Notes on Shelley's "Triumph of Life" Author(s): A. C. Bradley Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Oct., 1914), pp. 441-456 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3713629 Accessed: 11-06-2015 01:42 UTC

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This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VOLUME IX OCTOBER, 1914 NUMBER 4

NOTES ON SHELLEY'S 'TRIUMPH OF LIFE.'

The Triumph of Life, Shelley's last long poem, was left unfinished, and what was written was evidently left unrevised. The manuscript was no doubt difficult to decipher, and Mrs Shelley's version of it has been changed and, for the most part, improved by re-examination of the MS. (now apparently lost) and by conjectural emendation. But, apart from doubts as to the text, the fragment, intensely interesting as the last presentation of Shelley's way of regarding life, is not, as a whole, quite easy to understand; and it also contains passages the meaning of which is, at least at first, obscure. The following notes deal with some of these passages, but I must first say something on two special influ- ences visible in the poem. Unless notice is given, I quote the Oxford edition of Shelley's poems (Hutchinson's text). I refer to the poem as T. L., or, where no doubt could arise, give merely the number of the line referred to.

I. Influences. Dowden long ago pointed out that the immediate suggestion of the poem is to be found in Petrarch's Trionfi. These form a series of six poems in terza rima, describing in turn the triumph of Love over man, especially in his youth; the triumph of Chastity over Love; that of Death over all mortality; that of Fame over Death; that of Time over Fame; and that of Divinity over Time. Shelley owes little to the last five of the Trionfi, but a good deal to the first, as a few words will show. Here Petrarch, lying in early morning on the grass in a solitary place, and wearied with sad thoughts of the past, falls asleep. In his sleep he sees a great light, and within this light four white coursers drawing a car, in which sits Love, like a conqueror in a Roman triumph. Around the car he sees innumerable mortals, dead and alive; and one of them, a friend who recognizes him, points out and describes to him the most famous of the victims. Here we have in outline the main scheme of Shelley's fragment. A number of M . R.. x. 29

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minor coincidences may also be traced1; but my business is not with these, nor indeed with the Trionfi at all, but with another 'source,' which has not, I believe, been noticed, which may itself have suggested the idea of the Trionfi, and which contributed, I think, independently to The Triumph of Life. The style in parts of this poem is evidently influenced by that of Dante, much more so than by the style of Petrarch, and Dante is alluded to in lines 471ff. (475, should run 'In words of hate and awe the wondrous story': see Locock's edition). But something more than this influence comes from Dante. Shelley, it will be remembered, translated part of Canto xxviii of the Purgatorio. There we learn that the poet, having reached the 'divine forest' of the Earthly Paradise, leaves the mountain-side to explore it. The soil exhales fragrant odours, the boughs quiver in the sweet breeze, the leaves murmur, and the birds welcome the early morn with their songs. Dante comes to a stream, and stays his steps to admire the flowers on the opposite bank; and on this bank there suddenly appears to him, sS corn' egli appare Subitamente cosa che disvia Per maraviglia tutt' altro pensare, a lady (Matilda), who is moving along the bank, singing and gathering flowers. Now this is almost precisely the scenery amidst which Rousseau, in the Triumph of Life, sees, in the morn of life and of the day, a Shape which glides along a stream in a forest-a Shape whose moving feet seemed as they moved to blot The thoughts of him who gazed on them. 1 I owe almost all the following notes to the kindness of Miss Stawell, who has a paper on The Triumph of Life in the fifth volume of English Association Essays and Studies, 1914. (1) Cf. the friend's divination of Petrarch's feelings and future (T. d'Amore, i, 58 ff.) with T. L. 302 if. and perhaps 327 ff. (2) Cf. ib. 91, the conquerors conquered, with T. L. 235. (3) Cf. ib. iv, 94-5, the sound of the horses' wings, with T. L. 97-8. (4) Cf. T. d. Morte, i, 13-16, the fewness of Laura's companions untouched by the power of Love, with T. L. 128. (5) Cf. ib. 39, night before evening, with T. L. 214-15, 485-6. (6) Cf. ib. 54, and ii, 22, 28, 34, the worthlessness and delusiveness of life, with the drift of T. L. (7) Cf. ib. 83-4, 'gems,' 'sceptres,' 'crowns,' 'mitres,' with T. L. 132-3, 210. (8) Cf. ib. 91-2, the vain toil of life, with T. L. 66. (9) Cf. ib. ii, 14, 'pubblico viaggio,' with T. L. 43. (10) Cf. T. d. Fama, the famous conquerors, rulers, poets, writers, thinkers, with the similar division of the captives in 7'. L. (11) Cf. ib. ii, 11-12, Alexander over- running the world from Pella to India, with T. L. 263-5. (12) Cf. ib. 15, opportunity and glory, with T. L. 219-24. (13) Cf. ib. 85 if., Petrarch almost weary of watching, with T. L. 231-2. (14) Cf. ib. iii, 106 ff., the great thinkers who went wrong, with T. L. 211- 15. (15) Cf. T. d. Tempo, the opening, with the cancelled opening of T. L. (16) Cf. ib. 32ff., the extreme swiftness of the sun, with T. L. 1 ff. (17) Cf. T. d. Divin. 1-81, Time swallowed up in Eternity; and especially 28-9, the three parts of Time reduced to one only, which no longer moves; with T'.L. 99-105, where the four faces may represent past, present, future, and eternity. (18) Cf. ib. 41, the sun's path through the Zodiac directing the labours of men, with T. L. 15-20. (19) Cf. ib. 43, 46, 82, 86, 'happy he who,' etc., with T. L. 547 (one of some additional lines, published only in Locock's edition).

