Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 7

Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny's own words--words no less certain of immortality than the fame of him they celebrate. "The Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the pa.s.sage near the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, 'Come in, Sh.e.l.ley, its only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands; and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible this mild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with all the world?--excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his 'sizings.' Mrs. Williams saw my embarra.s.sment, and to relieve me asked Sh.e.l.ley what book he had in his hand? His face brightened, and he answered briskly,--

"'Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso"--I am translating some pa.s.sages in it.'

"'Oh, read it to us.'

"Shoved off from the sh.o.r.e of commonplace incidents that could not interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly manner in which he a.n.a.lysed the genius of the author, his lucid interpretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated into our language the most subtle and imaginative pa.s.sages of the Spanish poet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his ident.i.ty; a dead silence ensued; looking up, I asked,--

"'Where is he?'

"Mrs. Williams said, 'Who? Sh.e.l.ley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where.'"

Two little incidents which happened in the winter of 1821-2 deserve to be recorded. News reached the Pisan circle early in December that a man who had insulted the Host at Lucca was sentenced to be burned. Sh.e.l.ley proposed that the English--himself, Byron, Medwin, and their friend Mr.

Taafe--should immediately arm and ride off to rescue him. The scheme took Byron's fancy; but they agreed to try less Quixotic measures before they had recourse to force, and their excitement was calmed by hearing that the man's sentence had been commuted to the galleys. The other affair brought them less agreeably into contact with the Tuscan police.

The party were riding home one afternoon in March, when a mounted dragoon came rushing by, breaking their ranks and nearly unhorsing Mr.

Taafe. Byron and Sh.e.l.ley rode after him to remonstrate; but the man struck Sh.e.l.ley from his saddle with a sabre blow. The English then pursued him into Pisa, making such a clatter that one of Byron's servants issued with a pitchfork from the Casa Lanfranchi, and wounded the fellow somewhat seriously, under the impression that it was necessary to defend his master. Sh.e.l.ley called the whole matter "a trifling piece of business;" but it was strictly investigated by the authorities; and though the dragoon was found to have been in the wrong, Byron had to retire for a season to Leghorn. Another consequence was the exile of Count Gamba and his father from Tuscany, which led to Byron's final departure from Pisa.

The even current of Sh.e.l.ley's life was not often broken by such adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he pa.s.sed his days: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day, and in what state was the ma.n.u.script of that prettiest lyric, "Ariel, to Miranda take". "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most 'admired disorder;' it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, 'When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt a drawing."

A daily visit to Byron diversified existence. Byron talked more sensibly with Sh.e.l.ley than with his commonplace acquaintances; and when he began to gossip, Sh.e.l.ley retired into his own thoughts. Then they would go pistol-shooting, Byron's trembling hand contrasting with his friend's firmness. They had invented a "little language" for this sport: firing was called tiring; hitting, colping; missing, mancating, etc. It was in fact a kind of pigeon Italian. Sh.e.l.ley acquired two nick-names in the circle of his Pisan friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel and the Snake. The latter suited him because of his noiseless gliding movement, bright eyes, and ethereal diet. It was first given to him by Byron during a reading of "Faust". When he came to the line of Mephistopheles, "Wie meine Muhme, die beruhmte Schlange," and translated it, "My aunt, the renowned Snake," Byron cried, "Then you are her nephew." Sh.e.l.ley by no means resented the epithet. Indeed he alludes to it in his letters, and in a poem already referred to above.

Soon after Trelawny's arrival the party turned their thoughts to nautical affairs. Sh.e.l.ley had already done a good deal of boating with Williams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occasion nearly lost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They now determined to build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea; while Byron, liking the project of a summer residence upon the Bay of Spezia, made up his mind to have one too. Sh.e.l.ley's was to be an open boat carrying sail, Byron's a large decked schooner. The construction of both was entrusted to a Genoese builder, under the direction of Trelawny's friend, Captain Roberts. Such was the birth of the ill-fated "Don Juan", which cost the lives of Sh.e.l.ley and Willliams, and of the "Bolivar", which carried Byron off to Genoa before he finally set sail for Greece. Captain Roberts was allowed to have his own way about the latter; but Sh.e.l.ley and Williams had set their hearts upon a model for their little yacht, which did not suit the Captain's notions of sea-worthiness. Williams overruled his objections, and the "Don Juan" was built according to his cherished fancy. "When it was finished," says Trelawny, "it took two tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast, strongly built, and Torbay rigged." She was christened by Lord Byron, not wholly with Sh.e.l.ley's approval; and one young English sailor, Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Sh.e.l.ley, formed her crew.

"It was great fun," says Trelawny, "to witness Williams teaching the poet how to steer, and other points of seamanship. As usual, Sh.e.l.ley had a book in hand, saying he could read and steer at the same time, as one was mental, the other mechanical." "The boy was quick and handy, and used to boats. Williams was not as deficient as I antic.i.p.ated, but over-anxious, and wanted practice, which alone makes a man prompt in emergency. Sh.e.l.ley was intent on catching images from the ever-changing sea and sky; he heeded not the boat."

CHAPTER 7.

LAST DAYS.

The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for comfort; and early in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find a suitable lodging for themselves and the Sh.e.l.leys on the Gulf of Spezia. They pitched upon a house called the Villa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, which "looked more like a boat or a bathing-house than a place to live in. It consisted of a terrace or ground-floor unpaved, and used for storing boat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over it, divided into a hall or saloon and four small rooms, which had once been white-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we thought the Sh.e.l.leys might put up with for the summer. The only good thing about it was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it." When it came to be inhabited, the central hall was used for the living and eating room of the whole party. The Sh.e.l.leys occupied two rooms facing each other; the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and Trelawny another.

