Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets Part 30

"And then I clasped my hands, and looked around-- But none was near to mark my streaming eyes, Which poured their warm drops on 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.' I then controlled My tears; my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.

"And from that hour did I with earnest thought Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore; Yet nothing that my tyrant knew or taught I cared to learn; but from that secret store Wrought linked armor for my soul before It might walk forth to war among mankind."

This war began in earnest at Oxford. He had left Eton, it is understood, before the usual time, and in consequence of his resistance to the practices which he there found inconsistent with his ideas of self-respect: what was to be hoped from Oxford? The contest into which he soon fell with the princ.i.p.al of University College on theological and metaphysical questions, quickly led to his expulsion. No circ.u.mstance in his history has made so much noise as this; on it turned the whole character of his destiny. He was expelled on a charge of atheism. In the New Monthly Magazine for 1833 is given "The History of Sh.e.l.ley's Expulsion from Oxford." From this account, nothing could have been more barbarous, unfeeling, and tyrannical than the conduct of the princ.i.p.al on this occasion. It appears that Sh.e.l.ley and some of his companions had indulged themselves in puzzling the logicians. They had made a careful a.n.a.lysis of Locke on the Human Understanding, and Hume's Essays, particularly the latter, as was customary with those who read the Ethics, and other treatises of Aristotle, for their degrees. They printed a syllabus of these, and challenged, not only the heads of houses, but others, to answer them. "It was," says the writer, "never offered for sale; it was not addressed to the general reader, but to the metaphysician alone; and it was so short that it only designed to point out the line of argument. It was, in truth, a general issue; a compendious denial of every allegation, in order to put the whole case in proof. It was a formal mode of saying, You offer so and so--then prove it; and thus was it understood by his more candid and intelligent correspondents. As it was shorter, so it was plainer, and, perhaps, in order to provoke discussion, a little bolder than Hume's Essays, a book which occupies a conspicuous place in the library of every student. The doctrine, if it deserve the name, was precisely similar; the necessary and inevitable consequence of Locke's philosophy, and of the theory that all knowledge is from without. I will not admit your conclusions, his opponent might say; then you must deny those of Hume; I deny them; but you must deny those of Locke also; and we will go back together to Plato. Such was the usual course of argument; sometimes, however, he rested on mere denial, holding his adversary to strict proof, and deriving strength from his weakness. The young Platonist argued thus negatively through the love of argument, and because he found a n.o.ble joy in the fierce shock of contending minds. He loved truth, and sought it every where, and at all hazards, frankly and boldly, like a man who deserved to find it; but he also dearly loved victory in debate, and warm debate for its own sake. Never was there a more unexceptionable disputant. He was eager beyond the most ardent, but never angry and never personal; he was the only arguer I ever knew who drew every argument from the nature of the thing, and who never could be provoked to descend to personal contentions."--_P. 25 of Part II._

This is a very different thing to the foul and offensive statement put forth to the world, that Sh.e.l.ley avowedly, with his name, put forth a pamphlet on atheism, challenging the whole bench of bishops to refute it, for the sake and from the mere love of atheism. Not less disgraceful was the manner of his expulsion. He was suspected of this pamphlet; it is said that "a pert, meddling tutor of a college of inferior note, a man of an insalubrious and inauspicious aspect," had secretly denounced him to the master as the author of it; and that, for this piece of treason, he was, as he hoped, speedily enriched with the most splendid benefices, and finally made a bishop! The master himself is described by a third party "as a man possessing no more intellect or erudition than that famous ram, since translated to the stars, through grasping whose tail less fervently than was expedient, the sister of Phryxus formerly found a watery grave, and gave her name to the broad h.e.l.lespont." He adds, "I thank G.o.d I have never seen that man since; he is gone to his bed, and there let him sleep. While he lived he ate freely of the scholar's bread, and drank freely of his cup; and he was sustained throughout the whole term of his existence, wholly and most n.o.bly, by those sacred funds that were consecrated by our pious forefathers to the advancement of learning. If the vengeance of the all-patient and long-contemned G.o.d can ever be roused, it will surely be by some such sacrilege!"

But let us see in what manner this swollen Boeotian ox dealt with this ardent yet gentle stripling of seventeen--for, let it be remembered, he was only of that age--and let us first see what was the condition of the University at that time, in which it was made a mortal offense in a young and zealous spirit to dispute metaphysical points.