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And the stream in Dante is Lethe, and in Shelley it sings a' Lethean song.' And the place, in Shelley, is close to that 'orient cavern' which is evidently an image of birth, while in Dante it is questo loco eletto All 'umananatura per suo nido. This is not all. In the next Canto of the Purgatorio we learn that, while the lady and Dante are moving slowly along the opposite banks of the stream,suddenly a lustrous light flashes through the forest,like lightning except that it continuesand grows brighter. And then there enters the TriumphalCar of the Church. Just so in Shelley's poem, after Rousseau has questioned the Shape (as Dante had questioned Matilda), suddenly there 'bursts' on his sight the glare of the car of Life, whose coursers (we know from the description earlier in the poem) are lost in 'thick lightenings.' Naturally, there is no likeness in the meanings of Matilda and of the 'Shape,' and little likeness in the two cars; but it seems certain that, in the points noted above, Shelley's imagination has been influenced by these Cantos of the Puzrgatorio,and some minor points may be briefly noticed, in which the same influence may be surmised. (1) Cf. the 'Janus-visaged' charioteer, who, if his eyes were not banded, would see all that is, has been, or will be done (T. L. 104), with the three-eyed attendant in Purg. xxix, 132 (Prudence, who sees past, present and future). (2) Cf. the reference to Iris in Rousseau's vision (T. L. 356) with Purg. xxix, 77 and xxi, 50. (3) Cf. the reflections in water (T. L. 345 ff.) with Purg. xxix, 67-9, xxxi, 121. (4) Cf. the metaphor of the brain being stamped (T. L. 405 ff.) with Purg. xxxiii, 79-81. (5) Cf. the emotional effect of the repetition of 'Virgilio' in Purg. xxx, 49 if. with that of 'Me' in T. L. 461 ff., lines which also recall Dante's remorse under the reproaches of Beatrice (xxxi). (6) Cf. the question 'And what is this ?' (T. L. 177) with 'Che cosa e questa ?' in Purg. xxix, 21. (7) The fact that Shelley sees his vision at dawn may possibly be due to Purg. ix, 13 ff. and xxvii, 92 f. (8) Possibly Purg. xxxiii, 53-4 may give a hint as to the further course of the Triumph of Life, though I do not think this very probable. (9) Cf. 315-6 with Purg. xxviii, 25-8. (10) Cf. 210 with Purg. xxvii, 142. (11) Cf. 32 -vith Purg. xxxii, 71. II. The Introduction(1-40). The poem begins, Swift as a spirit hasteningto his task Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth Rejoicing in his splendour, 29-2

