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Title: The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley [Vol. II of II]
Author: Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Language: English
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BYSSHE SHELLEY [VOL. II OF II] ***
SHELLEY’S PROSE WORKS
VOL. II.
_In Five Volumes, crown 8vo, cloth boards_, 3s. 6d. _each_.
THE COMPLETE WORKS IN VERSE AND PROSE OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
Edited, Prefaced, and Annotated by
RICHARD HERNE SHEPHERD.
=Poetical Works=, in Three Volumes.
Vol. I. Introduction by the Editor; Posthumous Fragments
of Margaret Nicholson; Shelley’s Correspondence with
Stockdale; The Wandering Jew (the only complete version);
Queen Mab, with the Notes; Alastor, and other Poems;
Rosalind and Helen; Prometheus Unbound; Adonais, &c.
Vol. II. Laon and Cythna (as originally published,
instead of the emasculated “Revolt of Islam”); The Cenci;
Julian and Maddalo (from Shelley’s manuscript); Swellfoot
the Tyrant (from the copy in the Dyce Library at South
Kensington); The Witch of Atlas; Epipsychidion; Hellas.
Vol. III. Posthumous Poems, published by Mrs. Shelley
in 1824 and 1839; The Masque of Anarchy (from Shelley’s
manuscript); and other pieces not brought together in the
ordinary editions.
=Prose Works=, in Two Volumes.
Vol. I. The two Romances of Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne; the
Dublin and Marlow Pamphlets; A Refutation of Deism; Letters
to Leigh Hunt, and some Minor Writings and Fragments.
Vol. II. Essays: Letters from Abroad; Translations and
Fragments, edited by Mrs. Shelley, and first published
in 1840, with the addition of some Minor Pieces of great
interest and rarity, including one recently discovered by
Professor Dowden. With a Bibliography of Shelley, and an
exhaustive Index of the Prose Works.
CHATTO & WINDUS, 111 St. Martin’s Lane W.C.
THE PROSE WORKS
OF
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
_FROM THE ORIGINAL EDITIONS_
EDITED, PREFACED, AND ANNOTATED
BY
RICHARD HERNE SHEPHERD
_IN TWO VOLUMES_
VOL. II
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1897
_Printed by_ Ballantyne, Hanson & Co
_At the Ballantyne Press_
[Decoration]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A DEFENCE OF POETRY 1
ESSAY ON THE LITERATURE, THE ARTS,
AND THE MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS 39
ON THE SYMPOSIUM 48
THE BANQUET 51
ION; OR, OF THE ILIAD 114
MENEXENUS; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION 132
FRAGMENTS FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO 136
ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO 145
THE ASSASSINS 147
ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH 167
ON LIFE 174
ON A FUTURE STATE 180
SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS:--
_The Mind_ 186
_What Metaphysics are.
Errors in the usual Methods of Considering them_ 189
_Difficulty of Analysing the Human Mind_ 190
_How the Analysis should be carried on_ 191
_Catalogue of the Phenomena of Dreams,
as connecting Sleeping and Waking_ 191
FRAGMENTS:--
_Speculations on Morals_:--
_Plan of a Treatise on Morals_ 194
_On the Nature of Virtue_ 196
_Benevolence_ 197
_Justice_ 201
_Moral Science consists in considering the Difference,
not the Resemblance, of Persons_ 204
GHOST STORIES 208
_Fragment from Journal_ 215
LETTERS FROM ITALY:--
_To Thomas Love Peacock_ 221
_To the Same_ 223
_To the Same_ 227
_To the Same_ 228
_To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne_ 229
_To William Godwin_ 231
_To Mrs. Shelley_ 233
_To the Same_ 236
_To the Same_ 239
_To Thomas Love Peacock_ 241
_To the Same_ 244
_To the Same_ 249
_To the Same_ 255
_To the Same_ 259
_To the Same_ 268
_To the Same_ 277
_To the Same_ 286
_To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne_ 290
_To Thomas Love Peacock_ 291
_To Leigh Hunt_ 294
_To Mrs. Gisborne_ 296
_To Henry Reveley_ 299
_To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne_ 301
_To the Same_ 302
_To Mrs. Gisborne_ 305
_To Mr. John Gisborne_ 307
_To Henry Reveley_ 309
_To the Same_ 311
_To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne_ 312
_To Mr. John Gisborne_ 313
_To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne_ 314
_To the Same_ 314
_To the Same_ 315
_To the Same_ 317
_To Mrs. Shelley_ 319
_To the Same_ 321
_To the Editor of the “Quarterly Review”_ 322
_To Mr. John Gisborne_ 324
_To Henry Reveley_ 325
_To the Same_ 326
_To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne_ 326
_To Mr. John Gisborne_ 327
_To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne_ 329
_To the Same_ 329
_To Mrs. Shelley_ 330
_To the Same_ 331
_To the Same_ 332
_To the Same_ 334
_To the Same_ 341
_To Mrs. Shelley_ 342
_To the Same_ 342
_To Horatio Smith_ 347
_To Mr. John Gisborne_ 350
_To the Same_ 352
_To ----_ 356
_To Mrs. Shelley_ 358
_To Horatio Smith_ 359
_To ----_ 361
_To Mrs. Williams_ 363
_To Mrs. Shelley_ 363
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS AND LETTERS:--
_A Letter to Lord Ellenborough_ 369
_Prince Alexy Haimatoff_ 387
THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SHELLEY 397
INDEX TO THE PROSE WORKS 405
[Decoration]
A DEFENCE OF POETRY.
According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action,
which are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered
as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another,
however produced; and the latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts
so as to colour them with its own light, and composing from them,
as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the
principle of its own integrity. The one is the τὸ ποιειν, or the
principle of synthesis, and has for its object those forms which are
common to universal nature and existence itself; the other is the
τὸ λογιζειν, or principle of analysis, and its action regards the
relations of things simply as relations; considering thoughts, not in
their integral unity, but as the algebraical representations which
conduct to certain general results. Reason is the enumeration of
quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of
those quantities, both separately and as a whole. Reason respects the
differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to
imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit,
as the shadow to the substance.
Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be “the expression of the
imagination:” and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an
instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions
are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an
Æolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody.
But there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps within
all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in a lyre, and produces
not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds
and motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. It is
as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions of that
which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound; even as the
musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child
at play by itself will express its delight by its voice and motions;
and every inflexion of tone and gesture will bear exact relation to a
corresponding anti-type in the pleasurable impressions which awakened
it; it will be the reflected image of that impression; and as the lyre
trembles and sounds after the wind has died away, so the child seeks,
by prolonging in its voice and motions the duration of the effect, to
prolong also a consciousness of the cause. In relation to the objects
which delight a child, these expressions are what poetry is to higher
objects. The savage (for the savage is to ages what the child is to
years) expresses the emotions produced in him by surrounding objects in
a similar manner; and language and gesture, together with plastic or
pictorial imitation, become the image of the combined effect of those
objects and his apprehension of them. Man in society, with all his
passions and his pleasures, next becomes the object of the passions and
pleasures of man; an additional class of emotions produces an augmented
treasure of expression; and language, gesture, and the imitative arts
become at once the representation and the medium, the pencil and the
picture, the chisel and the statue, the chord and the harmony. The
social sympathies, or those laws from which as from its elements
society results, begin to develop themselves from the moment that two
human beings coexist; the future is contained within the present as
the plant within the seed; and equality, diversity, unity, contrast,
mutual dependence, become the principles alone capable of affording the
motives according to which the will of a social being is determined to
action, inasmuch as he is social; and constitute pleasure in sensation,
virtue in sentiment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love in the
intercourse of kind. Hence men, even in the infancy of society, observe
a certain order in their words and actions, distinct from that of the
objects and the impressions represented by them, all expression being
subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. But let us dismiss
those more general considerations which might involve an inquiry into
the principles of society itself, and restrict our view to the manner
in which the imagination is expressed upon its forms.
In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural
objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm
or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the
same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song,
in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of
natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to
each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer
and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any
other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called
taste by modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art, observes
an order which approximates more or less closely to that from which
this highest delight results: but the diversity is not sufficiently
marked, as that its gradations should be sensible, except in those
instances where the predominance of this faculty of approximation
to the beautiful (for so we may be permitted to name the relation
between this highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in
whom it exists to excess are poets, in the most universal sense of
the word; and the pleasure resulting from the manner in which they
express the influence of society or nature upon their own minds,
communicates itself to others, and gathers a sort of reduplication
from the community. Their language is vitally metaphorical; that is,
it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates
their apprehension, until words, which represent them, become, through
time, signs for portions or classes of thought, instead of pictures
of integral thoughts; and then, if no new poets should arise to
create afresh the associations which have been thus disorganised,
language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse.
These similitudes or relations are finely said by Bacon to be “the
same footsteps of nature impressed upon the various subjects of the
world;”[1]--and he considers the faculty which perceives them as
the storehouse of axioms common to all knowledge. In the infancy of
society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is
poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful,
in a word, the good which exists in the relation subsisting, first
between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and
expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself
the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the
distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely
the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry.
But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order,
are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and
architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors
of laws and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the
arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity
with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the
agencies of the invisible world which is called religion. Hence all
original religions are allegorical or susceptible of allegory, and,
like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to
the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were
called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators or prophets: a
poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not
only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws
according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds
the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower
and the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets
in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as
surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence
of superstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy,
rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in
the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his
conceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammatical forms
which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons, and
the distinction of place, are convertible with respect to the highest
poetry without injuring it as poetry; and the choruses of Æschylus, and
the book of Job, and Dante’s _Paradiso_, would afford, more than any
other writings, examples of this fact, if the limits of this essay did
not forbid citation. The creations of sculpture, painting, and music,
are illustrations still more decisive.
Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action, are
all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called poetry
by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym of
the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those
arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are
created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within
the invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself
of language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and
passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various
and delicate combinations, than colour, form, or motion, and is more
plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the
creation. For language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination, and
has relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments,
and conditions of art, have relations among each other, which limit and
interpose between conception and expression. The former is as a mirror
which reflects, the latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the light of
which both are mediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors,
painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great
masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have
employed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never
equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term; as two
performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar
and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders of religion, so long
as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the
restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a question, whether, if we
deduct the celebrity which their flattery of the gross opinions of the
vulgar usually conciliates, together with that which belonged to them
in their higher character of poets, any excess will remain.
We have thus circumscribed the word poetry within the limits of that
art which is the most familiar and the most perfect expression of
the faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make the circle
still narrower, and to determine the distinction between measured and
unmeasured language; for the popular division into prose and verse is
inadmissible in accurate philosophy.
Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and
towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of
those relations has always been found connected with a perception of
the order of the relations of thought. Hence the language of poets
has ever affected a sort of uniform and harmonious recurrence of
sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less
indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words
themselves, without reference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity
of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that
you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as
seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a
poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no
flower--and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.
An observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of harmony in
the language of poetical minds, together with its relation to music,
produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony
and language. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should
accommodate his language to this traditional form, so that the harmony,
which is its spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed convenient
and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such composition as
includes much action: but every great poet must inevitably innovate
upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his
peculiar versification. The distinction between poets and prose-writers
is a vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and poets
has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet--the truth and
splendour of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most
intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the harmony of
the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle
a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forbore
to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include, under
determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to
imitate the cadence of his periods, but with little success. Bacon
was a poet.[2] His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which
satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his
philosophy satisfies the intellect; it is a strain which distends, and
then bursts the circumference of the reader’s mind, and pours itself
forth together with it into the universal element with which it has
perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutions in opinion are not
only necessarily poets as they are inventors, nor even as their words
unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in
the life of truth; but as their periods are harmonious and rhythmical,
and contain in themselves the elements of verse; being the echo of
the eternal music. Nor are those supreme poets, who have employed
traditional forms of rhythm on account of the form and action of their
subjects, less capable of perceiving and teaching the truth of things,
than those who have omitted that form. Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton
(to confine ourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of the very
loftiest power.
A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There
is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a
catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connexion than time,
place, circumstance, cause, and effect; the other is the creation
of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as
existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all
other minds. The one is partial, and applies only to a definite period
of time, and a certain combination of events which can never again
recur; the other is universal, and contains within itself the germ of
a relation to whatever motives or actions have place in the possible
varieties of human nature. Time, which destroys the beauty and the use
of the story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should
invest them, augments that of poetry, and for ever develops new and
wonderful applications of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence
epitomes have been called the moths of just history; they eat out the
poetry of it. A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures
and distorts that which should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which
makes beautiful that which is distorted.
The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition
as a whole being a poem. A single sentence may be considered as a
whole, though it may be found in the midst of a series of unassimilated
portions; a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable
thought. And thus all the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy,
were poets; and although the plan of these writers, especially that
of Livy, restrained them from developing this faculty in its highest
degree, they made copious and ample amends for their subjection, by
filling all the interstices of their subjects with living images.
Having determined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us proceed to
estimate its effects upon society.
Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits upon which it
falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its
delight. In the infancy of the world, neither poets themselves nor
their auditors are fully aware of the excellence of poetry: for it acts
in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness;
and it is reserved for future generations to contemplate and measure
the mighty cause and effect in all the strength and splendour of
their union. Even in modern times, no living poet ever arrived at the
fulness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet,
belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers: it
must be empannelled by time from the selectest of the wise of many
generations. A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings
to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men
entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are
moved and softened, yet know not whence or why. The poems of Homer
and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were
the elements of that social system which is the column upon which
all succeeding civilisation has reposed. Homer embodied the ideal
perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those
who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to
Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses: the truth and beauty of friendship,
patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled
to their depths in these immortal creations: the sentiments of the
auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such
great and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and
from imitation they identified themselves with the objects of their
admiration. Nor let it be objected, that these characters are remote
from moral perfection, and that they are by no means to be considered
as edifying patterns for general imitation. Every epoch, under names
more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors; Revenge is the
naked idol of the worship of a semibarbarous age; and Self-deceit is
the veiled image of unknown evil, before which luxury and satiety lie
prostrate. But a poet considers the vices of his contemporaries as the
temporary dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and which cover
without concealing the eternal proportions of their beauty. An epic or
dramatic personage is understood to wear them around his soul, as he
may the ancient armour or modern uniform around his body; whilst it is
easy to conceive a dress more graceful than either. The beauty of the
internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture,
but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very
disguise, and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it
is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves
through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of the
highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in
its naked truth and splendour; and it is doubtful whether the alloy of
costume, habit, &c., be not necessary to temper this planetary music
for mortal ears.
The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests upon
a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the
moral improvement of man. Ethical science arranges the elements which
poetry has created, and propounds schemes and proposes examples of
civil and domestic life: nor is it for want of admirable doctrines that
men hate, and despise, and censure, and deceive, and subjugate one
another. But poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and
enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand
unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from
the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if
they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the
impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the
minds of those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of that
gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and
actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals is love; or
a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with
the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively;
he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the
pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great
instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to
the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference
of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new
delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their
own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and
interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens
the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same
manner as exercise strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do ill to
embody his own conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those
of his place and time, in his poetical creations, which participate
in neither. By this assumption of the inferior office of interpreting
the effect, in which perhaps after all he might acquit himself but
imperfectly, he would resign a glory in the participation of the cause.
There was little danger that Homer, or any of the eternal poets, should
have so far misunderstood themselves as to have abdicated this throne
of their widest dominion. Those in whom the poetical faculty, though
great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have
frequently affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is
diminished in exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to
advert to this purpose.
Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a certain interval by the
dramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who flourished contemporaneously
with all that is most perfect in the kindred expressions of the
poetical faculty; architecture, painting, music, the dance, sculpture,
philosophy, and we may add, the forms of civil life. For although the
scheme of Athenian society was deformed by many imperfections which
the poetry existing in chivalry and Christianity has erased from the
habits and institutions of modern Europe; yet never at any other
period has so much energy, beauty and virtue, been developed; never was
blind strength and stubborn form so disciplined and rendered subject
to the will of man, or that will less repugnant to the dictates of
the beautiful and the true, as during the century which preceded the
death of Socrates. Of no other epoch in the history of our species
have we records and fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the
divinity in man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, and in
language, which has rendered this epoch memorable above all others,
and the storehouse of examples to everlasting time. For written poetry
existed at that epoch simultaneously with the other arts, and it is an
idle inquiry to demand which gave and which received the light, which
all, as from a common focus, have scattered over the darkest periods of
succeeding time. We know no more of cause and effect than a constant
conjunction of events: poetry is ever found to co-exist with whatever
other arts contribute to the happiness and perfection of man. I appeal
to what has already been established to distinguish between the cause
and the effect.
It was at the period here adverted to, that the drama had its birth;
and however a succeeding writer may have equalled or surpassed those
few great specimens of the Athenian drama which have been preserved
to us, it is indisputable that the art itself never was understood
or practised according to the true philosophy of it, as at Athens.
For the Athenians employed language, action, music, painting, the
dance, and religious institutions, to produce a common effect in the
representation of the highest idealisms of passion and of power; each
division in the art was made perfect in its kind by artists of the
most consummate skill, and was disciplined into a beautiful proportion
and unity one towards the other. On the modern stage a few only of the
elements capable of expressing the image of the poet’s conception
are employed at once. We have tragedy without music and dancing; and
music and dancing without the highest impersonations of which they
are the fit accompaniment, and both without religion and solemnity.
Religious institution has indeed been usually banished from the
stage. Our system of divesting the actor’s face of a mask, on which
the many expressions appropriated to his dramatic character might be
moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favourable
only to a partial and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but
a monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great
master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy
with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is
undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should
be as in King Lear, universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the
intervention of this principle which determines the balance in favour
of King Lear against the Œdipus Tyrannus or the Agamemnon, or, if you
will, the trilogies with which they are connected; unless the intense
power of the choral poetry, especially that of the latter, should be
considered as restoring the equilibrium. King Lear, if it can sustain
this comparison, may be judged to be the most perfect specimen of the
dramatic art existing in the world; in spite of the narrow conditions
to which the poet was subjected by the ignorance of the philosophy
of the drama which has prevailed in modern Europe. Calderon, in his
religious Autos, has attempted to fulfil some of the high conditions
of dramatic representation neglected by Shakespeare; such as the
establishing a relation between the drama and religion, and the
accommodating them to music and dancing; but he omits the observation
of conditions still more important, and more is lost than gained by the
substitution of the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a
distorted superstition for the living impersonations of the truth of
human passions.
But I digress.--The connexion of scenic exhibitions with the
improvement or corruption of the manners of men, has been universally
recognised: in other words, the presence or absence of poetry, in
its most perfect and universal form, has been found to be connected
with good and evil in conduct or habit. The corruption which has been
imputed to the drama as an effect, begins, when the poetry employed in
its constitution ends: I appeal to the history of manners whether the
periods of the growth of the one and the decline of the other have not
corresponded with an exactness equal to any example of moral cause and
effect.
The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have approached to its
perfection, ever co-existed with the moral and intellectual greatness
of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian poets are as mirrors in which
the spectator beholds himself, under a thin disguise of circumstance,
stript of all but that ideal perfection and energy which every one
feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, admires, and
would become. The imagination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains
and passions so mighty, that they distend in their conception the
capacity of that by which they are conceived, the good affections are
strengthened by pity, indignation, terror and sorrow; and an exalted
calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into
the tumult of familiar life: even crime is disarmed of half its horror
and all its contagion by being represented as the fatal consequence
of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of its
wilfulness; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their
choice. In the drama of the highest order there is little food for
censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.
Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon
that which it resembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express
poetry, is a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the
brightest rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the
simplicity of these elementary forms, and touches them with majesty and
beauty, and multiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with the
power of propagating its like wherever it may fall.
But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathises with
that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great
masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmonious accompaniment
of the kindred arts; and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak
attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral
truths; and which are usually no more than specious flatteries of some
gross vice or weakness, with which the author, in common with his
auditors, are infected. Hence what has been called the classical and
domestic drama. Addison’s “Cato” is a specimen of the one; and would it
were not superfluous to cite examples of the other! To such purposes
poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever
unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus
we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative
in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion, which,
divested of imagination, are other names for caprice and appetite.
The period in our own history of the grossest degradation of the
drama is the reign of Charles II., when all forms in which poetry had
been accustomed to be expressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly
power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating an age
unworthy of him. At such periods the calculating principle pervades all
the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed
upon them. Comedy loves its ideal universality: wit succeeds to humour;
we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, instead of pleasure;
malignity, sarcasm, and contempt succeed to sympathetic merriment;
we hardly laugh, but we smile. Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy
against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it
assumes, more active if less disgusting: it is a monster for which the
corruption of society for ever brings forth new food, which it devours
in secret.
The drama being that form under which a greater number of modes of
expression of poetry are susceptible of being combined than any
other, the connexion of poetry and social good is more observable
in the drama than in whatever other form. And it is indisputable
that the highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded
with the highest dramatic excellence; and that the corruption or the
extinction of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished, is
a mark of a corruption of manners, and an extinction of the energies
which sustain the soul of social life. But, as Macchiavelli says of
political institutions, that life may be preserved and renewed, if men
should arise capable of bringing back the drama to its principles. And
this is true with respect to poetry in its most extended sense: all
language, institution and form require not only to be produced but to
be sustained: the office and character of a poet participates in the
divine nature as regards providence, no less than as regards creation.
Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal predominance first of
the Macedonian, and then of the Roman arms, were so many symbols of
the extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in Greece. The
bucolic writers, who found patronage under the lettered tyrants of
Sicily and Egypt, were the latest representatives of its most glorious
reign. Their poetry is intensely melodious; like the odour of the
tuberose, it overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of sweetness;
whilst the poetry of the preceding age was as a meadow-gale of June,
which mingles the fragrance of all the flowers of the field, and
adds a quickening and harmonising spirit of its own which endows the
sense with a power of sustaining its extreme delight. The bucolic and
erotic delicacy in written poetry is correlative with that softness
in statuary, music, and the kindred arts, and even in manners and
institutions, which distinguished the epoch to which I now refer.