"Whether such disputations," says the writer in the New Monthly, "were decorous or profitable, may be perhaps doubtful; there can be no doubt, however, since the sweet gentleness of Sh.e.l.ley was easily and instantly swayed by the mild influences of friendly admonition, that had even the least dignified of his elders suggested the propriety of pursuing his metaphysical inquiries with less ardor, his obedience would have been prompt and perfect. Not only had all salutary studies been long neglected at Oxford at that time, and all wholesome discipline fallen into decay, but the splendid endowments of the University were grossly abused. The resident authorities of the college were, too often, men of the lowest origin; of mean and sordid souls; dest.i.tute of every literary attainment except that brief and narrow course of reading by which the degree was attained; the vulgar sons of vulgar fathers; without liberality, and wanting the manners and sympathies of gentlemen. A total neglect of all learning, an unseemly turbulence, the most monstrous irregularities, open and habitual drunkenness, vice, and violence, were tolerated or encouraged, with the basest sycophancy, that the prospect of perpetual licentiousness might fill the colleges with young men of fortune. Whenever the rarely-exercised power of coercion was exercised, it demonstrated the utter incapacity of our unworthy rulers, by coa.r.s.eness, ignorance, and injustice. If a few gentlemen were admitted to fellowships, they were always absent; they were not persons of literary pretensions, or distinguished by scholarship, and they had no share in the government of the college."--P. 26.

It is fitting that the world should know out of what a sty, and by what swine, Sh.e.l.ley was expelled from Oxford. It seems that any crime or licentiousness might be practiced--nay, was encouraged--so that no question of learning was provokingly pushed forward that might show the ignorance, and thus wound the brutal pride of the fellows. Let us now see the manner in which it was done.

"As the term was drawing to a close, and a great part of the books we were reading together still remained unfinished, we had agreed to increase our exertions, and to meet at an early hour. It was a fine spring morning, on Lady Day, in the year 1811, when I went to Sh.e.l.ley's rooms: he was absent; but before I had collected our books he rushed in.

He was terribly agitated. I anxiously inquired what had happened. 'I am expelled,' he said, as soon as he had recovered himself a little, 'I am expelled! I was sent for suddenly a few minutes ago; I went to the common room, where I found our master, and two or three of the fellows.

The master produced a copy of the little syllabus, and asked me if I were the author of it. He spoke in a rude, abrupt, and insolent tone. I begged to be informed for what purpose they put the question. No answer was given; but the master loudly and angrily repeated, "Are you the author of this book?" "If I can judge from your manner," I said, "you are resolved to punish me if I should acknowledge that it is my work. If you can prove that it is, produce your evidence; it is neither just nor lawful to interrogate me in such a case and for such a purpose. Such proceedings would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in a free country." "Do you choose to deny that this is your composition?"

the master reiterated in the same rude and angry voice.'

"Sh.e.l.ley complained much of his violent and ungentleman-like deportment, saying, 'I have experienced tyranny and injustice before, and I well know what vulgar insolence is; but I never met with such unworthy treatment. I told him calmly, but firmly, that I was resolved not to answer any questions respecting the publication on the table.' 'Then,'

said he, furiously, 'you are expelled, and I desire you will quit the college early to-morrow morning, at the latest.'"

A regular sentence of expulsion, ready drawn up in due form, was handed to him, under the seal of the college. So monstrous and illegal did the outrage seem to one of Sh.e.l.ley's fellow-students, that he immediately wrote a remonstrance to the master and fellows against it, declaring that he himself, or any one else in that college, might just as well be treated in the same manner. The consequence was, that he was immediately treated in the same manner. He was called before this tribunal. "The angry and troubled air," he says, in a statement to the writer of the article, "of men a.s.sembled to commit injustice, according to established forms, was new to me; but a native instinct told me, as soon as I entered the room, that it was an affair of party; that whatever could conciliate the favor of patrons was to be done without scruple, and whatever could tend to prevent preferment was to be brushed away without remorse." The same question was put to him; he refused to answer it, and he was also expelled with the same summary violence. Thus were Sh.e.l.ley and another youth of eighteen expelled and branded for life with the stigma of atheism, to serve the sordid ends of those greedy preferment-seeking fellows. They were expelled simply because they refused to criminate themselves, and the boast of a virtuous zeal against atheism was trumpeted abroad, which soon raised one man to a bishopric, and others, no doubt, to what they wanted. So are sacrificed the rare spirits of the earth for the worldly benefit of the hogs of Epicurus. If all the youths were treated thus brutally at that age, when doubts beset almost every man, and more especially the earnest and inquiring, what would become of our finest and n.o.blest characters? When men begin to study the grounds of theology, they must study, too, what is advanced by the opposers. The consequence is at once, that all that has been received as fact by unquestioning boyhood, falls to the ground, and they have to begin again, and test, through doubts and anxieties, and amid the menaces of despair, all the evidence on which our faith is built. Seize on any one of these inquirers at this peculiar crisis, and expel him for atheism, and, if he be a man of quick feelings and a high spirit, you will pretty certainly make him that for which you have stigmatized him. His pride will unite with his doubts to fix him, to petrify him, as it were, into incurable unbelief. It would be a brutal and murderous procedure. Such procedure had the worst effect on Sh.e.l.ley.