This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 444 Notes on Shelley's 'Triumph of Life' and (15 ff.) Shelley tells how he saw everything, continent, Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear Their portion of the toil, which he of old Took as his own, and then imposed on them. In the Notes on Passages in Shelley printed in this Review (Oct. 1905) I called attention to the likeness of these lines to the quatrain in The Boat on the Serchio which follows a description of sunrise: All rose to do the task He set to each, Who shaped us to his ends and not our own; The million rose to learn, and one to teach What none yet ever knew or can be known1. In these passages the sun is the representative of, or for the moment is identified with, the ultimate good, or source of all good, or (as Shelley occasionally calls it) God; and it is the opposite of that which is called in this poem 'Life.' Hence the glare of the car, or of Life, obscures or dims the sun (77, 148). The elect spirits who leave Life while they are still young fly back to their 'native noon' (131: cf. Hellas, 223). The soul of Rousseau was 'lit' by a 'spark' from 'Heaven' (201). Medieval theology made a 'shadow' between man and 'God,' or an eclipse of the 'true sun' (289 ff.). The Shape that appears to Rousseau is 'all light,' appears in the sun's reflection on water, wanes in the glare of the car, is a 'light of Heaven' (348 ff., 412, 429). (I may note in passing that, in spite of the difference of tone in the two poems, there is a strong like- ness between this Shape and the Witch of Atlas.) The metaphor by which God, or any representative of God or the supreme good, is identified with the sun, is, of course, extremely common. Shelley's development of it is clearly influenced by two of his favourite authors, Plato (especially in the famous passage, Rep. vi, 508 f.), and Dante. Without enlarging on the general influence of the latter, who several times speaks of God as the sun, I will point out two examples in this Introduction. (1) Shelley writes of the sun as the 'father' of 'all things that wear the form and character of mortal mould'; and Dante (Par. xxii, 116) had described the sun as

Quegli ch' b padre d' ogni mortal vita.

1 'All' here does not mean merely all men. I take 'one' in the third line to be the same as 'He,' the One contrasted with the Many in Adonais and here represented by the sun. The last line recalls 'the Power unknown' of the Ode to Liberty, xvi. I cannot go into the difficulties raised by Shelley's ideas or language.

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(2) Shelley (22) speaks of 'the stars that gem the cone of night.' The cone of night is the conical shadow which the earth casts into the sky. Cf. Prom. Unb.'iv, 444, I spin beneathmy pyramidof night, Which points into the heavens: Epip. 228, 'the dreary cone of our life's shade'; Adon. xl, 'He has outsoared the shadow of our night'; Hellas, 943, 'pyramid.' I do not think the idea appears before Prom. iv (end of 1819). Shelley might have got it from Paradise Lost, iv, 776, or, I suppose, from an account of the Ptolemaic astronomy, but he would have been struck at once by the words (Par. ix, 118), Da questo cielo, in cui ' ombras'appunta Che il vostro mondoface. Cf. 's' appunta' with the quotation from Prometheus above. 'Questo cielo' is the Third Heaven, that of Venus, which, according to the astronomy followed by Dante, is the farthest point reached by the shadow of the earth; and it is 'the sphere whose light is melody to lovers' (T. L. 479) where however the immediate reference is to the first Canzone of the Convivio. Shelley translated this Canzone, and it is interesting to notice that he misinterprets it in a manner which shows that he cannot have read Dante's own interpretation.

III. The Charioteer.

The coming of the car in which the conqueror Life sits (74 if.) is heralded by 'a cold glare, intenser than the noon, But icy cold,' which obscures the sun with blinding light. The winged coursers which draw it are 'lost in thick lightenings.' It is guided by a 'Janus-visaged Shadow,' with four faces. The next lines, as they appeared in most1 of the texts until 1870 (Rossetti's first edition), run thus: All the four faces of that charioteer Had their eyes banded; little profit brings Speed in the van and blindnessin the rear, Nor then avail the beamsthat quenchthe sun Or that with bandedeyes could piercethe sphere Of all that is, has been, or will be done; So ill was the car guided-but it past With solemnspeed majesticallyon. Here the word 'that,' in 1. 5 of the quotation, must apparently be taken as a relative referring, like 'that' in 1. 4, to the 'beams' in 1. 4. But this, in Rossetti's judgment, yields no sense. He therefore put a colon 1 In one at least thereis a commaat the end of 1. 4 of the quotation.