Nor is it the poetical faculty itself, or any misapplication of it,
to which this want of harmony is to be imputed. An equal sensibility
to the influence of the senses and the affections is to be found in
the writings of Homer and Sophocles: the former, especially, has
clothed sensual and pathetic images with irresistible attractions. The
superiority in these to succeeding writers consists in the presence of
those thoughts which belong to the inner faculties of our nature, not
in the absence of those which are connected with the external: their
incomparable perfection consists in a harmony of the union of all. It
is not what the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which
their imperfection consists. It is not inasmuch as they were poets,
but inasmuch as they were not poets, that they can be considered with
any plausibility as connected with the corruption of their age. Had
that corruption availed so as to extinguish in them the sensibility to
pleasure, passion, and natural scenery, which is imputed to them as an
imperfection, the last triumph of evil would have been achieved. For
the end of social corruption is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure;
and, therefore, it is corruption. It begins at the imagination and the
intellect as at the core, and distributes itself thence as a paralysing
venom, through the affections into the very appetites, until all become
a torpid mass in which hardly sense survives. At the approach of such
a period, poetry ever addresses itself to those faculties which are
the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps
of Astræa, departing from the world. Poetry ever communicates all
the pleasure which men are capable of receiving: it is ever still the
light of life; the source of whatever of beautiful or generous or true
can have place in an evil time. It will readily be confessed that
those among the luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who
were delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel,
and sensual than the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must
utterly have destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry can
ever cease. The sacred links of that chain have never been entirely
disjoined, which descending through the minds of many men is attached
to those great minds, whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence
is sent forth, which at once connects, animates, and sustains the life
of all. It is the faculty which contains within itself the seeds at
once of its own and of social renovation. And let us not circumscribe
the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within the limits of the
sensibility of those to whom it was addressed. They may have perceived
the beauty of those immortal compositions, simply as fragments and
isolated portions: those who are more finely organised, or born in a
happier age, may recognise them as episodes to that great poem, which
all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built
up since the beginning of the world.
The same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place in ancient
Rome; but the actions and forms of its social life never seem to have
been perfectly saturated with the poetical element. The Romans appear
to have considered the Greeks as the selectest treasuries of the
selectest forms of manners and of nature, and to have abstained from
creating in measured language, sculpture, music, or architecture, any
thing which might bear a particular relation to their own condition,
whilst it should bear a general one to the universal constitution of
the world. But we judge from partial evidence, and we judge perhaps
partially. Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius, all great poets, have
been lost. Lucretius is in the highest, and Virgil in a very high
sense, a creator. The chosen delicacy of expressions of the latter are
as a mist of light which conceal from us the intense and exceeding
truth of his conceptions of nature. Livy is instinct with poetry.
Yet Horace, Catullus, Ovid, and generally the other great writers of
the Virgilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of Greece. The
institutions also, and the religion of Rome, were less poetical than
those of Greece, as the shadow is less vivid than the substance. Hence
poetry in Rome seemed to follow, rather than accompany, the perfection
of political and domestic society. The true poetry of Rome lived in
its institutions; for whatever of beautiful, true, and majestic, they
contained, could have sprung only from the faculty which creates
the order in which they consist. The life of Camillus, the death of
Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of
the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with
Hannibal, after the battle of Cannæ, were not the consequences of a
refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from
such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once
the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination
beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according
to its own idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward everlasting
fame. These things are not the less poetry, _quia carent vate sacro_.
They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the
memories of men. The Past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the
theatre of everlasting generations with their harmony.
At length the ancient system of religion and manners had fulfilled
the circle of its evolutions. And the world would have fallen into
utter anarchy and darkness, but that there were found poets among the
authors of the Christian and chivalric systems of manners and religion,
who created forms of opinion and action never before conceived;
which, copied into the imaginations of men, became as generals to the
bewildered armies of their thoughts. It is foreign to the present
purpose to touch upon the evil produced by these systems: except that
we protest, on the ground of the principles already established, that
no portion of it can be attributed to the poetry they contain.
It is probable that the poetry of Moses, Job, David, Solomon, and
Isaiah, had produced a great effect upon the mind of Jesus and his
disciples. The scattered fragments preserved to us by the biographers
of this extraordinary person are all instinct with the most vivid
poetry. But his doctrines seem to have been quickly distorted. At a
certain period after the prevalence of a system of opinions founded
upon those promulgated by him, the three forms into which Plato had
distributed the faculties of mind underwent a sort of apotheosis, and
became the object of the worship of the civilised world. Here it is to
be confessed that “Light seems to thicken,” and
“The crow makes wing to the rooky wood,
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
And night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”[3]
But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from the dust and blood of
this fierce chaos! how the world, as from a resurrection, balancing
itself on the golden wings of knowledge and of hope, has reassumed its
yet unwearied flight into the heaven of time. Listen to the music,
unheard by outward ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible wind,
nourishing its everlasting course with strength and swiftness.
The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus, and the mythology and
institutions of the Celtic conquerors of the Roman empire, outlived the
darkness and the convulsions connected with their growth and victory,
and blended themselves in a new fabric of manners and opinion. It is
an error to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to the Christian
doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic nations. Whatever of
evil their agencies may have contained sprang from the extinction of
the poetical principle, connected with the progress of despotism and
superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had
become insensible and selfish: their own will had become feeble, and
yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others:
but fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud, characterised a race amongst
whom no one was to be found capable of _creating_ in form, language,
or institution. The moral anomalies of such a state of society are not
justly to be charged upon any class of events immediately connected
with them, and those events are most entitled to our approbation which
could dissolve it most expeditiously. It is unfortunate for those who
cannot distinguish words from thoughts, that many of these anomalies
have been incorporated into our popular religion.
It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the poetry of
the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest themselves. The
principle of equality had been discovered and applied by Plato in his
Republic, as the theoretical rule of the mode in which the materials of
pleasure and of power, produced by the common skill and labour of human
beings, ought to be distributed among them. The limitations of this
rule were asserted by him to be determined only by the sensibility of
each, or the utility to result to all. Plato, following the doctrines
of Timæus and Pythagoras, taught also a moral and intellectual system
of doctrine, comprehending at once the past, the present, and the
future condition of man. Jesus divulged the sacred and eternal truths
contained in these views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract
purity, became the exoteric expression of the esoteric doctrines of the
poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporation of the Celtic nations
with the exhausted population of the south, impressed upon it the
figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and institutions. The
result was a sum of the action and reaction of all the causes included
in it; for it may be assumed as a maxim that no nation or religion can
supersede any other without incorporating into itself a portion of that
which it supersedes. The abolition of personal and domestic slavery,
and the emancipation of women from a great part of the degrading
restraints of antiquity, were among the consequences of these events.
The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of the highest political
hope that it can enter into the mind of man to conceive. The freedom
of women produced the poetry of sexual love. Love became a religion,
the idols of whose worship were ever present. It was as if the statues
of Apollo and the Muses had been endowed with life and motion, and had
walked forth among their worshippers; so that earth became peopled
by the inhabitants of a diviner world. The familiar appearance and
proceedings of life became wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was
created as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is
poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was the instrument
of their art: “Galeotto fù il libro, e chi lo scrisse.” The Provençal
Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells,
which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is
in the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without becoming
a portion of that beauty which we contemplate: it were superfluous
to explain how the gentleness and elevation of mind connected with
these sacred emotions can render men more amiable, more generous
and wise, and lift them out of the dull vapours of the little world
of self. Dante understood the secret things of love even more than
Petrarch. His _Vita Nuova_ is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of
sentiment and language: it is the idealised history of that period,
and those intervals of his life which were dedicated to love. His
apotheosis to Beatrice in Paradise, and the gradations of his own love
and her loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns himself to have
ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious
imagination of modern poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed
the judgment of the vulgar, and the order of the great acts of the
“Divina Commedia,” in the measure of the admiration which they accord
to the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual hymn
of everlasting love. Love, which found a worthy poet in Plato alone
of all the ancients, has been celebrated by a chorus of the greatest
writers of the renovated world; and the music has penetrated the
caverns of society, and its echoes still drown the dissonance of arms
and superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare,
Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and the great writers of our own age, have
celebrated the dominion of love, planting as it were trophies in the
human mind of that sublimest victory over sensuality and force. The
true relation borne to each other by the sexes into which human kind
is distributed, has become less misunderstood; and if the error which
confounded diversity with inequality of the powers of the two sexes has
been partially recognised in the opinions and institutions of modern
Europe, we owe this great benefit to the worship of which chivalry was
the law, and poets the prophets.
The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the
stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The
distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton
have idealised, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these great
poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a difficult
question to determine how far they were conscious of the distinction
which must have subsisted in their minds between their own creeds
and that of the people. Dante at least appears to wish to mark the
full extent of it by placing Riphæus, whom Virgil calls _justissimus
unus_, in Paradise, and observing a most poetical caprice in his
distribution of rewards and punishments. And Milton’s poem contains
within itself a philosophical refutation of that system of which, by a
strange and natural antithesis, it has been a chief popular support.
Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of
Satan as expressed in “Paradise Lost.” It is a mistake to suppose that
he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of
evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement
of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, these things
are evil; and, although venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in
a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one
subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his conquest in the victor.
Milton’s Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one
who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent
in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security
of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his
enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a
perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating
him to deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated the popular
creed (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no
superiority of moral virtue to his god over his devil. And this bold
neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the
supremacy of Milton’s genius. He mingled as it were the elements of
human nature as colours upon a single palette, and arranged them in the
composition of his great picture according to the laws of epic truth,
that is, according to the laws of that principle by which a series
of actions of the external universe and of intelligent and ethical
beings is calculated to excite the sympathy of succeeding generations
of mankind. The Divina Commedia and Paradise Lost have conferred upon
modern mythology a systematic form; and when change and time shall have
added one more superstition to the mass of those which have arisen
and decayed upon the earth, commentators will be learnedly employed
in elucidating the religion of ancestral Europe, only not utterly
forgotten because it will have been stamped with the eternity of genius.
Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet: that is, the second
poet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible
relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in
which he lived, and of the ages which followed it: developing itself
in correspondence with their development. For Lucretius had limed the
wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world; and
Virgil, with a modesty that ill became his genius, had affected the
fame of an imitator, even whilst he created anew all that he copied;
and none among the flock of mock-birds, though their notes are sweet,
Apollonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber, Smyrnæus, Nonnus, Lucan, Statius,
or Claudian, have sought even to fulfil a single condition of epic
truth. Milton was the third epic poet. For if the title of epic in its
highest sense be refused to the Æneid, still less can it be conceded to
the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the Lusiad, or the Fairy
Queen.
Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated with the ancient religion
of the civilised world; and its spirit exists in their poetry probably
in the same proportion as its forms survived in the unreformed
worship of modern Europe. The one preceded and the other followed the
Reformation at almost equal intervals. Dante was the first religious
reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony,
than in the boldness of his censures, of papal usurpation. Dante was
the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a language, in
itself music and persuasion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms.
He was the congregator of those great spirits who presided over the
resurrection of learning; the Lucifer of that starry flock which in the
thirteenth century shone forth from republican Italy, as from a heaven,
into the darkness of the benighted world. His very words are instinct
with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable
thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and
pregnant with a lightning which has yet found no conductor. All high
poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks
potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and the inmost naked
beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem is a fountain for
ever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight; and after one
person and one age has exhausted all of its divine effluence which
their peculiar relations enable them to share, another and yet another
succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, the source of an
unforeseen and an unconceived delight.