The consequences were a sort of repudiation of him by his father and family, who had built the highest worldly hopes on his talents. There was a fierce hue and cry set up after him in the world, and the very next year saw him sit down and write Queen Mab. The actions of this portion of his life are the least defensible of any portion of it. He seemed restless, unhappy, and put into a more antagonistic temperament by his public expulsion from college, which he felt more deeply than was natural to him, or could have arisen had he been treated differently. At this period he made his first unfortunate marriage with a young woman of humble station, and, as it proved, of very uncongenial mind. They separated, and in her distress she some time afterward drowned herself.

Differing as I do most widely from Sh.e.l.ley, both in his ideas regarding Christianity and marriage, it is but just to say that they who knew him best, and his second wife, the celebrated daughter of celebrated parents, G.o.dwin and Mary Wolstoncroft, most emphatically a.s.sert their a.s.surances that "in all he did, at the time of doing it, he believed himself justified to his conscience, while the various ills of poverty, and the loss of friends, brought home to him the sad realities of life."

My opinion is, that at this period the state of excitement into which so gross an outrage on his sensitive nature had thrown him, is to be regarded as the most palliating cause of any thing in Sh.e.l.ley which was not in perfect harmony with the general tone of his benign spirit. For his errors at this period, though they never could be run into by Sh.e.l.ley willfully, and with a consciousness of error, he suffered deeply and severely. One of his biographers says, "n.o.body could lament the catastrophe of his wife's death more bitterly than he did. For a time it tore his being to pieces."

For about two years after his wife's death he seemed to be wandering about in quest of rest, and not finding it. He was at one time at the Lakes on a pilgrimage to Southey, which, when Coleridge heard of, he said, "Why did he not come to me? I should have understood him." Most true. He was in London, and No. 90 Great Russell-street, oddly enough kept by a person named G.o.dwin, and in Mabledon Place, a corner house next to Hastings-street, are known as lodgings of his. He was also in Dublin, and in North Wales, where, in the absence of his landlord, Mr.

Maddocks, an extraordinary tide menacing his embankment against the sea, Sh.e.l.ley put his name at the head of a subscription paper for 500, and, carrying it round the neighborhood, raised a sum sufficient to prevent this truly Roman work being destroyed. In 1814 he made a tour on the Continent, visiting France, Switzerland, the Reuss, and the Rhine, the magnificent scenery of which produced the most striking effects on his mind. In 1815 he made a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire, and then renting a house on Bishopsgate Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, he spent the summer months in ruminating over the scenes he had visited, and produced there his poem of Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude. The next year he again visited the Continent. He was now married to Mary Wolstoncroft G.o.dwin, who accompanied him. They fixed their residence for a time on the banks of the Lake of Geneva.

Here Sh.e.l.ley and Lord Byron first met; they had corresponded before, but here began that friendship which contributed so palpably to the purification and elevation of tone in the higher poetry of Byron. They seemed equally pleased with each other. Byron was occupying the Villa Diodati; a name connected with Milton, and, perhaps, one of the n.o.ble poet's reasons for choosing it as a residence. Sh.e.l.ley engaged one just below it, in a most sequestered spot. There was no access to it in a carriage; it stood only separated from the lake by a small garden, much overgrown by trees, and a pathway through the vineyard of Diodati communicated with it. The two poets entered deeply into poetical disquisition. Nothing could be more opposite than their natures and their poetic tendencies. Sh.e.l.ley was all imagination; Byron had a strong tendency to the actual, or to that which must tell upon the general mind: Sh.e.l.ley was purely spiritual; Byron had much of the world in him: Sh.e.l.ley was all generosity; Byron, with a great show of it, had a tremendous dash of the selfish. Still, they had many things in common.