This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 446 Notes on Shelley's 'Triumph of Life' at the end of 1. 4, and in 1. 5 printed 'that' in italics. The meaning would then be as follows: The speed of the coursers in front is rendered almost useless by the blindness of the charioteer behind them; and in this state of things the glare of the chariot avails little; though, if the eyes of the charioteer were not banded, he could see everything done in the past and future as well as the present. 'Or that with banded eyes' would mean, 'If matters were'otherwise, that being whose eyes are banded.' Rossetti's interpretation has been adopted by almost all editors since 1870. But Mr Locock, in his recent valuable edition, has rejected it and has offered another: 'The beams which quench the sun [the keen eyes of the charioteer], and which, even though the eyes are banded, could pierce the sphere, etc., are of no avail for guiding the car Destiny may know the past, the present, and the future, but cannot guide the course of Life in accordance with his knowledge.' Mr Locock adds: 'the repetition of "banded" is evidently weak. Possibly it is a corruption of some such word as "bared."' This interpretation, if I understand it rightly, appears to me well- nigh impossible. (1) The lines leave, surely, the strongest impression that Shelley is insisting on the blindness of the charioteer, and not on any unmentioned disability of his; and otherwise it is difficult to see why he should refer to the blindness at all. (2) The interpretation not only ignores the words 'Nor then,' but seems to be quite incom- patible with them. 'Nor then' surely means 'nor, under this condition of speed in the coursers and blindness in their driver,' i.e. in effect, 'nor, when the driver's eyes are bandaged'; and it is nonsense to say, 'nor, when his eyes are bandaged, can these same eyes, which can see through the bandages, be of any use.' (3) Every reader naturally takes the glare that obscures the sun (77) to be the same as, or to proceed from, 'the beams that quench the sun' (102), beams which however, on Mr Locock's interpretation, are, or come from, the eyes of the charioteer. Yet Shelley follows up the mention of the 'glare' by a reference to the 'rushing splendour' of the chariot; and when later (148, 412, 434, 442, 533) he refers to the glare, he attributes it once, it is true, to Life herself, but twice to the car, and never to the charioteer, to whom indeed he does not allude again at all. Everything, it seems to me, combines to show that the glare and the beams are the same, and that neither comes from the bandaged eyes of the charioteer. It is perhaps worth while to remark that, if we adopted some such word as 'bared' instead of ' banded,' it would be possible to wring the

This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A. C. BRADLEY 447 following sense out of the lines without adopting Rossetti's change of construction: 'The charioteer being blind, there is little use in that glare of the car which quenches the sun, and which, if his eyes were bare, could reveal to him all that is, has been, or will be done.' But I am sure that Mr Locock would at once rightly set aside such a way of taking 'with bared eyes,' not to speak of the trouble as to 'Or.' His reason for rejecting Rossetti's emendation is his inability to think that the expression 'that with banded eyes' could have been used by Shelley for ' that charioteer with banded eyes.' And I share his feeling on this point so far that until lately I have hesitated to accept the emendation. But I suggest that Shelley here, as so often in this poem, is influenced by Dante. Dante will write 'quel di Gallura,' 'quel di Beccaria, 'quel da Este, 'quel da Pisa,' 'quel dalle chiavi' (see Blanc's Vocabolario)1. Though there appears to be no in- stance of 'quel' with 'con' after it, it seems not unlikely that Shelley, under this influence, may have ventured on the queer phrase 'that with banded eyes.' And he may have preferred it to the more English phrase 'he with banded eyes' because he wished to avoid the ascription of sex to this mysterious being. That the charioteer is Destiny or Necessity seems almost certain from Hellas, 711, 'The world's eyeless charioteer, Destiny'; Prologue to Hellas, 121, 'Art thou eyeless like old Destiny.' Cf. 'Necessity, whose sightless strength,' Revolt of Islam, IX, xxvii. It should be noticed that, in the passages referred to, Destiny is called 'eyeless' by a chorus of women who have the misfortune to be Christians, and by Satan, who also (except in Milton) is regarded by Shelley with disap- proval; whereas in the Triumph, speaking in his own person, Shelley says that Destiny is far from eyeless, though his eyes are banded; and when he wrote Queen Mab, some ten years before-a poem in which 'destiny' is used only in the sense of the end to which a being is destined-he identified Necessity with 'the universal Spirit' or 'Spirit of Nature,' and declared that nothing in the universe was unrecog- nized or unforeseen by it (vi, 189, 197-8). I am not suggesting that the Charioteer is 'the universal Spirit,' but am calling attention to material which must be considered in any attempt to interpret him and the meaning of his all-seeing eyes and of their bandages.

1 Miss Stawell has pointed out to me that in the Trionfi Petrarch has the same usage: T. della Fama, ii, 151, 'quel di Luria'; iii, 53, 'quel d'Arpino'; T. del Tempo, i, 116, quel di fuori.'