The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio, was characterised by a revival of painting, sculpture,
and architecture. Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the
superstructure of English literature is based upon the materials of
Italian invention.
But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history of
poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough to have pointed out
the effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the word, upon
their own and all succeeding times.
But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners
and mechanists, on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise
of the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that
of reason is more useful. Let us examine, as the grounds of this
distinction, what is here meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a
general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and
intelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it acquiesces. There
are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal, and permanent; the
other transitory and particular. Utility may either express the means
of producing the former or the latter. In the former sense, whatever
strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and
adds spirit to sense, is useful. But a narrower meaning may be assigned
to the word utility, confining it to express that which banishes the
importunity of the wants of our animal nature, the surrounding men with
security of life, the dispersing the grosser delusions of superstition,
and the conciliating such a degree of mutual forbearance among men as
may consist with the motives of personal advantage.
Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this limited sense, have their
appointed office in society. They follow the footsteps of poets, and
copy the sketches of their creations into the book of common life. They
make space, and give time. Their exertions are of the highest value,
so long as they confine their administration of the concerns of the
inferior powers of our nature within the limits due to the superior
ones. But while the sceptic destroys gross superstitions, let him spare
to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced, the eternal
truths charactered upon the imaginations of men. Whilst the mechanist
abridges, and the political economist combines, labour, let them beware
that their speculations, for want of correspondence with those first
principles which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have
in modern England, to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury and
want. They have exemplified the saying, “To him that hath, more shall
be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be
taken away.”[4] The rich have become richer, and the poor have become
poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and
Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the effects which must
ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty.
It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the definition
involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable
defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the
inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior
portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are
often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good.
Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy
delights by affording a shadow of that pleasure which exists in pain.
This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from
the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than
the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying, “It is better
to go to the house of mourning than to the house of mirth.”[5] Not
that this highest species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain.
The delight of love and friendship, the ecstasy of the admiration of
nature, the joy of the perception and still more of the creation of
poetry, is often wholly unalloyed.
The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense is true
utility. Those who produce and preserve this pleasure are poets or
poetical philosophers.
The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau,[6] and their
disciples, in favour of oppressed and deluded humanity, are entitled
to the gratitude of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree
of moral and intellectual improvement which the world would have
exhibited, had they never lived. A little more nonsense would have
been talked for a century or two; and perhaps a few more men, women,
and children, burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment have been
congratulating each other on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain.
But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would have been the
moral condition of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio,
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Bacon, nor Milton, had ever existed;
if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if the Hebrew
poetry had never been translated; if a revival of the study of Greek
literature had never taken place; if no monuments of ancient sculpture
had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the religion of the
ancient world had been extinguished together with its belief. The human
mind could never, except by the intervention of these excitements,
have been awakened to the invention of the grosser sciences, and that
application of analytical reasoning to the aberrations of society,
which it is now attempted to exalt over the direct expression of the
inventive and creative faculty itself.
We have more moral, political, and historical wisdom than we know
how to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical
knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the
produce which it multiplies. The poetry, in these systems of thought,
is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes.
There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in
morals, government, and political economy, or at least what is wiser
and better than what men now practise and endure. But we let “_I dare
not_ wait upon _I would_, like the poor cat in the adage.” We want the
creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous
impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life:
our calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we
can digest. The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged
the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for
want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of
the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains
himself a slave. To what but a cultivation of the mechanical arts in a
degree disproportioned to the presence of the creative faculty, which
is the basis of all knowledge, is to be attributed the abuse of all
invention for abridging and combining labour, to the exasperation of
the inequality of mankind? From what other cause has it arisen that
the discoveries which should have lightened, have added a weight to
the curse imposed on Adam? Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which
money is the visible incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world.
The functions of the poetical faculty are twofold; by one it creates
new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other it
engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according
to a certain rhythm and order, which may be called the beautiful and
the good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at
periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle,
the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity
of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature.
The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it.
Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and
circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science,
and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same
time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that
from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if
blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren
world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree
of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all
things; it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture
of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded
beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue,
love, patriotism, friendship,--what were the scenery of this beautiful
universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of
the grave--and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not
ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the
owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not
like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination
of the will. A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest
poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal,
which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to
transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour
of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the
conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach
or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original
purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the
results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the
decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated
to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of
the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether
it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are
produced by labour and study. The toil and the delay recommended by
critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful
observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connexion of the
spaces between their suggestions, by the intertexture of conventional
expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the
poetical faculty itself: for Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a
whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also
for the muse having “dictated” to him the “unpremeditated song.” And
let this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various
readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so
produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. The instinct and
intuition of the poetical faculty is still more observable in the
plastic and pictorial arts: a great statue or picture grows under the
power of the artist as a child in the mother’s womb; and the very mind
which directs the hands in formation, is incapable of accounting to
itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process.
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest
and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and
feeling, sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding
our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing
unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that
even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be
pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is
as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own;
but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the
morning calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled
sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are
experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility
and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced
by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue,
love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such
emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to
a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits
of the most refined organisation, but they can colour all that they
combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a
trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the
enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced
those emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the
past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful
in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the
interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form,
sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to
those with whom their sisters abide--abide, because there is no portal
of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into
the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of
the divinity in man.
Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that
which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most
deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure,
eternity and change; it subdues to union, under its light yoke, all
irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every
form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous
sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret
alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from
death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world,
and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its
forms.
All things exist as they are perceived; at least in relation to the
percipient.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”[7]
But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the
accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own
figured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene
of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It
makes us the inhabitant of a world to which the familiar world is a
chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions
and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of
familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels
us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we
know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in
our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration.
It justifies the bold and true word of Tasso: _Non merita nome di
creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta._
A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure,
virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best,
the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time
be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of
human life be comparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest,
the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally
incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most spotless
virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the
interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men: and the exceptions,
as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty in a high yet
inferior degree, will be found on consideration to confirm rather
than destroy the rule. Let us for a moment stoop to the arbitration
of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in our own persons the
incompatible characters of accuser, witness, judge and executioner,
let us decide without trial, testimony, or form, that certain
motives of those who are “there sitting where we dare not soar,” are
reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was
a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman, that
Bacon was a speculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was
a poet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject
to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great
names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found to have
been dust in the balance; if their sins “were as scarlet, they are now
white as snow:” they have been washed in the blood of the mediator
and redeemer, time. Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the imputations
of real or fictitious crime have been confused in the contemporary
calumnies against poetry and poets; consider how little is, as it
appears--or appears, as it is, look to your own motives, and judge not,
lest ye be judged.
Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that
it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind,
and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with
the consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to determine that these
are the necessary conditions of all mental causation, when mental
effects are experienced insusceptible of being referred to them. The
frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious to suppose,
may produce in the mind a habit of order and harmony correlative
with its own nature and with its effects upon other minds. But in
the intervals of inspiration, and they may be frequent without being
durable, a poet becomes a man, and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of
the influences under which others habitually live. But as he is more
delicately organised than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure,
both his own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, he will
avoid the one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned to
this difference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when he
neglects to observe the circumstances under which these objects of
universal pursuit and flight have disguised themselves in one another’s
garments.
But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus cruelty,
envy, revenge, avarice, and the passions purely evil, have never formed
any portion of the popular imputations on the lives of poets.
I have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth to set down
these remarks according to the order in which they were suggested
to my mind, by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of
observing the formality of a polemical reply; but if the view which
they contain be just, they will be found to involve a refutation of the
arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first division
of the subject. I can readily conjecture what should have moved the
gall of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel with certain
versifiers; I, like them, confess myself unwilling to be stunned by the
Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Mævius undoubtedly
are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it belongs to a
philosophical critic to distinguish rather than confound.
The first part of these remarks has related to poetry in its elements
and principles: and it has been shown, as well as the narrow limits
assigned them would permit, that what is called poetry in a restricted
sense, has a common source with all other forms of order and of beauty,
according to which the materials of human life are susceptible of being
arranged, and which is poetry in an universal sense.
The second part will have for its object an application of these
principles to the present state of the cultivation of poetry, and a
defence of the attempt to idealise the modern forms of manners and
opinions, and compel them into a subordination to the imaginative
and creative faculty. For the literature of England, an energetic
development of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and
free development of the national will, has arisen as it were from a
new birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy which would undervalue
contemporary merit, our own will be a memorable age in intellectual
achievements, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass
beyond comparison any who have appeared since the last national
struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most unfailing herald,
companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a
beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry. At such periods
there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving
intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. The
persons in whom this power resides may often, as far as regards many
portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with
that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. But even whilst
they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, the power which
is seated on the throne of their own soul. It is impossible to read
the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day
without being startled with the electric life which burns within their
words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human
nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are
themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations;
for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are
the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the
gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which
express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle
and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but
moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _De Augment. Scient._, cap. 1., lib. iii.
[2] See the _Filum Labyrinthi_, and the Essay on Death particularly.
[3] Macbeth, act iii. scene 2.
[4] A misquotation of Mark iv. 25.--Ed.
[5] A misquotation of Ecclesiastes vii. 2.--Ed.
[6] Although Rousseau has been thus classed, he was essentially a poet.
The others, even Voltaire, were mere reasoners. [_Author’s note._]
[7] Paradise Lost, Book I. l, 254-5.
[Decoration]
ESSAY ON THE LITERATURE, THE ARTS, AND THE MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS.
A Fragment.
The period which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the death
of Aristotle, is undoubtedly, whether considered in itself, or with
reference to the effects which it has produced upon the subsequent
destinies of civilised man, the most memorable in the history of the
world. What was the combination of moral and political circumstances
which produced so unparalleled a progress during that period in
literature and the arts;--why that progress, so rapid and so sustained,
so soon received a check, and became retrograde,--are problems left
to the wonder and conjecture of posterity. The wrecks and fragments
of those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue,
obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole.
Their very language--a type of the understandings of which it was the
creation and the image--in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and
in copiousness, excels every other language of the western world. Their
sculptures are such as we, in our presumption, assume to be the models
of ideal truth and beauty, and to which no artist of modern times can
produce forms in any degree comparable. Their paintings, according
to Pliny and Pausanias, were full of delicacy and harmony; and some
even were powerfully pathetic, so as to awaken, like tender music or
tragic poetry, the most overwhelming emotions. We are accustomed to
conceive the painters of the sixteenth century, as those who have
brought their art to the highest perfection, probably because none of
the ancient paintings have been preserved. For all the inventive arts
maintain, as it were, a sympathetic connexion between each other, being
no more than various expressions of one internal power, modified by
different circumstances, either of an individual, or of society; and
the paintings of that period would probably bear the same relation
as is confessedly borne by the sculptures to all succeeding ones. Of
their music we know little; but the effects which it is said to have
produced, whether they be attributed to the skill of the composer,
or the sensibility of his audience, are far more powerful than any
which we experience from the music of our own times; and if, indeed,
the melody of their compositions were more tender and delicate, and
inspiring, than the melodies of some modern European nations, their
superiority in this art must have been something wonderful, and wholly
beyond conception.
