CHAPTER X.

THE POET'S LIFE AT PISA AND LEGHORN.

ON the 26th of January, 1820, the Shelleys removed to Pisa. At that city they had friends, and could consult the celebrated physician Vaccà on the subject of the poet's ailments, though they received from him no other advice than to abstain from all medicine, and leave the constitution to right itself. Vaccà was as much puzzled as the other medical men to assign any cause for Shelley's painful symptoms; but, whatever might have been the nature of the complaint, the air of Pisa agreed better with the patient than that of any other place, and it was therefore determined on to remain there. Under the best of circumstances, however, Shelley was never entirely free from pain and ill-health.

In walking, riding, and studying, some months passed pleasantly away. When evening had set in, Shelley, according to his usual custom, would read aloud. A few weeks in the spring were spent at Leghorn, in a villa lent to them by their friends the Gisbornes, who were then absent in England. From this house Shelley addressed his letter in verse to Mrs. Gisborne

a com

position of interwoven grace and humor, uttered in free

and fluent heroic couplet, and containing a lovely picture of the scenery and influences by which the writer was surrounded:

"I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit

Built round dark caverns, even to the root

Of the living stems who feed them; in whose bowers
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers.
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and, borne
In circles quaint and ever-changing dance,
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance,
Pale in the open moonshine; but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,-
A meteor tamed, -
- a fix'd star gone astray
From the silver regions of the Milky Way.

Afar, the Contadino's song is heard,

Rude, but made sweet by distance; and a bird,
Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet

I know none else that sings so sweet as it

At this late hour; - and then all is still."

The date of this poem is July 1st. While staying at the same house, Shelley wrote his divine Ode to a Skylark. The poem was suggested to him one evening by the bird itself, whose song attracted his attention as he was wandering with Mrs. Shelley among lanes shut in by myrtle hedges, and spangled with the erratic glory of the fire-flies.

Being alarmed for the safety of their only child, who was affected by the extreme heat of the summer, the parents left Leghorn in August for the baths of San Giuliano, which are situated four miles from Pisa. The water of the baths soothed the nervous irritability of Shelley, and the time appears to have been very agree

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ably spent, the country being beautiful and the climate brilliant. During some of the hottest days of August,” we read in the notes to the poems, "Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pelegrino a mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the object, during certain days in the year, of many pilgrimages." The undue exertion produced considerable lassitude and weakness in Shelley after his return; yet, in the three days immediately succeeding, he produced that gorgeous fantasy, the Witch of Atlas. He had conceived the idea during his walk. In Mrs. Shelley's Journal, under date "August 25th," is recorded: "Shelley writes Ode to Naples; begins Swellfoot, the Tyrant - suggested by the grunting of the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano, whilst he was reading aloud his Ode to Liberty." He compared this unmusical interruption to "the chorus of frogs in the satiric drama of Aristophanes." The object of Shelley's burlesque was to place in a ludicrous point of view the prosecution of Queen Caroline, which was then going forward; and the pigs were made to serve as chorus. On being finished, it was sent to England, where it was printed and published anonymously; but the Society for the Suppression of Vice, conceiving, in their ultra-sensitiveness, that its subject trenched too much on forbidden ground, threatened to prosecute, and the work was consequently withdrawn.

Several other poems (though none of great length) were written in the same year; among them, that delicate dream, that romance of metaphysical subtlety, finding its

expression in the utmost affluence of fancy and imaginathe Sensitive Plant.

tion

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A singular circumstance brought to a termination the stay of the Shelleys at San Giuliano. "At the foot of our garden," writes Mrs. Shelley, Fran the canal that communicated between the Serchio and the Arno. The Serchio overflowed its banks, and, breaking its bounds, this canal also overflowed. All this part of the country is below the level of its rivers, and the consequence was that it was speedily flooded. The rising waters filled the square of the baths, in the lower part of which our house was situated. The canal overflowed in the garden behind; the rising waters on either side at last burst open the doors, and, meeting in the house, rose to the height of six feet. It was a picturesque sight at night, to see the peasants driving the cattle from the plains below to the hills above the baths. A fire was kept up to guide them across the ford; and the forms of the men and the animals showed in dark relief against the red glare of the flame, which was reflected again in the waters that filled the square."

Driven forth by this local deluge, Shelley and his wife took up their abode for the winter at Pisa, where the extreme mildness of the climate offered a great inducement to them to stay. The dreamy quiet of the halfdepopulated old Republican city, moreover, delighted Shelley; and for the brief remainder of his life he lived for the most part there. Painful experience had taught him and Mrs. Shelley, when contemplating their infant son, to dread the heat in the south of the peninsula ;

though, but for this fear, they would have continued to wander at will, being devoted lovers of travelling.

The appearance of the poet at this time showed a singular mixture of premature age and unusually prolonged youth. He walked with a stoop, and his hair was sprinkled with gray; but, when Mr. Trelawney was introduced to him some time afterwards, he found him looking like "a tall, thin stripling."

Some letters addressed to Mr. Ollier, during the year 1820, illustrate the progress of Shelley's intellectual labors :

"DEAR SIR,

"Pisa, Jan. 20th, 1820.

"I SEND you the Witch of Atlas, a fanciful poem, which, if its merit be measured by the labor which it cost, is worth nothing; and the errata of Prometheus, which I ought to have sent long since-a formidable list, as you will see.

"I have lately, and but lately, received Mr. Gisborne's parcel, with reviews, &c. I request you to convey to Mr. Procter my thanks for the present of his works, as well as for the pleasure which I received from the perusal, especially of the Dramatic Sketches.

"The reviews of my Cenci (though some of them, and especially that marked 'John Scott,' are written with great malignity) on the whole give me as much encouragement as a person of my habits of thinking is capable of receiving from such a source, which is, inasmuch as they coincide with, and confirm, my own decisions. My next attempt (if I should write more) will be a drama, in the composition of which I shall attend to the advice of my critics, to a certain degree. But I doubt whether I shall write more. I could be content either with the Hell or the Paradise of poetry; but the torments of its Purgatory vex me, without exciting my powers sufficiently to put an end to the vexation.