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IV. 138 ff. The description of the dancers recalls, in some respects, Shelley's description of a dance of Mmenadssculptured in relief on the pedestal of a statue of Minerva in the Gallery of Florence: 'Nothing can be conceived more wild and terrible than their [the ?] gestures, touching, as they do, the verge of distortion, into which their fine limbs and lovely forms are thrown.... The tremendous spirit of superstition, aided by drunkenness, producing something beyond insanity, seems to have caught them in its whirlwinds [cf. 144], and to bear them over the earth, as the rapid volutions of a tempest have the ever-changing trunk of a waterspout....The hair, loose and floating, seems caught in the tempest of their own tumultuous motion [cf. 147]; their heads are thrown back, leaning with a strange delirium upon their necks, and looking up to heaven, whilst they totter and stumble even in the energy of their tempestuous dance' (Essays and Letters, ed. 1852, ii, 215-16). The 'tremendous spirit' in the present passage seems to be mainly that of sexual excitement. Cf. the meeting and dissolution of two clouds in a thunderstorm with the 'electric poison' of Epip. 259. And cf. 137, which must refer, not to the people first seen by the poet (44-73), but to those he is going on to describe in 138-64. V. 161-4. Yet ere I can say where-the chariothath Passed over them-nor other trace I find But as of foam after the ocean's wrath Is spent upon the desert shore. The words 'ere I can say where' appear so pointless that Mr Locock conjectures "Ware' for 'where.' Most readers probably will reject this at once on instinct; and it is also open to the objection that, if 'where' '' was Mrs Shelley's correction of the Ware' of the MS., the latter would hardly have escaped Mr Garnett's eye. But, if we reject "Ware' (as I must), we ought to thank Mr Locock for insisting on the difficulty he attempts to meet. I can only suggest that 'ere I can say where' developes the meaning of the apparently otiose preceding words, 'nor is the desolation single,' while its own meaning is developed by the words that follow it. Those who fall fall so thickly that, after they are crushed, they form a line as unbroken as that of the foam left by a receding wave; and, they falling thus, and the chariot passing over them so quickly, the spectator cannot, as they are being crushed, dis- tinguish the several points at which they are crushed. (If Shelley were as popular as Shakespeare some commentator, English or foreign, would long ago have discovered that 'where' ought to be 'Whoa!" I hope

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I need not add that this remark does not glance in the smallest degree at Mr Locock, whose work I heartily admire,) VI. 254-9. All that is mortal of great Plato there Expiatesthe joy and woe his master knew not; The star that ruled his doom was far too fair, And life, where long that flowerof Heavengrew not, Conqueredthat heart by love, which gold, or pain, Or age, or sloth, or slavery could subduenot. These lines come in the poem later than those dealt with in my next note, but are taken first for a reason which will appear there. Plato, or his phantom (253), is one of the captives chained to the car, and so distinguished from the crowds which precede, surround, and follow it; the primary and most obvious distinction being one between the famous victims, who are unforgotten, and those, the immense majority, who, in Milton's words, Growup and perish,as the summer-fly, Heads without name, no more remember'd. Besides these two classes there are 'the sacred few' who were never conquered by Life and therefore do not appear in the pageant. Of these Socrates is one. This being so, the main meaning of the lines is clear. Plato, on earth, experienced a joy and woe depriving him of that complete self- mastery which Socrates possessed; and this joy and woe arose from love. Love was the one lure by which Life succeeded in enchaining Plato. Shelley would surmise this from his reading of the Phaedrus and the Symposium, which latter dialogue was translated by him and contains the evidence of Socrates' self-control in love. But what is the meaning of the words 'where long that flower of Heaven grew not'? What is this flower of heaven which did not grow long in life, i.e. on earth ? It seems at first impossible that it should be the 'star' of the preceding line, the star of love; and certainly im- possible that it should be Plato himself, whose 'age' is mentioned two lines after. This question, until lately, neither I nor anyone whom I consulted could answer, and I will not trouble the reader with our struggles, since the explanation now appears to me perfectly simple and certain. 'Aster' in Greek means 'star.' 'Aster' in English (and in Greek) is the name of a flower. 'Aster' was the name of the youth of whom Plato, according to a probably baseless tradition, was enamoured. And

