Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poet and Pioneer
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Gbe 3. <L Saul Collection of IRineteentb Century Xiterature purcbaseo in part tbrouQb a contribution to tbe Xibvarp jfunos maoe b^ tbe Department of Bncjlisb in TUniversitp College. YsP PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY POET AND PIONEER A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY HENRY S. SALT London : WILLIAM REEVES, 185, Fleet Street, E.C New York : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1896. PR PRINTED BV WILLIAM REEVES, 185, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. C O N T E N T S. PAGE PREFACE ix-xii INTRODUCTION. Successive .phases of Shelley Criticism -The " abusive view the " fiend-writer The later early ; ' " apologetic view; poor Shelley Dowden's Life of Shelley Can great poetry result from a wrong ideal ? " of the " The rational view Shelley ; poet pioneer Why the critics have misuuderstood him The new interpretation The Shelley Centenary, as observed at Horsham, at Eton, at Oxford Demo- cratic celebrations The criterion of Time applied to Shelley's principles 1-24 CHAPTER I. HEIR TO FIELD PLACE. Shelley's mission A scion of the Future Birth and parentage Sir Timothy Shelley Childhood ; school-days at Brentford Boyish eccentricities Misunderstandings at Field Place ; his parents' iv Contents. PACK hopes disappointed His revolt from the demands of the Family 25-34 CHAPTER II. THE EDUCATION OF A GENTLEMAN. " Shelley at Eton Shelley-baits "His rebel- lion against school-boy custom Early studies The awakeuiug and the vow Dr. Lind and Dr. Keate Goes to University College, Oxford " " " Mysteries of matter." and mysteries of mind His friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg; their walks and conversations Heretical Opinions The " " Necessity of Atheism Expulsion from Univer- sity College -- 35-50 CHAPTER III. MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE. Disheartening Prospects Correspondence with Hogg and Miss Hitchener Acquaintance with Harriet Westbrook ; influence of her sister its disastrous Shelley's marriage with Harriet ; consequences Wanderings to Edinburgh. York, Kesvvick Visit to Ireland ; "Address to the Irish " People In Wales and North Devon Domestic unhappiness Writing of Queen Mab" friend- ship with Hogg, Peacock, the Newtons and Boin villes Practice of vegetarianism Cause of the dissension with Harriet in 1813 A separation inevitable 51-69 Contents. v PAGE CHAPTER IV. LOVE WITHOUT MARRIAGE. Willhm Godwin and his family Shelley's meet- with in their T to ing Mary 1814 5 love he flight Switzerland, and "six weeks' tour" Claire Clair- mont Residence at Bishopsgate, and writing of " Alastor." Second visit to Switzerland; Shelley and of Harriet its con- Byron Suicide ; causes and sequencesFalsehood of the charges brought " " against Shelley The Harriet Question - - 70-85 CHAPTER V. THE HERMIT OF MAKLOW. Shelley and Mary at Marlow His habits and of life suit mode The Chancery ; Shelley deprived of his children by Lord Eldon's judgment His " political and social sympathies Hermit of Mar- " " " low pamphlets^-Writing of Laon and Cythna Friends and visitors ; Leigh Hunt, Peacock, Horace Smith, Keats Reasons for leaving Marlow 86-95 CHAPTER VI. EXILE IN ITALY. Italy in 1818 At Venice with Byron; "Julian " and Maddalo Winter at Naples Influence of Italian scenery on Shelley's writings His master- " " pieces of this period.; "The Cenci and the Pro- metheus" Political poems of 1819 Residence at A* vi Contents. I'AGE Pisa in 1820 and 1821 ; formation of new friend- ships The Gisbornes, the Masons, Vacca, Mavro- cordato in Insurrections Spain and Greece ; Shelley writes "Hellas" Arrival of Medwin " " Emilia Viviani and Epipsychidion Byron at Pisa ; Edward and Jane Williams ; Trelawny The lyrics addressed to Jane Note on Shelley's rela- tions with Claire Clairmont ----- 96-115 CHAPTER VII. COK COEDIUM. " " From Pisa to Lerici The Casa Magni and its surroundings Fierce summer heats Strange vis- " ions and apprehensions Writing of The Triumph of of Life" Shelley's mood despondency ; obloquy and misrepresentations He meets Leigh Hunt at Pisa The return voyage from Leghorn Drowning of Shelley and Williams The cremation of their bodies Cor Cordium Mary Shelley's widowhood Hostility of Field Place Shelley's character; its consistency arid its contradictions The clue to a right understanding 116 136 CHAPTER VIII. THE POET. Literary opinion of Shelley The Quarterly Review; its verdict and its recantation A reversal of judgment forced on the critics from without Matthew Arnold's misapprehension of Shelley Contents. vii PAGE Their principles contrasted Arnold's condemnation of Shelley's poetry and life The Superior Person of criticism Shelley's poetry the supreme product of his genius, but not to be dissociated from his creed The poet of Love Influence of Shelley on " " literature On whom has his mantle fallen ? - 137-160 CHAPTER IX. THE PIONEER. Shelley's claims to this title His championship free his of thought ; distinction detween Christ and Views on the social socialist Christian question ; or ? the communist The Sex question ; *narriage- bond and free love His advocacy