Shelley Part 2

Sh.e.l.ley paid Harriet frequent visits both at Mrs. Fenning's school and at Mount Street, and soon began a correspondence with her, hoping, as he expressly stated in a letter of a later date, by converting her to his theories, to add his sister and her "to the list of the good, the disinterested, the free." At first she seems to have been horrified at the opinions he expressed; but in this case at least he did not overrate the powers of eloquence. With all the earnestness of an evangelist, he preached his gospel of freethought or atheism, and had the satisfaction of forming his young pupil to his views. He does not seem to have felt any serious inclination for Harriet; but in the absence of other friends, he gladly availed himself of her society. Gradually she became more interesting to him, when he heard mysterious accounts of suffering at home and tyranny at school. This was enough to rouse in Sh.e.l.ley the spirit of Quixotic championship, if not to sow the seeds of love. What Harriet's ill-treatment really was, no one has been able to discover; yet she used to affirm that her life at this time was so irksome that she contemplated suicide.

During the summer of 1811, Sh.e.l.ley's movements were more than usually erratic, and his mind was in a state of extraordinary restlessness. In the month of May, a kind of accommodation was come to with his father. He received permission to revisit Field Place, and had an allowance made him of 200_l._ a year. His uncle, Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, was instrumental in effecting this partial reconciliation. Sh.e.l.ley spent some time at his uncle's country house, oscillating between London, Cuckfield, and Field Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying one brief visit to his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in North Wales. This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time saw the scenery of waterfalls and mountains. He was, however, too much preoccupied to take much interest in nature. He was divided between his old affection for Miss Grove, his new but somewhat languid interest in Harriet, and a dearly cherished scheme for bringing about a marriage between his sister Elizabeth and his friend Hogg. The letters written to Hogg at this period (vol. i. pp. 387-418), are exceedingly important and interesting, revealing as they do the perturbation of his feelings and the almost morbid excitement of his mind. Now also appears upon the scene Miss. .h.i.tchener, of whom more will hereafter be recorded. His enthusiasm for this lady was sudden and extravagant. Sh.e.l.ley's correspondence with her offers abundant material for the study of his opinions in early manhood.

Meanwhile his destiny was shaping itself with a rapidity that plunged him suddenly into decisive and irrevocable action. It is of the greatest moment to ascertain precisely what his feelings were during this summer with regard to Harriet. Hogg has printed two letters in immediate juxtaposition: the first without date, the second with the post-mark of Rhayader. Sh.e.l.ley ends the first epistle thus: "Your jokes on Harriet Westbrook amuse me: it is a common error for people to fancy others in their own situation, but if I know anything about love, I am _not_ in love. I have heard from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem." He begins the second with these words: "You will perhaps see me before you can answer this; perhaps not; heaven knows! I shall certainly come to York, but _Harriet Westbrook_ will decide whether now or in three weeks.

Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, by endeavouring to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice: resistance was the answer, at the same time that I essayed to mollify Mr. W. in vain! And in consequence of my advice _she_ has thrown herself upon _my_ protection. I set off for London on Monday. How flattering a distinction!--I am thinking of ten million things at once. What have I said? I declare, quite _ludicrous_. I advised her to resist. She wrote to say that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me, and threw herself upon my protection. We shall have 200_l._ a year; when we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love! Grat.i.tude and admiration, all demand that I should love her _for ever_. We shall see you at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I am now almost convinced. I can get lodgings at York, I suppose. Direct to me at Graham's, 18, Sackville Street, Piccadilly." From a letter recently published by Mr. W. M.

Rossetti (the University Magazine, Feb. 1878), we further learn that Harriet, having fallen violently in love with her preceptor, had avowed her pa.s.sion and flung herself into his arms.

It is clear from these doc.u.ments, first, that Sh.e.l.ley was not deeply in love with Harriet when he eloped with her; secondly, that he was not prepared for the step; thirdly, that she and her relatives induced him to take it; and fourthly, that he took it under a strong impression of her having been ill-treated. She had appealed to his most powerful pa.s.sion, the hatred of tyranny. She had excited his admiration by setting conventions at defiance, and showing her readiness to be his mistress. Her confidence called forth his grat.i.tude. Her choice of him for a protector flattered him: and, moreover, she had acted on his advice to carry resistance _a outrance_. There were many good Sh.e.l.leyan reasons why he should elope with Harriet; but among them all I do not find that spontaneous and unsophisticated feeling which is the substance of enduring love.