They were fond of boating and pistol-shooting; they were persecuted by public opinion; they had broken from all bonds of ordinary faith, and were free in discussion and speculation, as the birds were in their flight over their heads. They rowed together round the lake, and were very near being lost in a storm upon it. They visited together Meillerie and Clarens; and the effect of the scenery on Sh.e.l.ley, with the Nouvelle Heloise in his hand, was entrancing. He visited, also, Lausanne, and while walking in the Acacia Walk belonging to Gibbon's house, he could not help saying, "Gibbon had a cold and unimpa.s.sioned spirit. I never felt more inclination to rail at the prejudices which clung to such a thing, than now that Julie and Clarens, Lausanne and the Roman Empire, compel me to a contrast between Rousseau and Gibbon." His lines on the Bridge of Arve and his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty were written at this time.

The poets and Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley were constantly together, out in the air amid that sublime scenery in fine weather, and in the evenings at each other's houses; and during a week of rain, they horrified themselves with German ghost-stories, and gave a mutual challenge to write each one of their own. To this we owe the Vampire, which was, on its first appearance, attributed to Lord Byron, but was, in reality, written by his vain satellite of a physician, Polidori. Byron wrote a story called The Marriage of Belphegor, which was to narrate the circ.u.mstances of his own--as he was now smarting under a recent refusal of his wife to live with him; but on hearing from England that Lady Byron was ill, with an impulse that did him honor, he thrust it into the fire. What Sh.e.l.ley did does not appear, but the production of Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley was Frankenstein.

On his return to England in the autumn of that year, he had to endure the misery of his two children being taken from him by the Court of Chancery, on the ground of his disbelief of revealed religion, and the authorship of Queen Mab, a work published without his consent. It was at this period that he went to live at Great Marlowe, in Buckinghamshire.

Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley says, "Sh.e.l.ley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no great distance from London, and its neighborhood to the Thames. The poem of the Revolt of Islam was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighboring country, which is distinguished for its peculiar beauty. The chalk-hills break into cliffs that overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech. The wilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant vegetation, and the cultivated part is particularly fertile. With all this wealth of nature, which, either in the form of gentlemen's parks, or soil dedicated to agriculture, flourishes around, Marlowe was inhabited--I hope it is altered now--by a very poor population. The women are lace-makers, and lose their health by sedentary labor, for which they are very ill paid. The poor-laws ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates. The change produced by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with them the most heart-rending evils to the poor. Sh.e.l.ley afforded what alleviation he could. In winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the cottages. I mention these things--for this minute and active sympathy with his fellow-creatures gives a thousandfold interest to his speculations, and stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race."

Sh.e.l.ley does not seem to have had any acquaintance at Marlowe or in the neighborhood; it was simply the charm of the country and the river which attracted him; but his friend Mr. Peac.o.c.k, of the India House, was residing there at the time, either drawn there by Sh.e.l.ley, or Sh.e.l.ley by him. Marlowe stands in a fine open valley, on the banks of the Thames. The river here is beautiful, running bankful through the most beautiful meadows, level as a bowling green, of the richest verdure, and of a fine, ample, airy extent. Beyond the river these meadows are bounded by steep hills clothed with n.o.ble woods, and a more charming scene for boating can not be imagined. The gra.s.s and flowers on the river margin overhang and dip lovingly into the waters, which, from running over a chalk bottom, are as transparent nearly as the air itself; and at the various turns of the river new features of beauty salute you. Impending woods, which invite you to land and stroll away into them; solitary valleys, where house or man is not seen; and then, again, cultivated farms, and hills covered with flocks. No wonder that Sh.e.l.ley was all summer floating upon this fine river, and luxuriating in the composition of his splendid poem. A little below the town stands the village of Little Marlowe, with its gray church, and old manor-house, called Bisham Abbey, amid its fine trees; and around, a lovely scene of the softly flowing, beautiful river, the level meads, and the hills and woods. On the other side of the town, the country is of that clear, bright aspect, with its tillage farms and isolated clumps of beech on swelling hills, which always marks a chalk district. The town itself is small, and intensely quiet. The houses are low and clean-looking, as if no smoke ever fell on them from the pure diaphanous air. It consists of three princ.i.p.al streets, something in the shape of the letter T, with some smaller ones. In pa.s.sing along it, you would not suspect it of that intense poverty which Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley speaks of, though, from the wretched depression of the hand-lace weaving, it may exist. The houses have a neat miniature look, and the people look cheerful, healthy, and the women of a very agreeable expression of countenance.