Their poetry seems to maintain a very high, though not so
disproportionate a rank, in the comparison. Perhaps Shakespeare, from
the variety and comprehension of his genius, is to be considered, on
the whole, as the greatest individual mind, of which we have specimens
remaining. Perhaps Dante created imaginations of greater loveliness
and energy than any that are to be found in the ancient literature of
Greece. Perhaps nothing has been discovered in the fragments of the
Greek lyric poets equivalent to the sublime and chivalric sensibility
of Petrarch.--But, as a poet, Homer must be acknowledged to excel
Shakespeare in the truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the
satisfying completeness of his images, their exact fitness to the
illustration, and to that to which they belong. Nor could Dante,
deficient in conduct, plan, nature, variety, and temperance, have been
brought into comparison with these men, but for those fortunate isles,
laden with golden fruit, which alone could tempt any one to embark in
the misty ocean of his dark and extravagant fiction.
But, omitting the comparison of individual minds, which can afford no
general inference, how superior was the spirit and system of their
poetry to that of any other period! So that, had any other genius equal
in other respects to the greatest that ever enlightened the world,
arisen in that age, he would have been superior to all, from this
circumstance alone--that his conceptions would have assumed a more
harmonious and perfect form. For it is worthy of observation, that
whatever the poets of that age produced is as harmonious and perfect as
possible. If a drama, for instance, were the composition of a person of
inferior talent, it was still homogeneous and free from inequalities;
it was a whole, consistent with itself. The compositions of great minds
bore throughout the sustained stamp of their greatness. In the poetry
of succeeding ages the expectations are often exalted on Icarian wings,
and fall, too much disappointed to give a memory and a name to the
oblivious pool in which they fell.
In physical knowledge Aristotle and Theophrastus had already--no
doubt assisted by the labours of those of their predecessors whom
they criticise--made advances worthy of the maturity of science. The
astonishing invention of geometry, that series of discoveries which
have enabled man to command the elements and foresee future events,
before the subjects of his ignorant wonder, and which have opened
as it were the doors of the mysteries of nature, had already been
brought to great perfection. Metaphysics, the science of man’s intimate
nature, and logic, or the grammar and elementary principles of that
science, received from the latter philosophers of the Periclean age a
firm basis. All our more exact philosophy is built upon the labours of
these great men, and many of the words which we employ in metaphysical
distinctions were invented by them to give accuracy and system to
their reasonings. The science of morals, or the voluntary conduct of
men in relation to themselves or others, dates from this epoch. How
inexpressibly bolder and more pure were the doctrines of those great
men, in comparison with the timid maxims which prevail in the writings
of the most esteemed modern moralists! They were such as Phocion, and
Epaminondas, and Timoleon, who formed themselves on their influence,
were to the wretched heroes of our own age.
Their political and religious institutions are more difficult to bring
into comparison with those of other times. A summary idea may be formed
of the worth of any political and religious system, by observing the
comparative degree of happiness and of intellect produced under its
influence. And whilst many institutions and opinions, which in ancient
Greece were obstacles to the improvement of the human race, have been
abolished among modern nations, how many pernicious superstitions and
new contrivances of misrule, and unheard-of complications of public
mischief, have not been invented among them by the ever-watchful spirit
of avarice and tyranny!
The modern nations of the civilised world owe the progress which they
have made--as well in those physical sciences in which they have
already excelled their masters, as in the moral and intellectual
inquiries, in which, with all the advantage of the experience of
the latter, it can scarcely be said that they have yet equalled
them,--to what is called the revival of learning; that is, the study
of the writers of the age which preceded and immediately followed the
government of Pericles, or of subsequent writers, who were, so to
speak, the rivers flowing from those immortal fountains. And though
there seems to be a principle in the modern world, which, should
circumstances analogous to those which modelled the intellectual
resources of the age to which we refer, into so harmonious a
proportion, again arise, would arrest and perpetuate them, and consign
their results to a more equal, extensive, and lasting improvement of
the condition of man--though justice and the true meaning of human
society are, if not more accurately, more generally understood; though
perhaps men know more, and therefore are more, as a mass, yet this
principle has never been called into action, and requires indeed a
universal and an almost appalling change in the system of existing
things. The study of modern history is the study of kings, financiers,
statesmen, and priests. The history of ancient Greece is the study
of legislators, philosophers, and poets; it is the history of men,
compared with the history of titles. What the Greeks were, was a
reality, not a promise. And what we are and hope to be, is derived,
as it were, from the influence and inspiration of these glorious
generations.
Whatever tends to afford a further illustration of the manners and
opinions of those to whom we owe so much, and who were perhaps, on
the whole, the most perfect specimens of humanity of whom we have
authentic record, were infinitely valuable. Let us see their errors,
their weaknesses, their daily actions, their familiar conversation,
and catch the tone of their society. When we discover how far the
most admirable community ever framed was removed from that perfection
to which human society is impelled by some active power within each
bosom to aspire, how great ought to be our hopes, how resolute our
struggles! For the Greeks of the Periclean age were widely different
from us. It is to be lamented that no modern writer has hitherto
dared to show them precisely as they were. Barthélemi cannot be
denied the praise of industry and system; but he never forgets
that he is a Christian and a Frenchman. Wieland, in his delightful
novels, makes indeed a very tolerable Pagan, but cherishes too many
political prejudices, and refrains from diminishing the interest of
his romances by painting sentiments in which no European of modern
times can possibly sympathise. There is no book which shows the Greeks
precisely as they were; they seem all written for children, with the
caution that no practice or sentiment, highly inconsistent with our
present manners, should be mentioned, lest those manners should receive
outrage and violation. But there are many to whom the Greek language
is inaccessible, who ought not to be excluded by this prudery from
possessing an exact and comprehensive conception of the history of man;
for there is no knowledge concerning what man has been and may be, from
partaking of which a person can depart, without becoming in some degree
more philosophical, tolerant, and just.
One of the chief distinctions between the manners of ancient Greece
and modern Europe, consisted in the regulations and the sentiments
respecting sexual intercourse. Whether this difference arises from
some imperfect influence of the doctrines of Jesus, who alleges the
absolute and unconditional equality of all human beings, or from the
institutions of chivalry, or from a certain fundamental difference
of physical nature existing in the Celts, or from a combination of
all or any of these causes acting on each other, is a question worthy
of voluminous investigation. The fact is, that the modern Europeans
have in this circumstance, and in the abolition of slavery, made an
improvement the most decisive in the regulation of human society; and
all the virtue and the wisdom of the Periclean age arose under other
institutions, in spite of the diminution which personal slavery and the
inferiority of women, recognised by law and opinion, must have produced
in the delicacy, the strength, the comprehensiveness, and the accuracy
of their conceptions, in moral, political, and metaphysical science,
and perhaps in every other art and science.
The women, thus degraded, became such as it was expected they would
become. They possessed, except with extraordinary exceptions, the
habits and the qualities of slaves. They were probably not extremely
beautiful; at least there was no such disproportion in the attractions
of the external form between the female and male sex among the Greeks,
as exists among the modern Europeans. They were certainly devoid of
that moral and intellectual loveliness with which the acquisition of
knowledge and the cultivation of sentiment animates, as with another
life of overpowering grace, the lineaments and the gestures of every
form which they inhabit. Their eyes could not have been deep and
intricate from the workings of the mind, and could have entangled no
heart in soul-enwoven labyrinths.
Let it not be imagined that because the Greeks were deprived of its
legitimate object, they were incapable of sentimental love; and that
this passion is the mere child of chivalry and the literature of modern
times. This object or its archetype forever exists in the mind, which
selects among those who resemble it that which most resembles it; and
instinctively fills up the interstices of the imperfect image, in
the same manner as the imagination moulds and completes the shapes
in clouds, or in the fire, into the resemblances of whatever form,
animal, building, &c., happens to be present to it. Man is in his
wildest state a social being: a certain degree of civilisation and
refinement ever produces the want of sympathies still more intimate
and complete; and the gratification of the senses is no longer all
that is sought in sexual connexion. It soon becomes a very small part
of that profound and complicated sentiment, which we call love, which
is rather the universal thirst for a communion not only of the senses,
but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative and sensitive, and
which, when individualised, becomes an imperious necessity, only to be
satisfied by the complete or partial, actual or supposed fulfilment
of its claims. This want grows more powerful in proportion to the
development which our nature receives from civilisation, for man never
ceases to be a social being. The sexual impulse, which is only one,
and often a small part of those claims, serves, from its obvious and
external nature, as a kind of type or expression of the rest, a common
basis, an acknowledged and visible link. Still it is a claim which even
derives a strength not its own from the accessory circumstances which
surround it, and one which our nature thirsts to satisfy. To estimate
this, observe the degree of intensity and durability of the love of
the male towards the female in animals and savages; and acknowledge
all the duration and intensity observable in the love of civilised
beings beyond that of savages to be produced from other causes. In the
susceptibility of the external senses there is probably no important
difference.
Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the human race,
received the highest cultivation and refinement: whilst the other, so
far as intellect is concerned, were educated as slaves, and were raised
but few degrees in all that related to moral or intellectual excellence
above the condition of savages. The gradations in the society of man
present us with slow improvement in this respect. The Roman women
held a higher consideration in society, and were esteemed almost as
the equal partners with their husbands in the regulation of domestic
economy and the education of their children. The practices and customs
of modern Europe are essentially different from and incomparably less
pernicious than either, however remote from what an enlightened mind
cannot fail to desire as the future destiny of human beings.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
ON THE SYMPOSIUM,
OR PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO.
A Fragment.
The dialogue entitled “The Banquet,” was selected by the translator
as the most beautiful and perfect among all the works of Plato.[8] He
despairs of having communicated to the English language any portion
of the surpassing graces of the composition, or having done more than
present an imperfect shadow of the language and the sentiment of this
astonishing production.
Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek philosophers, and
from, or, rather, perhaps through him, from his master Socrates,
have proceeded those emanations of moral and metaphysical knowledge,
on which a long series and an incalculable variety of popular
superstitions have sheltered their absurdities from the slow contempt
of mankind. Plato exhibits the rare union of close and subtle logic
with the Pythian enthusiasm of poetry, melted by the splendour and
harmony of his periods into one irresistible stream of musical
impressions, which hurry the persuasions onward, as in a breathless
career. His language is that of an immortal spirit, rather than a man.
Bacon is, perhaps, the only writer who, in these particulars, can be
compared with him: his imitator, Cicero, sinks in the comparison into
an ape mocking the gestures of a man. His views into the nature of mind
and existence are often obscure, only because they are profound; and
though his theories respecting the government of the world, and the
elementary laws of moral action, are not always correct, yet there is
scarcely any of his treatises which do not, however stained by puerile
sophisms, contain the most remarkable intuitions into all that can be
the subject of the human mind. His excellence consists especially in
intuition, and it is this faculty which raises him far above Aristotle,
whose genius, though vivid and various, is obscure in comparison with
that of Plato.
The dialogue entitled the “Banquet,” is called Ερωτικος,
or a Discussion upon Love, and is supposed to have taken place at
the house of Agathon, at one of a series of festivals given by that
poet, on the occasion of his gaining the prize of tragedy at the
Dionysiaca. The account of the debate on this occasion is supposed to
have been given by Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, many years after
it had taken place, to a companion who was curious to hear it. This
Apollodorus appears, both from the style in which he is represented
in this piece, as well as from a passage in the Phædon, to have been
a person of an impassioned and enthusiastic disposition; to borrow
an image from the Italian painters, he seems to have been the St.
