically, are still too brief note with the multitudinous harmonies of important to be omitted, and the same remarle the elegy is, with Mr. Arnold’s leave, like com- applies to the six early letters to Miss Hitchener, paring the hymn of Pan to the hymn of Apollo, seleded, by the kind permission of the possessor, its music is not less truly poetry. Mr. H. J. Slack, from a much more extensive colledion. It cannot be expedcd that these juvé Carthy’s interesting volume on “ Shelley’s Early nile effusions should be worthy of the maturer Life” (1872). Shelley ; they fall, indeed, far short of the stand The remainder of the Hitchener set of letters ard which should, as a rule, be maintained in a chiefly relate to Shelley’s expédition to Ireland, seledion like the present.

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