Such was the spot where Sh.e.l.ley resided eight-and-twenty years ago. His house was in the main street--a long stuccoed dwelling, of that species of nondescript architecture which once was thought Gothic, because it had pointed windows and battlements. It must have been then a s.p.a.cious and a very pleasant residence. It is now, as is the lot of most places in which poets have lived, desolated and desecrated. It is divided into three tenements, a school, a private house, and a pot-house. I entered the latter, and with a strange feeling. In a large room with a boarded floor, and which had probably been Sh.e.l.ley's dining-room, was a sort of bar part.i.tioned off, and a number of visitors were drinking on benches along the walls, which still bore traces, amid disfigurement and stains, of former taste. The garden behind had evidently been extensive, and very pleasant. There were remains of fine evergreen trees, and of a mound on which grew some deciduous cypresses, where had evidently stood a summer-house. This was gone. The garden was divided into as many portions as there were now tenants, and all evidences of care had vanished from it. Along the side of it, however, lay a fine open meadow, and the eye ran across this to some sweetly wooded hills. It was a melancholy thing to go back to the time when Sh.e.l.ley and his wife and friends walked in this garden, enjoying it and its surrounding quiet scenery, and to reflect what had been the subsequent fate of it and him.

Among the poor of the town the remembrance of his benevolence and una.s.suming kindness had still chroniclers; but from the other cla.s.ses little could be learned, and that not what the memory of such a man deserves. One old shopkeeper, not far from his house, remembered him, and "hoped his children did not take after him." "Why?" "Oh! he was a very bad man!" "Indeed! what bad actions did he do?" "Oh! I beg your pardon! he did no bad actions that I ever heard of, but, on the contrary, he was uncommonly good to the poor; but then--" "But then, what?" "Why, he did not believe in the devil!" Such are the fruits of bigot teaching. Christ says, "By their _fruits_ shall ye know" men; but those calling themselves his followers say, "No;" no matter what good fruits men produce, they are all doomed to perdition if they cast a single aspersion on that very favorite personage, Satan. I begged the poor man, of whom I found Sh.e.l.ley bought no groceries, to at least leave Sh.e.l.ley to the judgment of his G.o.d and of Christ, who came to seek and to save all that were lost; and to believe those great a.s.surances of the Gospel, that the prodigal, when he had committed all kind of crimes, found not only a pacified, but a fond father; that he that hath not charity is as sounding bra.s.s and a tinkling cymbal; and that he that loveth intensely, though he may think very erroneously, will stand a very fair chance with the Father of love himself.

"But, pray, what has become of this Mr. Sh.e.l.ley, then?" asked the man's wife, who had come from an inner room. "He was drowned," I replied. "Oh!

that's just what one might have expected. Drowned! Lud-a-mercy! ay, just what we might ha' said he'd come to. He was always on the water, always boating, boating--never easy but when he was in that boat. Do you know what a trick was played him by some wag?" "No." "He called his boat '_Vaga_,' and one morning he found the name lengthened by a piece of chalk with the word '_bond_'--_Vagabond_. There are clever fellows here as well as in London, mind you. But Mr. Sh.e.l.ley was not offended. He only laughed; for, you see, he did not believe in a devil, and so he thought there could be nothing wrong. He used to say, when he heard of any wickedness, 'Ah, poor people! it's only ignorance; if they knew better, they'd do better!' Oh! what darkness and heathenry! to excuse sin, and feel no G.o.dly jealousy against wickedness!" I found that the crabbed creedsman had been there too long before me. My hint about charity was thrown away, and I moved off, lest both myself and Jesus Christ, who would not condemn even the adulteress at the desire of the vengeful and the sensual, should be found wanting in holy indignation too.