John of the Socratic group. The drama (for so the lively distinction
of character and the various and well-wrought circumstances of the
story almost entitle it to be called) begins by Socrates persuading
Aristodemus to sup at Agathon’s, uninvited. The whole of this
introduction affords the most lively conception of refined Athenian
manners.
[8] The Republic, though replete with considerable errors of
speculation, is, indeed, the greatest repository of important truths of
all the works of Plato. This, perhaps, is because it is the longest. He
first, and perhaps last, maintained that a state ought to be governed,
not by the wealthiest, or the most ambitious, or the most cunning, but
by the wisest; the method of selecting such rulers, and the laws by
which such a selection is made, must correspond with and arise out of
the moral freedom and refinement of the people.
[Decoration]
THE BANQUET.
_TRANSLATED FROM PLATO_
_THE PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE_
APOLLODORUS
A FRIEND OF APOLLODORUS
GLAUCO
ARISTODEMUS
SOCRATES
AGATHON
PHÆDRUS
PAUSANIAS
ERYXIMACHUS
ARISTOPHANES
DIOTIMA
ALCIBIADES
[Decoration]
THE BANQUET.
Translated from Plato.
APOLLODORUS.
I think that the subject of your inquiries is still fresh in my memory;
for yesterday, as I chanced to be returning home from Phaleros, one
of my acquaintance, seeing me before him, called out to me from a
distance, jokingly, “Apollodorus, you Phalerian, will you not wait a
minute?”--I waited for him, and as soon as he overtook me, “I have just
been looking for you, Apollodorus,” he said, “for I wished to hear what
those discussions were on Love, which took place at the party, when
Agathon, Socrates, Alcibiades, and some others, met at supper. Some one
who heard it from Phœnix, the son of Philip, told me that you could
give a full account, but he could relate nothing distinctly himself.
Relate to me, then, I entreat you, all the circumstances. I know you
are a faithful reporter of the discussions of your friends; but, first
tell me, were you present at the party or not?”
“Your informant,” I replied, “seems to have given you no very clear
idea of what you wish to hear, if he thinks that these discussions took
place so lately as that I could have been of the party.”--“Indeed, I
thought so,” replied he.--“For how,” said I, “O Glauco! could I have
been present? Do you not know that Agathon has been absent from the
city many years? But, since I began to converse with Socrates, and to
observe each day all his words and actions, three years are scarcely
past. Before this time I wandered about wherever it might chance,
thinking that I did something, but being in truth, a most miserable
wretch, not less than you are now, who believe that you ought to do
anything rather than practise the love of wisdom.”--“Do not cavil,”
interrupted Glauco, “but tell me, when did this party take place?”
“Whilst we were yet children,” I replied, “when Agathon first gained
the prize of tragedy, and the day after that on which he and the chorus
made sacrifices in celebration of their success.”--“A long time ago,
it seems. But who told you all the circumstances of the discussion?
Did you hear them from Socrates himself?” “No, by Jupiter! But the
same person from whom Phœnix had his information, one Aristodemus,
a Cydathenean,--a little man who always went about without sandals.
He was present at this feast, being, I believe, more than any of his
contemporaries, a lover and admirer of Socrates. I have questioned
Socrates concerning some of the circumstances of his narration, who
confirms all that I have heard from Aristodemus.”--“Why, then,” said
Glauco, “why not relate them, as we walk, to me? The road to the city
is every way convenient, both for those who listen and those who speak.”
Thus as we walked I gave him some account of those discussions
concerning Love; since, as I said before, I remember them with
sufficient accuracy. If I am required to relate them also to you,
that shall willingly be done; for, whensoever either I myself talk
of philosophy, or listen to others talking of it, in addition to the
improvement which I conceive there arises from such conversation, I am
delighted beyond measure; but whenever I hear your discussions about
moneyed men and great proprietors, I am weighed down with grief, and
pity you, who, doing nothing, believe that you are doing something.
Perhaps you think that I am a miserable wretch; and, indeed, I believe
that you think truly. I do not think, but well know, that you are
miserable.
COMPANION.
You are always the same, Apollodorus--always saying some ill of
yourself and others. Indeed, you seem to me to think every one
miserable except Socrates, beginning with yourself. I do not know what
could have entitled you to the surname of the “Madman,” for, I am sure,
you are consistent enough, for ever inveighing with bitterness against
yourself and all others, except Socrates.
APOLLODORUS.
My dear friend, it is manifest that I am out of my wits from this
alone--that I have such opinion as you describe concerning myself and
you.
COMPANION.
It is not worth while, Apollodorus, to dispute now about these things;
but do what I entreat you, and relate to us what were these discussions.
APOLLODORUS.
They were such as I will proceed to tell you. But let me attempt to
relate them in the order which Aristodemus observed in relating them
to me. He said that he met Socrates washed, and, contrary to his
usual custom, sandalled, and having inquired whither he went so gaily
dressed, Socrates replied, “I am going to sup at Agathon’s; yesterday
I avoided it, disliking the crowd, which would attend at the prize
sacrifices then celebrated; to-day I promised to be there, and I made
myself so gay, because one ought to be beautiful to approach one who
is beautiful. But you, Aristodemus, what think you of coming uninvited
to supper?”--“I will do,” he replied, “as you command.”--“Follow,
then, that we may, by changing its application, disarm that proverb
which says, _To the feasts of the good, the good come uninvited._
Homer, indeed, seems not only to destroy, but to outrage the proverb;
for, describing Agamemnon as excellent in battle, and Menelaus but a
faint-hearted warrior, he represents Menelaus as coming uninvited to
the feast of one better and braver than himself.”--Aristodemus hearing
this, said, “I also am in some danger, Socrates, not as you say, but
according to Homer, of approaching like an unworthy inferior, the
banquet of one more wise and excellent than myself. Will you not, then,
make some excuse for me? for I shall not confess that I came uninvited,
but shall say that I was invited by you.”--“As we walk together,” said
Socrates, “we will consider together what excuse to make--but let us
go.”
Thus discoursing, they proceeded. But, as they walked, Socrates,
engaged in some deep contemplation, slackened his pace, and, observing
Aristodemus waiting for him, he desired him to go on before. When
Aristodemus arrived at Agathon’s house he found the door open, and it
occurred somewhat comically, that a slave met him at the vestibule, and
conducted him where he found the guests already reclined. As soon as
Agathon saw him, “You arrive just in time to sup with us, Aristodemus,”
he said; “if you have any other purpose in your visit, defer it to a
better opportunity. I was looking for you yesterday, to invite you to
be of our party; I could not find you anywhere. But how is it that you
do not bring Socrates with you?”
But he turning round, and not seeing Socrates behind him, said to
Agathon, “I just came hither in his company, being invited by him to
sup with you.”--“You did well,” replied Agathon, “to come; but where is
Socrates?”--“He just now came hither behind me; I myself wonder where
he can be.”--“Go and look, boy,” said Agathon, “and bring Socrates
in; meanwhile, you, Aristodemus, recline there near Eryximachus.” And
he bade a slave wash his feet that he might recline. Another slave,
meanwhile, brought word that Socrates had retired into a neighbouring
vestibule, where he stood, and, in spite of his message, refused to
come in.--“What absurdity you talk,” cried Agathon, “call him, and do
not leave him till he comes.”--“Leave him alone, by all means,” said
Aristodemus, “it is customary with him sometimes to retire in this way
and stand wherever it may chance. He will come presently, I do not
doubt; do not disturb him.”--“Well, be it as you will,” said Agathon;
“as it is, you boys, bring supper for the rest; put before us what
you will, for I resolved that there should be no master of the feast.
Consider me, and these, my friends, as guests, whom you have invited to
supper, and serve them so that we may commend you.”
After this they began supper, but Socrates did not come in. Agathon
ordered him to be called, but Aristodemus perpetually forbade it. At
last he came in, much about the middle of supper, not having delayed
so long as was his custom. Agathon (who happened to be reclining at
the end of the table, and alone,) said, as he entered, “Come hither,
Socrates, and sit down by me; so that by the mere touch of one so wise
as you are, I may enjoy the fruit of your meditations in the vestibule;
for, I well know, you would not have departed till you had discovered
and secured it.”
Socrates having sat down as he was desired, replied, “It would be well,
Agathon, if wisdom were of such a nature, as that when we touched each
other, it would overflow of its own accord, from him who possesses much
to him who possesses little; like the water in two chalices, which will
flow through a flock of wool from the fuller into the emptier, until
both are equal. If wisdom had this property, I should esteem myself
most fortunate in reclining near to you. I should thus soon be filled,
I think, with the most beautiful and various wisdom. Mine, indeed, is
something obscure, and doubtful, and dreamlike. But yours is radiant,
and has been crowned with amplest reward; for, though you are yet so
young, it shone forth from you, and became so manifest yesterday, that
more than thirty thousand Greeks can bear testimony to its excellence
and loveliness.”--“You are laughing at me, Socrates,” said Agathon,
“but you and I will decide this controversy about wisdom by and bye,
taking Bacchus for our judge. At present turn to your supper.”
After Socrates and the rest had finished supper, and had reclined back
on their couches, and the libations had been poured forth, and they
had sung hymns to the god, and all other rites which are customary
had been performed, they turned to drinking. Then Pausanias made this
kind of proposal. “Come, my friends,” said he, “in what manner will
it be pleasantest for us to drink? I must confess to you that, in
reality, I am not very well from the wine we drank last night, and I
have need of some intermission. I suspect that most of you are in the
same condition, for you were here yesterday. Now, consider how we shall
drink most easily and comfortably.”
“’Tis a good proposal, Pausanias,” said Aristophanes, “to contrive, in
some way or other, to place moderation in our cups. I was one of those
who were drenched last night.”--Eryximachus, the son of Acumenius,
hearing this, said: “I am of your opinion; I only wish to know one
thing--whether Agathon is in the humour for hard drinking?”--“Not at
all,” replied Agathon, “I confess that I am not able to drink much this
evening.”--“It is an excellent thing for us,” replied Eryximachus,
“I mean myself, Aristodemus, Phædrus, and these others, if you who
are such invincible drinkers, now refuse to drink. I ought to except
Socrates, for he is capable of drinking everything, or nothing; and
whatever we shall determine will equally suit him. Since, then, no one
present has any desire to drink much wine, I shall perhaps give less
offence if I declare the nature of drunkenness. The science of medicine
teaches us that drunkenness is very pernicious: nor would I choose to
drink immoderately myself, or counsel another to do so, especially
if he had been drunk the night before.”--“Yes,” said Phædrus, the
Myrinusian, interrupting him, “I have been accustomed to confide in
you, especially in your directions concerning medicine; and I would now
willingly do so, if the rest will do the same.” All then agreed that
they would drink at this present banquet not for drunkenness, but for
pleasure.