This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 450 Notes on Shelley's 'Triumph of Life' this youth, as Shelley (for a reason to be mentioned) assumed, died young. The interpretation which follows is obvious. It would be confirmed, if it needed confirmation, by the fact that Shelley translated two epigrams attributed by the same tradition to Plato, and supposed to be addressed to Aster. The first formed the motto to Adonais, and the translation was published by Mrs Shelley under the title To Stella: Thou wert the morning star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled: Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendour to the dead. The 'flower of heaven,' therefore, did not 'grow long' in 'life.' The other epigram is translated in Revolt of Islam, IX, xxxvi: 'Fair star of life and love,' I cried, 'my soul's delight, Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies ? O, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night, Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes.' In both translations, it will be noticed, Shelley introduces the epithet 'fair,' which reappears in the lines from T. L. The Aster story, and the epigrams, are given in Diogenes Laertius (iii, 29), a writer whose name appears in Mrs Shelley's list of authors read by her husband in 1814-151. VII. 239-42. For in the battle Life and they did wage, She remained conqueror. I was overcome By my own heart alone, which neither age, Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb Could temper to its object. Rousseau, who is speaking, and who is not one of the captives chained to the car, is contrasting himself with certain captives contem- porary, or nearly so, with himself. He cannot mean that he fought with Life and 'remained conqueror'; for he is following the car and is being hurried by the conqueror he knows not where (304). But to discuss the whole meaning of the lines would be to discuss the scheme and signifi- cance of the whole poem. I wish to isolate, so far as possible, the small question of the relative clause beginning 'which neither age.' Shelley was fond of the verb 'temper,' and increasingly so towards the end of his life, the increase being probably due to the influence of 1 Miss Stawellhas suggestedto me that Shelleymay have used the phrase ' flowerof heaven' not, or not only, becausehe thoughtof the flowercalled aster, but from a recol- lection of vurt opipdvtovin Timaewu80 A, wherePlato speaksof man as 'a heavenlyplant, not an earthly.' The word'slavery,' as she also reminds me, refersto the traditionthat Dionysiushad Plato sold into slavery.

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Italian poetry (the verb appears about ten times in the Commedia,e.g. Purg. xxviii, 3, translated by Shelley; in Petrarch,e.g. T. d. Morte,ii, 90; and, I may add, in some verses by Emilia Viviani,Dowden, ii, 379). Wherehe uses 'temper to,' the meaningseems to be to modify,usually to moderateor subdue,this or that so as to make it suitable to this or that: see Q.Mab, iv, 221, the referenceto Purg. above, CharlesI, I, 40, T. L., 8 and 2761. What then is the meaning of 'temper to its object'? (1) 'Object' may = purpose or aim, and 'its' may refer to 'age,' etc. Infamy,e.g., an agent of Life, could not subdue Rousseau'sheart into conformitywith infamy'spurpose. (2) Dowden must have construed the phrase otherwise. From Life of Shelley,ii, 506, and Transcriptsand Studies,106, it followsthat he took 'its' to refer to 'heart,' and 'object' to mean object of desire, and understoodthe passage thus: This (object) had really only a rela- tive value; age, etc., could not subdue or moderate the heart so as to make it suit this relative value of its object; the heart'persisted in pursuing that object as absolutely good. The desire in question he seems to identify with love (in the narrowsense), and he thinks Plato's failure the same as Rousseau's,except that his love was nobler. So- crates,on the other hand,did temper his heart to its object. ('Object,' I note, may quite well mean objects,or whateverfrom time to time was the object.) This interpretationis attractive, and it seems to correspondwith Shelley's conceptionof Rousseau; and yet I do not find it convincing. One cannot argue about one's 'instinct' that Shelley did not mean this or that, though one cannot help giving weight to it; but there is an objection to this interpretationthat can be formulated. The passage has a strong formal resemblanceto the Plato passage consideredin the precedingnote, and the two are separatedby only a few lines. In both, certain things are mentionedwhich fail to subdue, or to temper, the heart. Now, in the Plato passage, the success of those things would have been bad; but, in the Rousseau passage as construedby Dowden, it would have been good. I do not say that this obstacleis fatal; but, consideringthe likeness and the proximityof the two passages,it seems to me most probablethat in the Rousseauone, as in the Plato one, the possible success of the agents is imagined as bad. (3) Shelley more than once quotes Shakespeare'swords about his 1 The meaning here seems to be: The great ancient poets, in expressing passions which they had quelled, subdued the expression of them so as to make it suit (i.e. not injure) readers moved by those passions.