It was in vain that I inquired among the cla.s.s of little gentry in the place for information about Sh.e.l.ley; they knew nothing of any such person. At length, after much research, and the running to and fro of waiters from the inn, I was directed to an ancient surgeon, who had attended almost every body for the last half century. I found him an old man of nearly ninety. He recollected Sh.e.l.ley; had attended him, but knew little about him. He was a very unsocial man, he said; kept no company but Mr. Peac.o.c.k's, and that of his boat, and was never seen in the town but he had a book in his hand, and was reading as he went along. The old gentleman, however, kindly sent his servant to point out Sh.e.l.ley's house to me, and as I returned up the street, I saw him standing bare-headed on the pavement before his door, in active discourse with various neighbors. My inquiries had evidently aroused the Marlowean curiosity.

On coming up, the old gentleman inquired eagerly if I wanted to learn more yet about Mr. Sh.e.l.ley--I had learned little or nothing. I replied that I should be very happy. "Then," said he, "come in, sir, for I have sent for a gentleman who knows all about him." I entered, and found a tall, well-dressed man, with a very solemn aspect. "It is the squire of the place," said I to myself. With a very solemn bow he arose, and with very solemn bows we sat down opposite to each other. "I am happy to hear," said I, "that you knew Mr. Sh.e.l.ley, and can give me some particulars regarding his residence here." "I can, sir," he replied, with another solemn bow. I waited to hear news, but I waited in vain.

That Mr. Sh.e.l.ley had lived there, and that he had long left there, and that his house was down the street, and that he was a very extraordinary man, he knew, and I knew; but that was all: not a word of his doings or his sayings at Marlowe came out of the solemn brain of that large, solemn man. But at length a degree of interest appeared to gather in his cheeks and brighten in his eyes. "Thank G.o.d!" I exclaimed, inwardly.

"The man is slow, but it is coming now." His mouth opened, and he said, "But pray, sir, what became of that Mr. Sh.e.l.ley?"

"Good gracious!" I exclaimed. "What! did you never hear? Did it never reach Marlowe--but thirty miles from London--that sad story of his death, which created a sensation throughout the civilized world?" No, the thing had never penetrated into the Boeotian denseness of that place! I rose up, and now bowed solemnly too. "And, pray, what family might he leave?" asked the solemn personage, as I was hasting away. "You will learn that," I said, still going away, "in the Baronetage, if such a book ever reaches Marlowe."

I hastened to the inn, where my chaise was standing ready for my departure, and was just in the act of entering it, when I heard a sort of outcry, perceived a sort of bustle behind me, and, turning my head, saw the tall and solemn man hasting with huge and anxious strides after me.

"You'll excuse me, sir--you'll excuse me, I think; but I _could_ relate to you a fact, and I think I _will_ venture to relate to you a fact connected with the late Mr. Sh.e.l.ley." "Do," said I. "I think I _will_,"

replied the tall, stout man, heaving a deep sigh, and erecting himself to his full height, far above my head, and casting a most awful glance at the sky; "I _think_ I will--I _think_ I may venture." "It is certainly something very sad and agonizing," I said to myself; "but I wish he would only bring it out." "Well, then," continued he, with another heave of his capacious chest, and another great glance at the distant horizon, "I certainly will mention it. It was this: When Mr.

Sh.e.l.ley left Marlowe, he ordered all his bills to be paid, most honorably, certainly most honorably; and they were paid--all--except--mine! There, sir! it is out; excuse it--excuse it; but I am glad it is out."

"What! a bill!" I exclaimed, in profoundest astonishment; "a bill! was that all?"

"All, sir! all! every thing of the sort; every shilling, I a.s.sure you, has been paid but my little account; and it was my fault; I don't know how in the world I forgot to send it in."

"What!" said I, "are you not the squire here? What are you?"

"Oh, Lord! no, sir! I am no squire here! I am a tradesman! I am--in the general way!"

"Drive on!" I said, springing into the carriage; "drive like the Dragon of Wantley out of this place: Sh.e.l.ley is remembered in Marlowe because there was one bill left unpaid!"

There again is fame. It would be a curious thing if the man who deems himself most thoroughly and universally famous, and walks about in the comfortable persuasion of it, could see his fame mapped upon the country. What an odd figure it would make! A few feeble rays shooting here and there, but all around what vast patches of unvisited country, what unilluminated regions, what deserts of oblivion of his name!

Sh.e.l.ley lived, and suffered, and spent himself for mankind; and, in the place where he last lived in England, within thirty miles of the great metropolis of genius and knowledge, he is only remembered by a bad joke on his boat, by his disbelief of the devil, and by a forgotten bill.

Were it not forgotten, he had been so! _Eheu! jam satis._

On the 12th of March, 1818, Sh.e.l.ley quitted England once more. He was never to return. His own fate and that of Byron were wonderfully alike.