In the same series of letters, so incoherently jumbled together by Hogg's carelessness or caprice, Sh.e.l.ley more than once expresses the utmost horror of matrimony. Yet we now find him upon the verge of contracting marriage with a woman whom he did not pa.s.sionately love, and who had offered herself unreservedly to him. It is worth pausing to observe that even Sh.e.l.ley, fearless and uncompromising as he was in conduct, could not at this crisis practise the principles he so eloquently impressed on others. Yet the point of weakness was honourable. It lay in his respect for women in general, and his tender chivalry for the one woman who had cast herself upon his generosity.[5]

"My unfortunate friend Harriet," he writes under date Aug. 15, 1811, from London, whither he had hurried to arrange the affairs of his elopement, "is yet undecided; not with respect to me, but to herself. How much, my dear friend, have I to tell you! In my leisure moments for thought, which since I wrote, have been few, I have considered the important point on which you reprobated my hasty decision. The ties of love and honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenial souls--they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force of power; they are delicate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments of impracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice which the female is called upon to make--these arguments, which you have urged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not that I suppose it to be likely that _I_ shall directly be called upon to evince my attachment to either theory. I am become a perfect convert to matrimony, not from temporizing, but from _your_ arguments; nor, much as I wish to emulate your virtues and liken myself to you, do I regret the prejudices of anti-matrimonialism from your example or a.s.sertion. No. The _one_ argument, which you have urged so often with so much energy; the sacrifice made by the woman, so disproportioned to any which the man can give--this alone may exculpate me, were it a fault, from uninquiring submission to your superior intellect."

Whether Sh.e.l.ley from his own peculiar point of view was morally justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often haunted me.

The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with regard to Harriet, prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how, having found it needful to submit to custom, for his partner's sake, he should have gone on denouncing an inst.i.tution which he recognized in his own practice.

The conclusion seems to be that, though he despised accepted usage, his practical sense was stronger than his theories. In like manner he allowed his children to be baptized.

A letter from Sh.e.l.ley's cousin, Mr. C. H. Grove, gives the details of Harriet's elopement. "When Bysshe finally came to town to elope with Miss Westbrook, he came as usual to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I was his companion on his visits to her, and finally accompanied them early one morning--I forget now the month, or the date, but it might have been September--in a hackney coach to the Green Dragon, in Gracechurch Street, where we remained all day, till the hour when the mail-coaches start, when they departed in the northern mail for York." From York the young couple made their way at once to Edinburgh, where they were married upon the 28th of August, according to the formalities of the Scotch law.

Sh.e.l.ley had now committed that greatest of social crimes in his father's eyes--a _mesalliance_. Supplies and communications were at once cut off from the prodigal; and it appears that Harriet and he were mainly dependent upon the generosity of Captain Pilfold for subsistence. Even Jew Westbrook, much as he may have rejoiced at seeing his daughter wedded to the heir of several thousands a year, b.u.t.toned up his pockets, either because he thought it well to play the part of an injured parent, or because he was not certain about Sh.e.l.ley's expectations. He afterwards made the Sh.e.l.leys an allowance of 200_l._ a year, and early in 1812 Sh.e.l.ley says that he is in receipt of twice that income. Whence we may conclude that both fathers before long relented to the extent of the sum above mentioned.

In spite of temporary impecuniosity, the young people lived happily enough in excellent lodgings in George Street. Hogg, who joined them early in September, has drawn a lively picture of their domesticity. Much of the day was spent in reading aloud; for Harriet, who had a fine voice and excellent lungs, was never happy unless she was allowed to read and comment on her favourite authors. Sh.e.l.ley sometimes fell asleep during the performance of these rites; but when he woke refreshed with slumber, he was no less ready than at Oxford to support philosophical paradoxes with impa.s.sioned and persuasive eloquence. He began to teach Harriet Latin, set her to work upon the translation of a French story by Madame Cottin, and for his own part executed a version of one of Buffon's treatises. The sitting-room was full of books. It was one of Sh.e.l.ley's peculiarities to buy books wherever he went, regardless of their volume or their cost.