This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 452 Notes on Shelley's 'Triumph of Life' nature being almost 'subdued to what it works in.' It is possible then to take our passage to mean: Age, etc., could not subdue Rousseau's heart into conformity with its element, the objects or things surround- ing it; these objects being conceived as inadequate to the heart, and its possible subdual as bad. The difficulty here is that 'object,' in the required sense, is naturally used only for an object of perception (or imagination or thought), while the 'object' of a heart can only natur- ally mean an object of desire, love, etc. (nor would it be natural for Shelley to write 'object' in the singular, if he meant what is supposed by this interpretation). Still, if one could believe that Shelley meant what is supposed, one would be satisfied with the meaning, if not with the writing. (4) It had occurred to me that possibly 'object' is a misreading of 'abject,' which Shelley uses as a substantive in Prom. IIl, iv, 140: Until the subject of a tyrant'swill Became,worse fate, the abject of his own. In that case, 'its' would refer to 'age,' etc., and 'temper to its object' would mean 'transform into its slave.' But this rendering would in- volve a use of 'temper to' for which I can find no parallel in Shelley. On the whole, though I should like to believe in interpretation (2) or (3), I think (1) the most probable. VIII. 327-30. Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore Ills, which if ills can find no cure from thee, The thought of which no other sleep will quell, Nor other music blot from memory. Rousseau is describing to the poet the 'oblivious valley,' with its 'lethean' stream, where he awoke and where, after a time, the Triumph appeared to him. 'No other sleep' or 'music' means no other than the sleep and music of this valley. The lines have a deep and pathetic interest, because they tell us the nature of the thoughts referred to in lines 21-2, thoughts which had kept the poet wakeful through the whole night. They 'must remain untold,' he had said; and so, as regards their detail, they do; but their bearing is here disclosed. They were broodings over, and perhaps self- reproaches concerning, the 'ills' of his past years. And thus the lines recall earlier poems, and also some passages in late letters; e.g. that where he says of Faust, 'It deepens the gloom and augments the rapidity of ideas, and would therefore seem to me an unfit study for any person who is a prey to the reproaches of memory and the delusions

This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A. C. BRADLEY 453 of an imagination not to be restrained' (to John Gisborne, April 10, 1822). The lines, however, are not free from difficulty. (1) They would naturally imply that Shelley has just been deploring in Rousseau's hearing ('thus') some ills of the past. But this is not so. How then does Rousseau know that Shelley is, or has been, deploring such ills at all ? We might answer that Rousseau reads this in his face, and does this with ease because in very important respects (as we readily gather from the poem) Shelley resembles him. But here again we have, I think, the influence of Dante, since in various passages of the Corn- media Virgil is represented as knowing what is passing in Dante's mind. Possibly, too, we should remember ideas which appear elsewhere in Shelley and (e.g. 31 ff.) in the Triumph (though they are not developed in the fragment written)-ideas of a mode of being, other than 'life'; pre-existent, perhaps post-existent, possibly somehow subsistent below 'life' and even now accessible to some extent; a mode of being or experience in which Rousseau and Shelley (or what of them is not 'mortal,' 254) are in closer contact than that of two waking men. (2) What is the meaning of the qualification 'if ills'? The ob- vious answer is that Rousseau disclaims such a knowledge of Shelley's past as would enable him to judge whether Shelley's ills really were ills, while he is sure that in any case it is vain to deplore the past. (That remorse is irrational and purely mischievous was a tenet of Godwin's to which Shelley had been wedded, whether or no he still felt sure of its truth.) But I am not certain that this answer is right. The words may imply a doubt on Shelley's own part about the ills that haunted him. Life, he may have felt, is so inexplicable, and so much ill seems to spring from what we once thought good and even superla- tively good, that we can have no certainty as to the ultimate ill of what seems, and even haunts us as, ill. Possibly, again, he is using the idea which often appears in his writings, and best in the conclusion of the Sensitive Plant, that everything in life except what is 'pure' or 'divine' is 'unreal,' or 'phantasmal,' or a 'mockery.' IX. 334. Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep. I wish to withdraw a suggestion in the Notes on Passages already referred to, that 'wake' is a misreading of 'woke.' Line 430, 'Through the sick day in which we wake to weep' (to which Mr Locock has drawn attention) shows that Rousseau regards himself as living still, like