The two greatest, most original, most powerful, and influential poets of the age were driven into exile by the public feeling of their country.

They could not bring themselves to think on political questions with a large party, nor on religious ones with a still larger; and every species of vituperation and insult was let loose upon them. As if charity and forbearance had been heathen qualities, and wrath and calumny Christian virtues, the British public most loftily resolved not to do as Christ required them--to love those who hated them and despitefully used them--but to hate those who loved them, and had n.o.ble virtues, though they had their errors. Their errors should have been lamented, and their doctrines refuted as much as possible; but there is no law, human or divine, that can release us from the law of love, and the command of seventy times seven forgiveness of injuries. Both these great men died in their exile of hatred; the world had its will for the time, and the spirits of these dead outcasts must now have their will, in their deathless volumes, to the end of time.

If any one would know what sort of a man this moral monster, Sh.e.l.ley, was, let him read the eloquent account of him and his life at Oxford in the New Monthly Magazine for 1832, written by one who was his friend and companion, and who, Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley says, has described him most faithfully. There we find him full of zeal for learning; most zealous in acc.u.mulating knowledge; overflowing in kindness; indignant against all oppression to man or to animals. Never failing to rush in on witnessing any cruelty or hearing of any calamity, to stop the one and alleviate the other. Full of gayety and fun as a child, sailing his paper boats on every pool and stream, or rambling far and wide over the country in earnest talk and deep love of all nature. He was ready to caress children, to smile on even gipsies and beggars, to run for refreshment for starving people by the way side, pledging even his favorite microscope, his daily means of recreation, to a.s.sist a poor old man.

Such was the dreadful creature that must be expelled from colleges, have his children torn from him to prevent the contamination of his virtues, and to be hooted out of his native land. Yet, amid all the anguish that this inflicted on him, he was ever ready still to do a sublime good, or enter with the most boyish relish into the merest joke. Nothing can convey a more vivid idea of the latter disposition--which is not that of a man systematically malicious, which is the true spirit of wickedness--than to quote a joke related to him by the writer of these articles, and see the manner in which it was enjoyed.

"I was walking one afternoon, in the summer, on the western side of that short street leading from Long Acre to Covent Garden, where the pa.s.senger is earnestly invited, as a personal favor to the demandant, to proceed straightway to Highgate or Kentish Town, and which is called, I think, James-street. I was about to enter Covent Garden, when an Irish laborer, whom I met bearing an empty hod, accosted me somewhat roughly, and asked why I had run against him. I told him briefly that he was mistaken. Whether somebody had actually pushed the man, or he only sought to quarrel, and although he, doubtless, attended a weekly row regularly, and the week was already drawing to a close, he was unable to wait till Sunday for a broken head, I know not, but he discoursed for some time with the vehemence of a man who considers himself injured or insulted, and he concluded, being emboldened by my long silence, with a cordial invitation just to push him again. Several persons, not very unlike in costume, had gathered round him, and appeared to regard him with sympathy. When he paused, I addressed him slowly and quietly, and it should seem with great gravity, these words, as nearly as I can recollect them: 'I have put my hand into the hamper; I have looked upon the sacred barley; I have eaten out of the drum! I have drunk, and was well pleased; I have said, [Greek: konx ompax], and it is finished!'

'Have you, sir?' inquired the astonished Irishman; and his ragged friends instantly pressed round him with, 'Where is the hamper, Paddy?'

'What barley? and the like. And ladies from his own country, that is to say, the basket-women, suddenly began to interrogate him; 'Now, I say, Pat, where have you been drinking? What have you had?' I turned, therefore, to the right, leaving the astounded neophyte, whom I had thus planted, to expound the mystic words of initiation as he could to his inquisitive companions. As I walked slowly under the piazzas, and through the streets and courts toward the West, I marveled at the ingenuity of Orpheus--if he were, indeed, the inventor of the Eleusinian mysteries; that he was able to devise words that, imperfectly as I had repeated them, and in the tattered fragment that has reached us, were able to soothe people so savage and barbarous as those to whom I had addressed them, and which, as the apologists for those venerable rites affirm, were manifestly well adapted to incite persons who hear them for the first time, however rude they may be, to ask questions. Words that can awaken curiosity even in the sluggish intellect of a wild man, and can open the inlet of knowledge!"