“Since, then,” said Eryximachus, “it is decided that no one shall be
compelled to drink more than he pleases, I think that we may as well
send away the flute-player to play to herself; or, if she likes, to
the women within. Let us devote the present occasion to conversation
between ourselves, and if you wish, I will propose to you what shall be
the subject of our discussion.” All present desired and entreated that
he would explain.--“The exordium of my speech,” said Eryximachus, “will
be in the style of the Menalippe of Euripides, for the story which I
am about to tell belongs not to me, but to Phædrus. Phædrus has often
indignantly complained to me, saying--‘Is it not strange, Eryximachus,
that there are innumerable hymns and pæans composed for the other gods,
but that not one of the many poets who spring up in the world have
ever composed a verse in honour of Love, who is such and so great a
god? Nor any one of those accomplished sophists, who, like the famous
Prodicus, have celebrated the praise of Hercules and others, have ever
celebrated that of Love; but what is more astonishing, I have lately
met with the book of some philosopher, in which salt is extolled on
account of its utility, and many other things of the same nature are
in like manner celebrated with elaborate praise. That so much serious
thought is expended on such trifles, and that no man has dared to this
day to frame a hymn in honour of Love, who being so great a deity, is
thus neglected, may well be sufficient to excite my indignation.’
“There seemed to me some justice in these complaints of Phædrus; I
propose, therefore, at the same time for the sake of giving pleasure
to Phædrus, and that we may on the present occasion do something well
and befitting us, that this God should receive from those who are
now present the honour which is most due to him. If you agree to my
proposal, an excellent discussion might arise on the subject. Every one
ought, according to my plan, to praise Love with as much eloquence as
he can. Let Phædrus begin first, both because he reclines the first in
order, and because he is the father of the discussion.”
“No one will vote against you, Eryximachus,” said Socrates, “for how
can I oppose your proposal, who am ready to confess that I know nothing
on any subject but love? Or how can Agathon, or Pausanias, or even
Aristophanes, whose life is one perpetual ministration to Venus and
Bacchus? Or how can any other whom I see here? Though we who sit last
are scarcely on an equality with you; for if those who speak before us
shall have exhausted the subject with their eloquence and reasonings,
our discourses will be superfluous. But in the name of Good Fortune,
let Phædrus begin and praise Love.” The whole party agreed to what
Socrates said, and entreated Phædrus to begin.
What each then said on this subject, Aristodemus did not entirely
recollect, nor do I recollect all that he related to me; but only the
speeches of those who said what was most worthy of remembrance. First,
then, Phædrus began thus:--
“Love is a mighty deity, and the object of admiration, both to Gods
and men, for many and for various claims; but especially on account of
his origin. For that he is to be honoured as one of the most ancient
of the gods, this may serve as a testimony, that Love has no parents,
nor is there any poet or other person who has ever affirmed that
there are such. Hesiod says, that first ‘Chaos was produced; then the
broad-bosomed Earth, to be a secure foundation for all things; then
Love.’ He says that after Chaos these two were produced, the Earth and
Love. Parmenides, speaking of generation, says:--‘But he created Love
before any of the gods.’ Acusileus agrees with Hesiod. Love, therefore,
is universally acknowledged to be among the oldest of things. And in
addition to this, Love is the author of our greatest advantages; for I
cannot imagine a greater happiness and advantage to one who is in the
flower of youth than an amiable lover, or to a lover, than an amiable
object of his love. For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honours, can
awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those
who from their youth aspire to an honourable and excellent life, as
Love awakens them. I speak of the fear of shame, which deters them
from that which is disgraceful; and the love of glory, which incites
to honourable deeds. For it is not possible that a state or private
person should accomplish, without these incitements, anything beautiful
or great. I assert, then, that should one who loves be discovered in
any dishonourable action, or tamely enduring insult through cowardice,
he would feel more anguish and shame if observed by the object of his
passion, than if he were observed by his father, or his companions,
or any other person. In like manner, among warmly attached friends,
a man is especially grieved to be discovered by his friend in any
dishonourable act. If, then, by any contrivance, a state or army
could be composed of friends bound by strong attachment, it is beyond
calculation how excellently they would administer their affairs,
refraining from anything base, contending with each other for the
acquirement of fame, and exhibiting such valour in battle as that,
though few in numbers, they might subdue all mankind. For should one
friend desert the ranks or cast away his arms in the presence of the
other, he would suffer far acuter shame from that one person’s regard,
than from the regard of all other men. A thousand times would he prefer
to die, rather than desert the object of his attachment, and not
succour him in danger.
“There is none so worthless whom Love cannot impel, as it were by a
divine inspiration, towards virtue, even so that he may through this
inspiration become equal to one who might naturally be more excellent;
and, in truth, as Homer says: The God breathes vigour into certain
heroes--so Love breathes into those who love, the spirit which is
produced from himself. Not only men, but even women who love, are those
alone who willingly expose themselves to die for others. Alcestis,
the daughter of Pelias, affords to the Greeks a remarkable example
of this opinion; she alone being willing to die for her husband, and
so surpassing his parents in the affection with which love inspired
her towards him, as to make them appear, in the comparison with her,
strangers to their own child, and related to him merely in name; and so
lovely and admirable did this action appear, not only to men, but even
to the Gods, that, although they conceded the prerogative of bringing
back the spirit from death to few among the many who then performed
excellent and honourable deeds, yet, delighted with this action, they
redeemed her soul from the infernal regions: so highly do the Gods
honour zeal and devotion in love. They sent back indeed Orpheus, the
son of Œagrus, from Hell, with his purpose unfulfilled, and, showing
him only the spectre of her for whom he came, refused to render up
herself. For Orpheus seemed to them, not as Alcestis, to have dared
die for the sake of her whom he loved, and thus to secure to himself a
perpetual intercourse with her in the regions to which she had preceded
him, but like a cowardly musician, to have contrived to descend
alive into Hell; and, indeed, they appointed as a punishment for his
cowardice, that he should be put to death by women.
“Far otherwise did they reward Achilles, the son of Thetis, whom they
sent to inhabit the islands of the blessed. For Achilles, though
informed by his mother that his own death would ensue upon his killing
Hector, but that if he refrained from it he might return home and
die in old age, yet preferred revenging and honouring his beloved
Patroclus; not to die for him merely, but to disdain and reject that
life which he had ceased to share. Therefore the Greeks honoured
Achilles beyond all other men, because he thus preferred his friend to
all things else.
“On this account have the Gods rewarded Achilles more amply than
Alcestis; permitting his spirit to inhabit the islands of the blessed.
Hence do I assert that Love is the most ancient and venerable of
deities, and most powerful to endow mortals with the possession of
happiness and virtue, both whilst they live and after they die.”
Thus Aristodemus reported the discourse of Phædrus; and after Phædrus,
he said that some others spoke, whose discourses he did not well
remember. When they had ceased, Pausanias began thus:--
“Simply to praise Love, O Phædrus, seems to me too bounded a scope for
our discourse. If Love were one, it would be well. But since Love is
not one, I will endeavour to distinguish which is the Love whom it
becomes us to praise, and having thus discriminated one from the other,
will attempt to render him who is the subject of our discourse the
honour due to his divinity. We all know that Venus is never without
Love; and if Venus were one, Love would be one; but since there are
two Venuses, of necessity also must there be two Loves. For assuredly
are there two Venuses; one, the eldest, the daughter of Uranus,
born without a mother, whom we call the Uranian; the other younger,
the daughter of Jupiter and Dione, whom we call the Pandemian;--of
necessity must there also be two Loves, the Uranian and Pandemian
companions of these goddesses. It is becoming to praise all the Gods,
but the attributes which fall to the lot of each may be distinguished
and selected. For any particular action whatever in itself is neither
good nor evil; what we are now doing--drinking, singing, talking, none
of these things are good in themselves, but the mode in which they are
done stamps them with its own nature; and that which is done well, is
good, and that which is done ill, is evil. Thus, not all love, nor
every mode of love is beautiful, or worthy of commendation, but that
alone which excites us to love worthily. The Love, therefore, which
attends upon Venus Pandemos is, in truth, common to the vulgar, and
presides over transient and fortuitous connexions, and is worshipped
by the least excellent of mankind. The votaries of this deity seek
the body rather than the soul, and the ignorant rather than the wise,
disdaining all that is honourable and lovely, and considering how they
shall best satisfy their sensual necessities. This Love is derived
from the younger goddess, who partakes in her nature both of male and
female. But the attendant on the other, the Uranian, whose nature is
entirely masculine, is the Love who inspires us with affection, and
exempts us from all wantonness and libertinism. Those who are inspired
by this divinity seek the affections of those who are endowed by nature
with greater excellence and vigour both of body and mind. And it is
easy to distinguish those who especially exist under the influence of
this power, by their choosing in early youth as the objects of their
love those in whom the intellectual faculties have begun to develop.
For those who begin to love in this manner seem to me to be preparing
to pass their whole life together in a community of good and evil,
and not ever lightly deceiving those who love them, to be faithless
to their vows. There ought to be a law that none should love the
very young; so much serious affection as this deity enkindles should
not be doubtfully bestowed; for the body and mind of those so young
are yet unformed, and it is difficult to foretell what will be their
future tendencies and power. The good voluntarily impose this law upon
themselves, and those vulgar lovers ought to be compelled to the same
observance, as we deter them with all the power of the laws from the
love of free matrons. For these are the persons whose shameful actions
embolden those who observe their importunity and intemperance to
assert, that it is dishonourable to serve and gratify the objects of
our love. But no one who does this gracefully and according to law, can
justly be liable to the imputation of blame.
“Not only friendship, but philosophy and the practice of the gymnastic
exercises, are represented as dishonourable by the tyrannical
governments under which the barbarians live. For I imagine it would
little conduce to the benefit of the governors, that the governed
should be disciplined to lofty thoughts and to the unity and communion
of steadfast friendship, of which admirable effects the tyrants
of our own country have also learned that Love is the author. For
the love of Harmodius and Aristogiton, strengthened into a firm
friendship, dissolved the tyranny. Wherever, therefore, it is declared
dishonourable in any case to serve and benefit friends, that law is a
mark of the depravity of the legislator, the avarice and tyranny of
the rulers, and the cowardice of those who are ruled. Wherever it is
simply declared to be honourable without distinction of cases, such a
declaration denotes dulness and want of subtlety of mind in the authors
of the regulation. Here the degrees of praise or blame to be attributed
by law are far better regulated; but it is yet difficult to determine
the cases to which they should refer.
“It is evident, however, for one in whom passion is enkindled, it is
more honourable to love openly than secretly; and most honourable to
love the most excellent and virtuous, even if they should be less
beautiful than others. It is honourable for the lover to exhort and
sustain the object of his love in virtuous conduct. It is considered
honourable to attain the love of those whom we seek, and the contrary
shameful; and to facilitate this attainment, opinion has given to the
lover the permission of acquiring favour by the most extraordinary
devices, which if a person should practise for any purpose besides
this, he would incur the severest reproof of philosophy. For if any one
desirous of accumulating money, or ambitious of procuring power, or
seeking any other advantage, should, like a lover seeking to acquire
the favour of his beloved, employ prayers and entreaties in his
necessity, and swear such oaths as lovers swear, and sleep before the
threshold, and offer to subject himself to such slavery as no slave
even would endure; he would be frustrated of the attainment of what he
sought, both by his enemies and friends, these reviling him for his
flattery, those sharply admonishing him, and taking to themselves the
shame of his servility. But there is a certain grace in a lover who
does all these things, so that he alone may do them without dishonour.
It is commonly said that the Gods accord pardon to the lover alone if
he should break his oath, and that there is no oath by Venus. Thus, as
our law declares, both gods and men have given to lovers all possible
indulgence.
