Page images
PDF
EPUB

to a study that 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. You see that the metaphysical works to which my heart hankers are not numerous in this list. One thing will you take care of for me? that those standard and respectable works on history, &c., be of the cheapest possible editions. With respect to metaphysical works, I am less scrupulous.

"Spinoza you may or may not be able to obtain. Kant is translated into Latin by some Englishman. I would prefer that the Greek classics should have Latin or English versions printed opposite. If not to be obtained thus, they must be sent otherwise.

"Mrs. Shelley is attacking Latin with considerable resolution, and can already read many odes in Horace. She unites with her sister and myself in best wishes to yourself and brother.

"Your very sincere friend,

“P. B. SHELLEY.

"T. Hookham, Esq.,

"15 Bond Street, London."

CHAPTER VI.

POETICAL LABORS AND DOMESTIC SORROWS.

THE poetical element in Shelley's nature that faculty by which we mainly know him, though he himself conceived it to be secondary to his love of logic and metaphysics was now beginning to develop itself more fully and systematically than it had yet done. That he must have felt an intense pleasure in the gradual unfolding of that gorgeous imagination which afterwards produced so many images of almost supernatural loveliness, cannot be doubted; but, at the same time, his keen, critical perceptions detected with remarkable accuracy the faults of his early productions. In writing to Mr. Hookham, during the January of 1813, he says: "My poems will, I fear, little stand the criticism even of friendship. Some of the later ones (it should be recollected that these "later ones" must now be regarded as among the early fruit) "have the merit of conveying a meaning in every word, and all are faithful pictures of my feelings at the time of writing them; but they are in a great measure obscure. One fault they are in

[ocr errors]

disputably exempt from - that of being a volume of fashionable literature. I doubt not but your friendly hand will clip the wings of my Pegasus considerably.”

The early poems of Shelley, however, showed nothing more than the faults incidental to all young writers; and from the midst of their greatest obscurities issued a golden dawn of promise.

But the pursuits of art were always cheerfully abandoned by the poet when any occasion arose for the exercise of his philanthropy, or whenever he conceived himself called upon to vindicate and support an oppressed fellow-struggler for liberty and justice. In the year 1813, one of a series of government prosecutions of the Examiner newspaper, for speaking with more freedom on political topics than rulers at that time would tolerate, ended in the conviction of Messrs. John and Leigh Hunt, who were sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and condemned to pay a fine of 1,000l. Hereupon Shelley wrote from Tanyralt, as follows, to Mr. Hookham:

"MY DEAR SIR,

"February, 1813.

"I AM boiling with indignation at the horrible injustice and tyranny of the sentence pronounced on Hunt and his brother; and it is on this subject that I write to you. Surely the seal of abjectness and slavery is indelibly stamped upon the character of England.

66

Although I do not retract in the slightest degree my wish for a subscription for the widows and children of those poor men hung at York, yet this 1,000l. which the Hunts are sentenced to pay is an affair of more consequence. Hunt is a brave, a good, and an enlightened man. Surely the public, for whom Hunt has done so much, will repay in part the great debt of obligation which they owe the champion of their liberties and virtues; or are they dead, cold, stone-hearted, and insensible-brutalized by centuries of unremitting bondage? How

ever that may be, they surely may be excited into some slight acknowledgment of his merits. Whilst hundreds of thousands are sent to the tyrants of Russia, he pines in a dungeon, far from all that can make life desired.

"Well, I am rather poor at present; but I have 201. which is not immediately wanted. Pray, begin a subscription for the Hunts; put down my name for that sum, and, when I hear that you have complied with my request, I will send it you.* Now, if there are any difficulties in the way of this scheme of ours, for the love of liberty and virtue, overcome them. O, that I might wallow for one night in the Bank of England!

"Queen Mab is finished and transcribed. I am now preparing the notes, which shall be long and philosophical. You will receive it with the other poems. I think that the whole should form one volume; but of that we can speak hereafter.

"As to the French Encyclopédie, it is a book which I am desirous- very desirous-of possessing; and, if you could get me a few months' credit (being at present rather low in cash), I should very much desire to have it.

"My dear sir, excuse the earnestness of the first part of my letter. I feel warmly on this subject, and I flatter myself that, so long as your own independence and liberty remain uncompromised, you are inclined to second my desires.

"P. S.

"Your very sincere friend,

"P. B. SHELLEY.

If no other way can be devised for this subscription, will you take the trouble on yourself of writing an appropriate advertisement for the papers, inserting, by way of stimulant, my subscription?

"On second thoughts, I enclose the 201."

*The Hunts, with a noble magnanimity, for which they long suffered in a worldly point of view, however great might have been the reward of their own consciences, refused to accept any subscription, public or private, and paid the fine entirely out of their own pockets. - ED.

According to Mrs. Shelley, in the collected edition of her husband's works, and to the poet himself, as we shall shortly see, the latter was eighteen when he wrote Queen Mab; but it would appear from the foregoing that it was at least not completed before he was in his twenty-first year. year. He never published it (though at first he designed to do so), but distributed copies amongst his friends. In 1821, however, when Shelley was in Italy, an edition was surreptitiously issued; on which its author applied to Chancery for an injunction to restrain the sale. In addressing the Examiner (under date June 22d) on the subject, he thus spoke of the chief composition of his youth:

the

[ocr errors]

"A poem, entitled Queen Mab, was written by me at of eighteen age I dare say, in a sufficiently intemperate spirit. I have not seen this production 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 subtiler discriminations of metaphysical aud 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." And in a letter to his publisher, Mr. Ollier, dated June 11th, 1821, he uses almost the same words, and speaks of the "villapoem as - in which sweeping condemnation, however,

nous trash"

many readers will disagree with him. He continues: "In the name of poetry, and as you are a bookseller

« PreviousContinue »