"_Konx ompax_; and it is finished!" exclaimed Sh.e.l.ley, crowing with enthusiastic delight at my whimsical adventure. A thousand times, as he strode about the house, and in his rambles out of doors, he would stop and repeat the mystic words of initiation, but always with an energy of manner, and a vehemence of tone and gesture, that would have prevented the ready acceptance which a calm, pa.s.sionless delivery had once procured for them. How often would he throw down his book, clasp his hands, and, starting from his seat, cry suddenly, with a thrilling voice, "I have said _Konx ompax_; and it is finished!"

This child-like, this great, and greatly kind, and if men would have let him, this light-hearted man, thus then quitted England. Like Byron, he sought a home in Italy. He lived in various cities, and wrote there his very finest works; among them, Prometheus Unbound; The Cenci; h.e.l.las; part of Rosalind and Helen; his Ode to Liberty, perhaps the very finest ode in the language, and certainly, in its description of Athens, never excelled in any piece of description in any language; Adonais, an elegy on the death of Keats, and those very melancholy verses written in the Bay of Naples. He was drowned, as is well known, by the sinking of his boat in a squall, in the Gulf of Spezia, in the summer of 1822, at the age of thirty.

Sh.e.l.ley must have enjoyed this portion of his life beyond all others, had he been in health and spirits. He was united to a woman worthy of him, and who could partake of all his intellectual pleasures. Children were growing around him, and he was living in that beautiful country, surrounded by the remains of former art and history, and under that fine sky, pouring out from heart and brain, glorious, and impa.s.sioned, and immortal works. But his health failed him, and the darts of calumny were rankling in his bosom, depressing his spirits, and sapping his const.i.tution. I can only allow myself a few pa.s.sing glances at his homes in Italy, of which Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley has given us such delightful sketches in the notes to her edition of her husband's poems.

They went direct to Milan, and visited the Lake of Como; then proceeding to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back to Rome for the winter. There he chiefly wrote his Prometheus. In 1818 they were at the Baths of Lucca, where Sh.e.l.ley finished Rosalind and Helen. Thence he visited Venice, and occupied a house lent him by Lord Byron at Este. "I Capucini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious houses. It was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill, at the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk, or pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, which Sh.e.l.ley made his study, and in which he began the Prometheus; and here, also, as he mentioned in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo. A slight ravine, with a wood in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient Castle of Este, whose dark, ma.s.sive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ivied crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements. We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the west by the far Apennines; while to the east, the horizon was lost in misty distance. After the picturesque but limited view of mountain, ravine, and chestnut wood at the Baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect commanded by our new abode."

Here they lost a little girl, and quitting the neighborhood of Venice, they proceeded southward. Sh.e.l.ley was delighted beyond expression with the scenery and antiquities of Italy. "The aspect of its nature, its sunny sky, its majestic streams; the luxuriant vegetation of the country, and the n.o.ble, marble-built cities, enchanted him. The first entrance to Rome opened to him a scene of remains of ancient grandeur that far surpa.s.sed his expectations; and the unspeakable beauty of Naples and its environs added to the impression he received of the transcendent and glorious beauty of Italy."

The winter was spent at Naples, where they lived in utter solitude, yet greatly enjoyed their excursions along its sunny sea or into its beautiful environs. From Naples they returned to Rome, where they arrived in March, 1819. Here they had the old MS. account of the story of the Cenci put into their hands, and visited the Doria and Colonna palaces, where the portraits of Beatrice were to be found. Her beauty cast the reflection of its grace over her appalling story, and Sh.e.l.ley conceived the subject of his masterly drama. In Rome they lost their eldest child, a very lovely and engaging boy, and, quitting the Eternal City, took the villa Valsovano, between Leghorn and Monte Nero, where they resided during the summer. "Our villa," says Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "was situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during the heat of a very hot season; and in the evening the water-wheel creaked as the progress of irrigation went on, and the fire-flies flashed among the myrtle hedges; nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed.

"At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such in Italy, generally roofed. This one was very small, yet not only roofed, but glazed. This Sh.e.l.ley made his study; it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The storms that sometimes varied our day, showed themselves most picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean. Sometimes the dark, lurid clouds dipped toward the waves, and became water-spouts, that churned up the waters beneath as they were chased onward, and scattered by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it almost intolerable to every other; but Sh.e.l.ley basked in both, and his health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he wrote the princ.i.p.al part of the Cenci."