These he was wont to leave behind, when the moment arrived for a sudden departure from his temporary abode; so that, as Hogg remarks, a fine library might have been formed from the waifs and strays of his collections scattered over the three kingdoms. This quiet course of life was diversified by short rambles in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and by many episodes related with Hogg's caustic humour. On the whole, the impression left upon the reader's mind is that Sh.e.l.ley and Harriet were very happy together at this period, and that Harriet was a charming and sweet-tempered girl, somewhat too much given to the study of trite ethics, and slightly deficient in sensibility, but otherwise a fit and soothing companion for the poet.

They were not, however, content to remain in Edinburgh. Hogg was obliged to leave that city, in order to resume his law studies at York, and Sh.e.l.ley's programme of life at this period imperatively required the society of his chosen comrade. It was therefore decided that the three friends should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other's company. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloud novels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm the tedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triune felicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice of lodgings. In the second Sh.e.l.ley found himself obliged to take an expensive journey southward, in the fruitless attempt to come to some terms with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Sir Bysshe and Mr. Sh.e.l.ley were anxious to bind the erratic poet down to a settlement of the estates, which, on their own death, would pa.s.s into the latter's absolute control. They suggested numerous arrangements; and not long after the date of Sh.e.l.ley's residence in York, it was proposed to make him an immediate allowance of 2000_l._, if Sh.e.l.ley would but consent to entail the land on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. Sh.e.l.ley recognized the truth that property is a trust far more than a possession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command over labour, such incalculable potentialities of social good or evil, for an unborn being of whose opinions he knew nothing. This is only one among many instances of his readiness to sacrifice ease, comfort, nay, the bare necessities of life, for principle.

On his return to York, Sh.e.l.ley found a new inmate established in their lodgings. The incomparable Eliza, who was henceforth doomed to guide his destinies to an obscure catastrophe, had arrived from London. Harriet believed her sister to be a paragon of beauty, good sense, and propriety.

She obeyed her elder sister like a mother; never questioned her wisdom; and foolishly allowed her to interpose between herself and her husband.

Hogg had been told before her first appearance in the friendly circle that Eliza was "beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; an elegant figure, full of grace; her face was lovely,--dark, bright eyes; jet-black hair, glossy; a crop upon which she bestowed the care it merited,--almost all her time; and she was so sensible, so amiable, so good!" Now let us listen to the account he has himself transmitted of this woman, whom certainly he did not love, and to whom poor Sh.e.l.ley had afterwards but little reason to feel grat.i.tude. "She was older than I had expected, and she looked much older than she was. The lovely face was seamed with the small-pox, and of a dead white, as faces so much marked and scarred commonly are; as white indeed as a ma.s.s of boiled rice, but of a dingy hue, like rice boiled in dirty water. The eyes were dark, but dull, and without meaning; the hair was black and glossy, but coa.r.s.e; and there was the admired crop--a long crop, much like the tail of a horse--a switch tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, and constrained. The beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt, in their utmost perfection, but only in the imagination of her partial young sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called 'Jew Westbrook,' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the dark-eyed daughters of Judah."

This portrait is drawn, no doubt, with an unfriendly hand; and, in Hogg's biography, each of its sarcastic touches is sustained with merciless reiteration, whenever the mention of Eliza's name is necessary. We hear, moreover, how she taught the blooming Harriet to fancy that she was the victim of her nerves, how she checked her favourite studies, and how she ruled the household by continual reference to a Mrs. Grundy of her earlier experience. "What would Miss Warne say?" was as often on her lips, if we may credit Hogg, as the brush and comb were in her hands.

The intrusion of Eliza disturbed the harmony of Sh.e.l.ley's circle; but we know now that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt departure which he made from York with his wife and her sister in November, 1811. It has recently been proved beyond all doubt that Sh.e.l.ley had good cause to resent Hogg's undue familiarity with Harriet; and though he forgave this faithless friend, he felt the necessity of removing his wife from inconvenient surroundings. They quitted York without giving Hogg notice of their projected departure.[6]

The destination of the travellers was Keswick. Here they engaged lodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. At Chesnut Cottage occurred one of those mysterious incidents which perplex Sh.e.l.ley's biographers. He declared he had been attacked one night by a man bent on burglary or murder. Probably Sh.e.l.ley was attracted to the lake country as much by the celebrated men who lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, and the cheapness of its accommodation. He had long entertained an admiration for Southey's poetry, and was now beginning to study Wordsworth and Coleridge. But if he hoped for much companionship with the literary lions of the lakes, he was disappointed. Coleridge was absent, and missed making his acquaintance--a circ.u.mstance he afterwards regretted, saying that he could have been more useful to the young poet and metaphysician than Southey. De Quincey, though he writes ambiguously upon this point, does not seem to have met Sh.e.l.ley. Wordsworth paid him no attention; and though he saw a good deal of Southey, this intimacy changed Sh.e.l.ley's early liking for the man and poet into something like contempt.