This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 454 Notes on Shelley's 'Triumph of Life' Shelley, through a 'day' consistingof many days. 'This harsh world' is, of course,an echo from Hamlet. X. 343-4. And, as I looked,the bright omnipresence Of morningthrough the orient cavernflowed. It will be found on investigationthat this cavern,already mentioned in 313, is 'orient' in the sense that it is an opening in the mountain which rises on the eastern side of the valley where Rousseau stands. The cavern thereforeopens to the west. How then can the rising sun flow through it? This question, with others about the passage that 'follows,can be answered,I believe, only on the hypothesis that the cavern is not a cavern in the usual sense, but the roofed opening of a deep gorge or ravine which rends the mountain from top to bottom, and throughwhich the morningsun shines. This was suggested to me by the obscuredescription in Alastor, be- ginning at 351, where also a 'cavern'appears which seemed intelligible only on the same hypothesis. The reader may comparethe following passages,in some of which 'cavern' seems to be used in a loose way (I do not mean that he will find the same hypothesis necessaryin them). In Revolt of Islam, vI, xxix, a stream appears to flow throughcaverns. In Cenci,ill, i, 243 ff., a mountain 'yawns' into a 'ravine,' as here it 'yawns into a cavern' (313). In Triumph,71, Epip. 441, Athanase, 182, 'cavern,' though it does not mean what I take it to mean here, seems not to be a hollowin somethinghard like rock,ice, or even earth, 'but a deep woodyrecess. XI. 384-5. and soon All that was, seemedas if it had been not; And all the gazer'smind was strewn beneath Her feet like embers; and she, thought by thought, Trampledits sparksinto the dust of death. 'She' is the 'Shape,' who might therefore be hastily taken for a malevolent being; and this mistake might be confirmed by the fact that Rousseau's draught from her crystal glass is followed by the appearance of the car. To interpret this fact would take too long; but what Shelley describes in the lines quoted is the effect of a revelation of the ideal in obliterating the modes of thought and feeling habitual before that revelation. The 'death' of the last line is the 'Death' of Epip. 72, She met me, Stranger,upon life's roughway, And lured me towardsweet Death;

This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A. C. BRADLEY 455 or the 'radiant death' which the moth seeks in the star (Epip. 223). Cf. Rosalind, 1125-9. In the lines following our quotation the trampling of the sparks is compared, not with the extinction of day by night, but with the 'treading out' of the lamps of night by day, and the Shape is said to come like day, making the night a dream. That the Shape is a thing of light or, like the Witch of Atlas, a daughter of the Sun, i.e. some manifestation or other of the ideal, is certain. Cf. note on the Introduction; also Witch of Atlas, xii, and for her 'crystal bowl,' lxix ff. XII. 425-6. The presence of that Shape which on the stream Moved,as I moved along the wilderness. We have not heard of this 'wilderness' till now. The first thought of a reader will probably be that it is, in the common phrase, the wilder- ness or desert of life. He may then reflect that the beautiful forest- valley so far described seems to leave no room for a wilderness, and may conclude that this forest-valley itself is what Shelley means by 'wilderness,' since that word is occasionally used by him not for a desert place but for a beautiful wild place. Shelley, however, after mentioning the wilderness again (443), calls it a 'desert' (449); and that word he always uses with its common meaning. I believe this wilderness or desert is simply the 'path,' 'track,' or 'way' (433, 459, 518, 535), along which the Triumph advances through the forest. This is the same 'way' which, at a further stage in the advance of the Triumph, after it has ascended the western slope of the valley (470), has become that 'public way, thick strewn with summer dust,' which the poet himself sees covered by the people in front of the car (43). I think this, not only or chiefly because of the difficulty of finding room for a wilderness or desert in the usual sense, but because the idea fits in with all the passages where the words occur. Thus, in 425-6, Rousseau, joining the procession, moves 'along the wilderness,' while the Shape, now dim, moves, parallel with him, on the stream in the forest. It keeps its 'obscure tenour''beside my path' (433). Directly afterwards Shelley writes, of the Triumph and its car, And underneathaethereal glory clad The wilderness; i.e. the 'track' or'way' under the car (442). Then he says (447) that some of the crowd upon the new Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance The grassy vesture of the desert, played, Forgetfulof the chariot'sswift advance';

This content downloaded from 138.38.0.53 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 01:42:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 456 Notes on Shelley's 'Triumph of Life' that is to say, they played on the flowery grass with which the forest clothed the sides of the track-the edges of 'that path where flowers never grew' (65). The forest with its grass and flowers, its streams and birds and breezes, is the realm not of Life but of the ideal. It is 'la divina foresta,' and the home of the Golden Age of the old poets (Purg. xxviii, 2, 139 ff.). ' Life's rough way,' 'the broad highway of the world' (Epip. 71, 157), which 'crosses' (435) or runs through this forest, is 'the desert of our life' (Prom. II, i, 12)1. A. C. BRADLEY. LONDON.

1 I do not mean, of course, that this imagery is used consistently throughout Shelley's poems. In Epip. 249, 321, our life itself is a forest, wintry and obscure, a wilderness of thorns. I take this opportunity of correcting a mistake in Notes on Passages, etc., 1905, no. 16, where I expressed misgivings about the word 'kill' in Epip. 557. Mr Rossetti reminded me, to my shame, that it is a reminiscence of Troilus and Cressida, iv, ii, 4.

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