of simple living His humanitarian creed to to ; humanity men, animals A food-reformer His practicalness and shrewd foresight His ideals, and common mis- understandings of them Not in conflict with evolutionary science Summary of his doctrines and character - 161-189 ILLUSTRATIONS. - . Percy Bysshe Shelley Frontispiece. - Shelley's house at Marlow Facing p. 86. PREFACE IN this Study of Shelley I have embodied, in fulfil- ment of a long-made plan, the greater part of my " Shelley Monograph (1888) and Shelley's Principles" (1892), together with some passages of scattered essays that have been published from time to time. In its main features it is a new book rather than a new edition. It has been my purpose to interpret Shelley, not to criticise or eulogise him. I have shown, in the Intro- duction and elsewhere, the futility of the criticisms that have been lavished on our great democratic poet by literary gentlemen who first abused him, and then apologised for him, and even now are quite unable to appreciate him at his real worth. On the other hand it has been just as far from my desire to depict him as " a "hero," or "perfect character (whatever that may be), or indeed under any of the romantic conceptions x Preface. which his followers are absurdly supposed to entertain. It is in the remarkable unity of Shelley's character in the consistency that ruled his thoughts and actions from the day of his departure from Field Place to the day of his drowning at Leghorn that we find the true and only key to a right understanding of his genius. But while avowing that I have written more especi- ally for those readers who are in sympathy with Shelley's aims, I do not own to being in any blame- " worthy sense a partisan." For what does the term " " partisan denote ? If it suggests a garbling or unfair colouring of facts, the charge is a serious one and should not be made without proof; but if it is merely applied to those who hold the Shelleyan view of certain debatable questions, then all the critics are equally, on one side or the other, partisans. Nor do I offer any apology for writing as a contro- for it is that versialist ; impossible a genuine study of Shelley can (at present) be other than controversial. In exhibiting specimens of the blunders made by a former generation of critics, I have also acted with fixed intent for it is such of ; only through knowledge past fallacies that current fallacies can be exposed. " " To let bygones be bygones is an amiable maxim, Preface. xi but it is not a method which commends itself to the historical or literary student least of all in a case where a strong appeal is to be made to the indisputable verdict of Time. There appears to be no likelihood of auy further authentic information being published concerning Shelley. No serious Shelley student can regard as authentic such posthumous gossip as Mr. W. Graham's "Chats with Jane Clermont," or place reliance on the unsupported statements made, or alleged to have been made, in extreme old age by an eccentric lady whose " word was always unreliable, and whose errors and misfortunes chiefly sprang from her determination to * be a heroine of romance at any cost." We are pro- mised in 1909, thirty years after Miss Clairmont s death, certain "clearly specified matter, intensely interesting," which the octogenarian lady confided to " the of before boy twenty," whom she had never seen ; but the biographers of the next century will scarcely " " give credence to reminiscences of this sort without asking for the proofs. My estimate of Shelley is based on a careful examin- ation of the material which we already possess ; though * Dictionary of National Biography. xii Preface. in dea ling with the various and sometimes conflicting records left by those who knew him, I have been com- pelled to use my own judgment in accepting some " statements and rejecting others. The rule of criti- " cism," says Shelley himself, to be adopted in judging of the life, actions, and words of a man who has acted any conspicuous part in the revolutions of the world, ought not to be narrow. We ought to form a general image of his character and doctrines, and refer to this whole the distinct portions of action and speech by which they are diversified." I have kept this prin- ciple before me in the following Study of Shelley as Poet and Pioneer. I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. H. Buxton Formau for permission to use the illustration of Shelley's house at Marlow. H. S. S. INTRODUCTION. I. IT is very instructive to note the series of changes which public opinion has undergone, and is undergoing, with regard to Shelley's character. During the poet's life and for some time after, his detractors had the field most entirely to themselves, the voices raised on his behalf being those of a few personal friends or literary enthusiasts who could scarcely make themselves heard amid the general chorus of detestation.* It is only by a study of the contemporary criticism of Shelley's poetns that we can realise the intensity of the feeling aroused by his attacks on the established code of religion and ethics, which seem to have filled his readers with a conviction that he was a monster of abnormal and almost superhuman wickedness.