It was not likely that the calm methodical student, the mechanical versifier, and the political convert, who had outlived all his earlier illusions, should retain the goodwill of such an Ariel as Sh.e.l.ley, in whose brain _Queen Mab_ was already simmering. Life at Keswick began to be monotonous. It was, however, enlivened by a visit to the Duke of Norfolk's seat, Greystoke. Sh.e.l.ley spent his last guinea on the trip; but though the ladies of his family enjoyed the honour of some days pa.s.sed in ducal hospitalities, the visit was not fruitful of results. The Duke at this time kindly did his best, but without success, to bring about a reconciliation between his old friend, the member for Horsham, and his rebellious son.

Another important incident of the Keswick residence was Sh.e.l.ley's letter to William G.o.dwin, whose work on Political Justice he had studied with unbounded admiration. He never spoke of this book without respect in after-life, affirming that the perusal of it had turned his attention from romances to questions of public utility. The earliest letter dated to G.o.dwin from Keswick, January 3, 1812, is in many respects remarkable, and not the least so as a specimen of self-delineation. He entreats G.o.dwin to become his guide, philosopher, and friend, urging that "if desire for universal happiness has any claim upon your preference," if persecution and injustice suffered in the cause of philanthropy and truth may commend a young man to William G.o.dwin's regard, he is not unworthy of this honour. We who have learned to know the flawless purity of Sh.e.l.ley's aspirations, can refrain from smiling at the big generalities of this epistle. Words which to men made callous by long contact with the world, ring false and wake suspicion, were for Sh.e.l.ley but the natural expression of his most abiding mood. Yet G.o.dwin may be pardoned if he wished to know more in detail of the youth, who sought to cast himself upon his care in all the panoply of phrases about philanthropy and universal happiness.

Sh.e.l.ley's second letter contains an extraordinary mixture of truth willingly communicated, and of curious romance, ill.u.s.trating his tendency to colour facts with the hallucinations of an ardent fancy. Of his sincerity there is, I think, no doubt. He really meant what he wrote; and yet we have no reason to believe the statement that he was twice expelled from Eton for disseminating the doctrines of _Political Justice_, or that his father wished to drive him by poverty to accept a commission in some distant regiment, in order that he might prosecute the _Necessity of Atheism_ in his absence, procure a sentence of outlawry, and so convey the family estates to his younger brother. The embroidery of bare fact with a tissue of imagination was a peculiarity of Sh.e.l.ley's mind; and this letter may be used as a key for the explanation of many strange occurrences in his biography. What he tells G.o.dwin about his want of love for his father, and his inability to learn from the tutors imposed upon him at Eton and Oxford, represents the simple truth. Only from teachers chosen by himself, and recognized as his superiors by his own deliberate judgment, can he receive instruction. To G.o.dwin he resigns himself with the implicit confidence of admiration. G.o.dwin was greatly struck with this letter.

Indeed he must have been "or G.o.d or beast," like the insensible man in Aristotle's _Ethics_, if he could have resisted the devotion of so splendid and high-spirited a nature, poured forth in language at once so vehement and so convincingly sincere. He accepted the responsible post of Sh.e.l.ley's Mentor; and thus began a connexion which proved not only a source of moral support and intellectual guidance to the poet, but was also destined to end in a closer personal tie between the two ill.u.s.trious men.

In his second letter Sh.e.l.ley told G.o.dwin that he was then engaged in writing "An inquiry into the causes of the failure of the French Revolution to benefit mankind," adding, "My plan is that of resolving to lose no opportunity to disseminate truth and happiness." G.o.dwin sensibly replied that Sh.e.l.ley was too young to set himself up as a teacher and apostle: but his pupil did not take the hint. A third letter (Jan. 16, 1812) contains this startling announcement: "In a few days we set off to Dublin. I do not know exactly where, but a letter addressed to Keswick will find me. Our journey has been settled some time. We go princ.i.p.ally _to forward as much as we can_ the Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation." In a fourth letter (Jan. 28, 1812) he informs G.o.dwin that he has already prepared an address to the Catholics of Ireland, and combats the dissuasions of his counsellor with ingenious arguments to prove that his contemplated expedition can do no harm, and may be fruitful of great good.