Access to these smaller apartments could only be got through the saloon; and this circ.u.mstance once gave rise to a ludicrous incident, when Sh.e.l.ley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in puris naturalibus, not undetected, though covered in his retreat by the clever Italian handmaiden, through a luncheon party a.s.sembled in the dining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet's unexpected apparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny.

Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was no easy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny's laconic remark that the sea was his only washing-basin.

They arrived at Villa Magni on the 26th of April, and began a course of life which was not interrupted till the final catastrophe of July 8.

These few weeks were in many respects the happiest of Sh.e.l.ley's life. We seem to discern in his last letter of importance, recently edited by Mr.

Garnett, that he was now conscious of having reached a platform from which he could survey his past achievement, and whence he would probably have risen to a loftier alt.i.tude, by a calmer and more equable exercise of powers which had been ripening during the last three years of life in Italy. Meanwhile, "I am content," he writes, "if the heaven above me is calm for the pa.s.sing moment." And this tranquillity was perfect, with none of the oppressive sense of coming danger, which distinguishes the calm before a storm. He was far away from the distractions of the world he hated, in a scene of indescribable beauty, among a population little removed from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasures of a race at one with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on the element he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial and well mixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water with Williams, or in solitary musings in his cranky little skiff, floating upon the shallows in sh.o.r.e, or putting out to sea and waiting for the landward breeze to bring him home. The evenings were pa.s.sed upon the terrace, listening to Jane's guitar, conversing with Trelawny, or reading his favourite poets aloud to the a.s.sembled party.

In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, this uninterrupted communion with nature, Sh.e.l.ley's enthusiasms and inspirations revived with their old strength. He began a poem, which, if we may judge of its scale by the fragment we possess, would have been one of the longest, as it certainly is one of the loftiest of his masterpieces. The "Triumph of Life" is composed in no strain of compliment to the powers of this world, which quell untameable spirits, and enslave the n.o.blest by the operation of blind pa.s.sions and inordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant of the spirit dragged in chains, led captive to the world, the flesh and the devil. The sonorous march and sultry splendour of the terza rima stanzas, bearing on their tide of song those mult.i.tudes of forms, processionally grand, yet misty with the dust of their own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robe of light, affect the imagination so powerfully that we are fain to abandon criticism and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of this solemn mystery. Some have compared the "Triumph of Life" to a Panathenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the burning summer heat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of interminable waves, which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The imagery of Dante plays a part, and Dante has controlled the structure. The genius of the Revolution pa.s.ses by: Napoleon is there, and Rousseau serves for guide.

The great of all ages are arraigned, and the spirit of the world is brought before us, while its heroes pa.s.s, unveil their faces for a moment, and are swallowed in the throng that has no ending. But how Sh.e.l.ley meant to solve the problems he has raised, by what sublime philosophy he purposed to resolve the discords of this revelation more soul-shattering than Daniel's "Mene", we cannot even guess. The poem, as we have it, breaks abruptly with these words: "Then what is Life? I cried"--a sentence of the profoundest import, when we remember that the questioner was now about to seek its answer in the halls of Death.

To separate any single pa.s.sage from a poem which owes so much of its splendour to the continuity of music and the succession of visionary images, does it cruel wrong. Yet this must be attempted; for Sh.e.l.ley is the only English poet who has successfully handled that most difficult of metres, terza rima. His power over complicated versification cannot be appreciated except by duly noticing the method he employed in treating a structure alien, perhaps, to the genius of our literature, and even in Italian used with perfect mastery by none but Dante. To select the introduction and part of the first paragraph will inflict less violence upon the "Triumph of Life" as a whole, than to detach one of its episodes.

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.

The smokeless altars of the mountain snows Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, To which the birds tempered their matin lay.

All flowers in field or forest which unclose

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, Swinging their censers in the element, With orient incense lit by the new ray,

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; And, in succession due, did 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.

But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem The cone of night, now they were laid asleep, Stretched my faint limbs beneath the h.o.a.ry stem

Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep Of a green Apennine. Before me fled The night; behind me rose the day; the deep

Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,-- When a strange trance over my fancy grew Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread

Was so transparent that the scene came through As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew

That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn

Under the self-same bough, and heard as there The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.

And then a vision on my brain was rolled.

Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this point one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The "Triumph of Life" itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the terza rima, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimming in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with clinging and r.e.t.a.r.ding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour: yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement.

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenour of my waking dream:-- Methought I sate beside a public way

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro, Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or why He made one of the mult.i.tude, and so

Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky One of the million leaves of summer's bier; Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,

Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear: Some flying from the thing they feared, and some Seeking the object of another's fear;

And others, as with steps towards the tomb, Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, And others mournfully within the gloom

Of their own shadow walked and called it death; And some fled from it as it were a ghost, Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.

But more, with motions which each other crossed, Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,

Upon that path where flowers never grew-- And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew

Out of their mossy cells for ever burst; Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told Of gra.s.sy paths, and wood-lawn interspersed,

With over-arching elms, and caverns cold, And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;--but they Pursued their serious folly as of old.

Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the text, to notice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has been woven in one paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound the pa.s.sing of a mult.i.tude, which is presented at the same time to the eye of fancy by acc.u.mulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presiding genius of the pageant. Students of Petrarch's "Trionfi" will not fail to note what Sh.e.l.ley owes to that poet, and how he has trans.m.u.ted the definite imagery of mediaeval symbolism into something metaphysical and mystic.

And as I gazed, methought that in the way The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June When the south wind shakes the extinguished day;