It appears that for some time past Sh.e.l.ley had devoted his attention to Irish politics. The persecution of Mr. Peter Finnerty, an Irish journalist and editor of _The Press_ newspaper, who had been sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail (between Feb. 7, 1811, and Aug. 7, 1812) for plain speech about Lord Castlereagh, roused his hottest indignation. He published a poem, as yet unrecovered, for his benefit; the proceeds of the sale amounting, it is said, to nearly one hundred pounds.[7] The young enthusiast, who was attempting a philosophic study of the French Revolution, whose heart was glowing with universal philanthropy, and who burned to disseminate truth and happiness, judged that Ireland would be a fitting field for making a first experiment in practical politics. Armed with the MS. of his _Address to the Irish People_,[8] he set sail with Harriet and Eliza on the 3rd of February from Whitehaven. They touched the Isle of Man; and after a very stormy pa.s.sage, which drove them to the north coast of Ireland, and forced them to complete their journey by land, the party reached Dublin travel-worn, but with unabated spirit, on the 12th. Harriet shared her husband's philanthropical enthusiasm. "My wife," wrote Sh.e.l.ley to G.o.dwin, "is the partner of my thoughts and feelings." Indeed, there is abundant proof in both his letters and hers, about this period, that they felt and worked together. Miss Westbrook, meantime, ruled the household; "Eliza keeps our common stock of money for safety in some nook or corner of her dress, but we are not dependent on her, although she gives it out as we want it."

This master-touch of unconscious delineation tells us all we need to know about the domestic party now established in 7, Lower Sackville Street.

Before a week had pa.s.sed, the _Address to the Irish People_ had been printed. Sh.e.l.ley and Harriet immediately engaged their whole energies in the task of distribution. It was advertised for sale; but that alone seemed insufficient. On the 27th of February Sh.e.l.ley wrote to a friend in England: "I have already sent 400 of my Irish pamphlets into the world, and they have excited a sensation of wonder in Dublin. Eleven hundred yet remain for distribution. Copies have been sent to sixty public-houses....

Expectation is on the tiptoe. I send a man out every day to distribute copies, with instructions where and how to give them. His account corresponds with the mult.i.tudes of people who possess them. I stand at the balcony of our window and watch till I see a man _who looks likely_. I throw a book to him."

A postscript to this letter lets us see the propaganda from Harriet's point of view. "I am sure you would laugh were you to see us give the pamphlets. We throw them out of window, and give them to men that we pa.s.s in the streets. For myself, I am ready to die of laughter when it is done, and Percy looks so grave. Yesterday he put one into a woman's hood of a cloak."

The purpose of this address was to rouse the Irish people to a sense of their real misery, to point out that Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation and a Repeal of the Union Act were the only radical remedies for their wrongs, and to teach them the spirit in which they should attempt a revolution. On the last point Sh.e.l.ley felt intensely. The whole address aims at the inculcation of a n.o.ble moral temper, tolerant, peaceful, resolute, rational, and self-denying. Considered as a treatise on the principles which should govern patriots during a great national crisis, the doc.u.ment is admirable: and if the inhabitants of Dublin had been a population of Sh.e.l.leys, its effect might have been permanent and overwhelming. The mistake lay in supposing that a people whom the poet himself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the scale of intellectual being than the oyster," were qualified to take the remedy of their grievances into their own hands, or were amenable to such sound reasoning as he poured forth. He told G.o.dwin that he had "wilfully vulgarized the language of this pamphlet, in order to reduce the remarks it contains to the taste and comprehension of the Irish peasantry." A few extracts will enable the reader to judge how far he had succeeded in this aim. I select such as seem to me most valuable for the light they throw upon his own opinions.

"All religions are good which make men good; and the way that a person ought to prove that his method of worshipping G.o.d is best, is for himself to be better than all other men." "A Protestant is my brother, and a Catholic is my brother." "Do not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a heathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, if he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much a believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a rascal, and a knave." "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime to be intolerant." "Anything short of unlimited toleration and complete charity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ princ.i.p.ally insisted, is wrong." "Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient.... Think and talk and discuss.... Be free and be happy, but first be wise and good." Proceeding to recommend the formation of a.s.sociations, he condemns secret and violent societies; "Be fair, open, and you will be terrible to your enemies." "Habits of SOBRIETY, REGULARITY, and THOUGHT must be entered into and firmly resolved upon." Then follow precepts, which Sh.e.l.ley no doubt regarded as practical, for the purification of private morals, and the regulation of public discussion by the ma.s.ses whom he elsewhere recognized as "thousands huddled together, one ma.s.s of animated filth."

The foregoing extracts show that Sh.e.l.ley was in no sense an inflammatory demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed. We find in them, moreover, the germs of _The Revolt of Islam_, where the hero plays the part successfully in fiction, which the poet had attempted without appreciable result in practice at Dublin. The same principles guided Sh.e.l.ley at a still later period. When he wrote his _Masque of Anarchy_, he bade the people of England to a.s.semble by thousands, strong in the truth and justice of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposition to force.

While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of Dublin, Sh.e.l.ley was engaged in preparing a second pamphlet on the subject of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation. It was ent.i.tled _Proposals for an a.s.sociation_, and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the formation of a vast society, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ireland together, for the recovery of their rights. In estimating Sh.e.l.ley's political sagacity, it must be remembered that Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation has since his day been brought about by the very measure he proposed and under the conditions he foresaw.

Speaking of the English Government in his Address, he used these simple phrases:--"It wants altering and mending. It will be mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to the Irish." These sentences were prophetic; and perhaps they are destined to be even more so.

With a view to presenting at one glance Sh.e.l.ley's position as a practical politician, I shall antic.i.p.ate the course of a few years, and compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under the t.i.tle of _A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom_. He saw that the House of Commons did not represent the country; and acting upon his principle that government is the servant of the governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of the nation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collective opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was that a huge network of committees should be formed, and that by their means every individual man should be canva.s.sed. We find here the same method of advancing reform by peaceable a.s.sociations as in Ireland. How moderate were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is proved by the following sentence:-"With respect to Universal Suffrage, I confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think that none but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum in _direct taxes_ ought at present to send members to Parliament." As in the case of Ireland, so in that of England, subsequent events have shown that Sh.e.l.ley's hopes were not exaggerated.

While the Sh.e.l.leys were in Dublin, a meeting of the Irish Catholics was announced for the evening of Feb. 28. It was held in Fishamble Street Theatre; and here Sh.e.l.ley made his _debut_ as an orator. He spoke for about an hour; and his speech was, on the whole, well received, though it raised some hisses at the beginning by his remarks upon Roman Catholicism.

There is no proof that Sh.e.l.ley, though eloquent in conversation, was a powerful public speaker. The somewhat conflicting accounts we have received of this, his maiden effort, tend to the impression that he failed to carry his audience with him. The dissemination of his pamphlets had, however, raised considerable interest in his favour; and he was welcomed by the press as an Englishman of birth and fortune, who wished well to the Irish cause. His youth told somewhat against him. It was difficult to take the strong words of the beardless boy at their real value; and as though to aggravate this drawback, his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, an efficient agent in the dissemination of the Address, affirmed that his master was fifteen--four years less than his real age.

In Dublin Sh.e.l.ley made acquaintance with Curran, whose jokes and dirty stories he could not appreciate, and with a Mr. Lawless, who began a history of the Irish people in concert with the young philosopher. We also obtain, from one of Harriet's letters, a somewhat humorous peep at another of their friends, a patriotic Mrs. Nugent, who supported herself by working in a furrier's shop, and who is described as "sitting in the room now, and talking to Percy about Virtue." After less than two months'

experience of his Irish propaganda, Sh.e.l.ley came to the conclusion that he "had done all that he could." The population of Dublin had not risen to the appeal of their Laon with the rapidity he hoped for; and accordingly upon the 4th of April he once more embarked with his family for Holyhead.

In after-days it was hinted that the police had given him warning that it would be well for him to leave Dublin; but, though the danger of a prosecution was not wholly visionary, this intimation does not seem to have been made. Before he quitted Ireland, however, he despatched a box containing the remaining copies of his _Address_ and _Proposals_, together with the recently printed edition of another manifesto, called a _Declaration of Rights_, to a friend in Suss.e.x. This box was delayed at the Holyhead custom-house, and opened. Its contents gave serious anxiety to the Surveyor of Customs, who communicated the astonishing discovery through the proper official channels to the government. After some correspondence, the authorities decided to take no steps against Sh.e.l.ley, and the box was forwarded to its destination.

The friend in question was a Miss Eliza Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint, who kept a sort of school, and who had attracted Sh.e.l.ley's favourable notice by her advanced political and religious opinions. Though he had barely made her personal acquaintance, his correspondence with this lady, still fortunately extant, was enthusiastic and voluminous. How recklessly he entered into serious entanglements with people whom he had not learned to know, may be gathered from these extracts:--"We will meet you in Wales, and never part again. It will not do. In compliance with Harriet's earnest solicitations, I entreated you instantly to come and join our circle, resign your school, all, everything for us and the Irish cause." "I ought to count myself a favoured mortal with such a wife and such a friend."

Harriet addressed this lady as "Portia;" and it is an undoubted fact that soon after their return to England, Miss. .h.i.tchener formed one of their permanent family circle. Her entrance into it and her exit from it at no very distant period are, however, both obscure. Before long she acquired another name than Portia in the Sh.e.l.ley household, and now she is better known to fame as the "Brown Demon." Eliza Westbrook took a strong dislike to her; Harriet followed suit; and Sh.e.l.ley himself found that he had liked her better at a distance than in close companionship. She had at last to be bought off or bribed to leave.

The scene now shifts with bewildering frequency; nor is it easy to trace the Sh.e.l.leys in their rapid flight. About the 21st of April, they settled for a short time at Nantgwilt, near Rhayader, in North Wales. Ere long we find them at Lynmouth on the Somersetshire coast. Here Sh.e.l.ley continued his political propaganda, by circulating the _Declaration of Rights_, whereof mention has already been made. It was, as Mr. W. M. Rossetti first pointed out, a manifesto concerning the ends of government and the rights of man,--framed in imitation of two similar French Revolutionary doc.u.ments, issued by the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly in August, 1789, and by Robespierre in April, 1793.[9] Sh.e.l.ley used to seal this pamphlet in bottles and set it afloat upon the sea, hoping perhaps that after this wise it would traverse St. George's Channel and reach the sacred soil of Erin. He also employed his servant, Daniel Hill, to distribute it among the Somersetshire farmers. On the 19th of August this man was arrested in the streets of Barnstaple, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment for uttering a seditious pamphlet; and the remaining copies of the _Declaration of Rights_ were destroyed. In strong contrast with the puerility of these proceedings, is the grave and lofty _Letter to Lord Ellenborough_, composed at Lynmouth, and printed at Barnstaple.[10] A printer, named D. J. Eaton, had recently been sentenced to imprisonment by his Lordship for publishing the Third Part of Paine's _Age of Reason_.

Sh.e.l.ley's epistle is an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and the freedom of the intellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance of legal tyranny which occasioned its composition, and treating it with philosophic, if impa.s.sioned seriousness.

An extract from this composition will serve to show his power of handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty. I have chosen a pa.s.sage bearing on his theological opinions:--

Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is capable of altering them, is to degrade G.o.d into man, and to annex to this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible definition of his nature.

It may be here objected: Ought not the Creator to possess the perfections of the creature? No. To attribute to G.o.d the moral qualities of man, is to suppose him susceptible of pa.s.sions, which arising out of corporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot possess.... But even suppose, with the vulgar, that G.o.d is a venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various pa.s.sions, a.n.a.logous to those of humanity, his will changeable and uncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice are qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that he disapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities. Persecution for opinion is unjust. With what consistency, then, can the worshippers of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of their fellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from those which they entertain? Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutors who worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would alone act consonantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in his name.

Sh.e.l.ley had more than once urged G.o.dwin and his family to visit him. The sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season.

Accordingly he travelled by coach through Bristol and Chepstow to Lynmouth, where he found that the Sh.e.l.leys had flitted a few days previously without giving any notice. This fruitless journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following year to Dublin with a similar result. The Sh.e.l.leys were now established at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to Mr. W. A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had reclaimed a considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it with an embankment. Sh.e.l.ley, whose interest in the poor people around him was always keen and practical, lost no time in making their acquaintance at Tremadoc. The work of utility carried out by his landlord aroused his enthusiastic admiration; and when the embankment was emperilled by a heavy sea, he got up a subscription for its preservation. Heading the list with 100_l._, how raised, or whether paid, we know not, he endeavoured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, and even ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the same purpose with the Duke of Norfolk. On this occasion he made the personal acquaintance of the G.o.dwin family.

Life at Tanyrallt was smooth and studious, except for the diversion caused by the peril to the embankment. We hear of Harriet continuing her Latin studies, reading Odes of Horace, and projecting an epistle in that language to Hogg. Sh.e.l.ley, as usual, collected many books around him.

There are letters extant in which he writes to London for Spinoza and Kant, Plato, and the works of the chief Greek historians. It appears that at this period, under the influence of G.o.dwin, he attempted to conquer a strong natural dislike for history. "I am determined to apply myself to a study which is hateful and disgusting to my very soul, but which is above all studies necessary for him who would be listened to as a mender of antiquated abuses,--I mean, that record of crimes and miseries--history."

Although he may have made an effort to apply himself to historical reading, he was not successful. His true bias inclined him to metaphysics coloured by a glowing fancy, and to poetry penetrated with speculative enthusiasm. In the historic sense he was deficient; and when he made a serious effort at a later period to compose a tragedy upon the death of Charles I., this work was taken up with reluctance, continued with effort, and finally abandoned.

In the same letters he speaks about a collection of short poems on which he was engaged, and makes frequent allusions to _Queen Mab_. It appears from his own a.s.sertion, and from Medwin's biography, that a poem on Queen Mab had been projected and partially written by him at the early age of eighteen. But it was not taken seriously in hand until the spring of 1812; nor was it finished and printed before 1813. The first impression was a private issue of 250 copies, on fine paper, which Sh.e.l.ley distributed to people whom he wished to influence. It was pirated soon after its appearance, and again in 1821 it was given to the public by a bookseller named Clarke. Against the latter republication Sh.e.l.ley energetically protested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to _The Examiner_, from Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a production which he had not even seen for several years. "I doubt not but that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political, and domestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not so much from literary vanity as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to serve the sacred cause of freedom." This judgment is undoubtedly severe; but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, like all Sh.e.l.ley's criticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. We cannot include _Queen Mab_, in spite of its sonorous rhetoric and fervid declamation, in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a _succes de scandale_ on its first appearance, and fatally injured Sh.e.l.ley's reputation. As a work of art it lacks maturity and permanent vitality.

The Sh.e.l.leys were suddenly driven away from Tanyrallt by a mysterious occurrence, of which no satisfactory explanation has yet been given.

According to letters written by himself and Harriet soon after the event, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, Sh.e.l.ley was twice attacked upon the night of Feb. 26, by an armed ruffian, with whom he struggled in a hand-to-hand combat. Pistols were fired and windows broken, and Sh.e.l.ley's nightgown was shot through: but the a.s.sa.s.sin made his escape from the house without being recognized. His motive and his personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair was a figment of Sh.e.l.ley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible by laudanum taken to a.s.suage intense physical pain; whether it was a perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of no unfrequent occurrence in Sh.e.l.ley's biography. In estimating the relative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne in mind, on the one hand, that no one but Sh.e.l.ley, who was alone in the parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his pistols on the evening before the alleged a.s.sault, professed to have seen the villain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, and confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, are too circ.u.mstantial to be lightly set aside.

On the whole it appears most probable that Sh.e.l.ley on this night was the subject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his enemies at Tanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate his escape from the neighbourhood without paying his bills, may be dismissed. But no investigation on the spot could throw any clear light on the circ.u.mstance, and Sh.e.l.ley's friends, Hogg, Peac.o.c.k, and Mr. Madocks, concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion.

There was no money in the common purse of the Sh.e.l.leys at this moment. In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, a London publisher, who sent them enough to carry them across the Irish Channel. After a short residence in 35, Cuffe Street, Dublin, and a flying visit to Killarney, they returned to London. Eliza, for some reason as unexplained as the whole episode of this second visit to Ireland, was left behind for a short season. The flight from Tanyrallt closes the first important period of Sh.e.l.ley's life; and his settlement in London marks the beginning of another, fruitful of the gravest consequences and decisive for his future.

CHAPTER IV.