“The affair, however, I imagine, stands thus: As I have before
said, love cannot be considered in itself as either honourable or
dishonourable: if it is honourably pursued, it is honourable; if
dishonourably, dishonourable: it is dishonourable basely to serve and
gratify a worthless person; it is honourable honourably to serve a
person of virtue. That Pandemic lover who loves rather the body than
the soul is worthless, nor can be constant and consistent, since he
has placed his affections on that which has no stability. For as soon
as the flower of the form, which was the sole object of his desire,
has faded, then he departs and is seen no more; bound by no faith nor
shame of his many promises and persuasions. But he who is the lover of
virtuous manners is constant during life, since he has placed himself
in harmony and desire with that which is consistent with itself.
“These two classes of persons we ought to distinguish with careful
examination, so that we may serve and converse with the one and avoid
the other; determining, by that inquiry, by what a man is attracted,
and for what the object of his love is dear to him. On the same
account it is considered as dishonourable to be inspired with love at
once, lest time should be wanting to know and approve the character
of the object. It is considered dishonourable to be captivated by the
allurements of wealth and power, or terrified through injuries to
yield up the affections, or not to despise in the comparison with an
unconstrained choice all political influence and personal advantage.
For no circumstance is there in wealth or power so invariable and
consistent, as that no generous friendship can ever spring up from
amongst them. We have an opinion with respect to lovers which declares
that it shall not be considered servile or disgraceful, though the
lover should submit himself to any species of slavery for the sake of
his beloved. The same opinion holds with respect to those who undergo
any degradation for the sake of virtue. And also it is esteemed among
us, that if any one chooses to serve and obey another for the purpose
of becoming more wise or more virtuous through the intercourse that
might thence arise, such willing slavery is not the slavery of a
dishonest flatterer. Through this we should consider in the same
light a servitude undertaken for the sake of love as one undertaken
for the acquirement of wisdom or any other excellence, if indeed the
devotion of a lover to his beloved is to be considered a beautiful
thing. For when the lover and the beloved have once arrived at the
same point, the province of each being distinguished; the one able to
assist in the cultivation of the mind and in the acquirement of every
other excellence; the other yet requiring education, and seeking the
possession of wisdom; then alone, by the union of these conditions,
and in no other case, is it honourable for the beloved to yield up
the affections to the lover. In this servitude alone there is no
disgrace in being deceived and defeated of the object for which it was
undertaken, whereas every other is disgraceful, whether we are deceived
or no.
“On the same principle, if any one seeks the friendship of another,
believing him to be virtuous, for the sake of becoming better through
such intercourse and affection, and is deceived, his friend turning
out to be worthless, and far from the possession of virtue; yet it
is honourable to have been so deceived. For such a one seems to have
submitted to a kind of servitude, because he would endure anything for
the sake of becoming more virtuous and wise; a disposition of mind
eminently beautiful.
“This is that Love who attends on the Uranian deity, and is Uranian;
the author of innumerable benefits both to the state and to
individuals, and by the necessity of whose influence those who love are
disciplined into the zeal of virtue. All other loves are the attendants
on Venus Pandemos. So much, although unpremeditated, is what I have to
deliver on the subject of love, O Phædrus.”
Pausanias having ceased (for so the learned teach me to denote the
changes of the discourse), Aristodemus said that it came to the turn
of Aristophanes to speak; but it happened that, from repletion or some
other cause, he had an hiccough which prevented him; so he turned to
Eryximachus, the physician, who was reclining close beside him, and
said--“Eryximachus, it is but fair that you should cure my hiccough,
or speak instead of me until it is over.”--“I will do both,” said
Eryximachus; “I will speak in your turn, and you, when your hiccough
has ceased, shall speak in mine. Meanwhile, if you hold your breath
some time, it will subside. If not, gargle your throat with water;
and if it still continue, take something to stimulate your nostrils,
and sneeze; do this once or twice, and even though it should be very
violent it will cease.”--“Whilst you speak,” said Aristophanes, “I will
follow your directions.”--Eryximachus then began:--
“Since Pausanias, beginning his discourse excellently, placed no fit
completion and development to it, I think it necessary to attempt to
fill up what he has left unfinished. He has reasoned well in defining
love as of a double nature. The science of medicine, to which I have
addicted myself, seems to teach me that the love which impels towards
those who are beautiful, does not subsist only in the souls of men,
but in the bodies also of those of all other living beings which are
produced upon earth, and, in a word, in all things which are. So
wonderful and mighty is this divinity, and so widely is his influence
extended over all divine and human things! For the honour of my
profession, I will begin by adducing a proof from medicine. The nature
of the body contains within itself this double love. For that which is
healthy and that which is diseased in a body differ and are unlike:
that which is unlike loves and desires that which is unlike. Love,
therefore, is different in a sane and in a diseased body. Pausanias has
asserted rightly that it is honourable to gratify those things in the
body which are good and healthy, and in this consists the skill of the
physician; whilst those which are bad and diseased ought to be treated
with no indulgence. The science of medicine, in a word, is a knowledge
of the love affairs of the body, as they bear relation to repletion
and evacuation; and he is the most skilful physician who can trace
those operations of the good and evil love, can make the one change
places with the other, and attract love into those parts from which
he is absent, or expel him from those which he ought not to occupy.
He ought to make those things which are most inimical, friendly, and
excite them to mutual love. But those things are most inimical which
are most opposite to each other; cold to heat, bitterness to sweetness,
dryness to moisture. Our progenitor, Æsculapius, as the poets inform
us, (and indeed I believe them,) through the skill which he possessed
to inspire love and concord in these contending principles, established
the science of medicine.
“The gymnastic arts and agriculture, no less than medicine, are
exercised under the dominion of this God. Music, as any one may
perceive who yields a very slight attention to the subject, originates
from the same source; which Heraclitus probably meant, though he could
not express his meaning very clearly in words, when he says, ‘One
though apparently differing, yet so agrees with itself, as the harmony
of a lyre and a bow.’ It is great absurdity to say that a harmony
differs, and can exist between things whilst they are dissimilar;
but probably he meant that from sounds which first differed, like the
grave and the acute, and which afterwards agreed, harmony was produced
according to musical art. For no harmony can arise from the grave and
the acute whilst yet they differ. But harmony is symphony: symphony is,
as it were, concord. But it is impossible that concord should subsist
between things that differ, so long as they differ. Between things
which are discordant and dissimilar there is then no harmony. A rhythm
is produced from that which is quick, and that which is slow, first
being distinguished and opposed to each other, and then made accordant;
so does medicine, no less than music, establish a concord between the
objects of its art, producing love and agreement between adverse things.
“Music is then the knowledge of that which relates to love in harmony
and system. In the very system of harmony and rhythm, it is easy to
distinguish love. The double love is not distinguishable in music
itself; but it is required to apply it to the service of mankind by
system and harmony, which is called poetry, or the composition of
melody; or by the correct use of songs and measures already composed,
which is called discipline; then one can be distinguished from the
other, by the aid of an extremely skilful artist. And the better love
ought to be honoured and preserved for the sake of those who are
virtuous, and that the nature of the vicious may be changed through
the inspiration of its spirit. This is that beautiful Uranian love,
the attendant on the Uranian muse: the Pandemian is the attendant of
Polyhymnia; to whose influence we should only so far subject ourselves,
as to derive pleasure from it without indulging to excess; in the
same manner as, according to our art, we are instructed to seek the
pleasures of the table, only so far as we can enjoy them without the
consequences of disease. In music, therefore, and in medicine, and in
all other things, human and divine, this double love ought to be traced
and discriminated; for it is in all things.
“Even the constitution of the seasons of the year is penetrated with
these contending principles. For so often as heat and cold, dryness
and moisture, of which I spoke before, are influenced by the more
benignant love, and are harmoniously and temperately intermingled
with the seasons, they bring maturity and health to men, and to all
the other animals and plants. But when the evil and injurious love
assumes the dominion of the seasons of the year, destruction is spread
widely abroad. Then pestilence is accustomed to arise, and many other
blights and diseases fall upon animals and plants: and hoar frosts,
and hails, and mildew on the corn, are produced from that excessive
and disorderly love, with which each season of the year is impelled
towards the other; the motions of which and the knowledge of the stars,
is called astronomy. All sacrifices, and all those things in which
divination is concerned (for these things are the links by which is
maintained an intercourse and communion between the Gods and men), are
nothing else than the science of preservation and right government of
Love. For impiety is accustomed to spring up, so soon as any one ceases
to serve the more honourable Love, and worship him by the sacrifice
of good actions; but submits himself to the influences of the other,
in relation to his duties towards his parents, and the Gods, and the
living, and the dead. It is the object of divination to distinguish and
remedy the effects of these opposite loves; and divination is therefore
the author of the friendship of Gods and men, because it affords the
knowledge of what in matters of love is lawful or unlawful to men.
“Thus every species of love possesses collectively a various and vast,
or rather universal power. But love which incites to the acquirement
of its objects according to virtue and wisdom, possesses the most
exclusive dominion, and prepares for his worshippers the highest
happiness through the mutual intercourse of social kindness which it
promotes among them, and through the benevolence which he attracts to
them from the Gods, our superiors.
“Probably in thus praising Love, I have unwillingly omitted many
things; but it is your business, O Aristophanes, to fill up all that
I have left incomplete; or, if you have imagined any other mode of
honouring the divinity: for I observe your hiccough is over.”
“Yes,” said Aristophanes, “but not before I applied the sneezing. I
wonder why the harmonious construction of our body should require such
noisy operations as sneezing; for it ceased the moment I sneezed.”--“Do
you not observe what you do, my good Aristophanes?” said Eryximachus;
“you are going to speak, and you predispose us to laughter, and compel
me to watch for the first ridiculous idea which you may start in your
discourse, when you might have spoken in peace.”--“Let me unsay what I
have said, then,” replied Aristophanes, laughing. “Do not watch me, I
entreat you; though I am not afraid of saying what is laughable (since
that would be all gain, and quite in the accustomed spirit of my muse),
but lest I should say what is ridiculous.”--“Do you think to throw your
dart, and escape with impunity, Aristophanes? Attend, and what you say
be careful you maintain; then, perhaps, if it pleases me, I may dismiss
you without question.”
“Indeed, Eryximachus,” proceeded Aristophanes, “I have designed that my
discourse should be very different from yours and that of Pausanias. It
seems to me that mankind are by no means penetrated with a conception
of the power of Love, or they would have built sumptuous temples and
altars, and have established magnificent rites of sacrifice in his
honour; he deserves worship and homage more than all the other Gods,
and he has yet received none. For Love is of all the Gods the most
friendly to mortals; and the physician of those wounds, whose cure
would be the greatest happiness which could be conferred upon the human
race. I will endeavour to unfold to you his true power, and you can
relate what I declare to others.
“You ought first to know the nature of man, and the adventures he has
gone through; for his nature was anciently far different from that
which it is at present. First, then, human beings were formerly not
divided into two sexes, male and female; there was also a third, common
to both the others, the name of which remains, though the sex itself
has disappeared. The androgynous sex, both in appearance and in name,
was common both to male and female; its name alone remains, which
labours under a reproach.
“At the period to which I refer, the form of every human being was
round, the back and the sides being circularly joined, and each had
four arms and as many legs; two faces fixed upon a round neck, exactly
like each other; one head between the two faces; four ears, and
everything else as from such proportions it is easy to conjecture. Man
walked upright as now, in whatever direction he pleased; but when he
wished to go fast he made use of all his eight limbs, and proceeded
in a rapid motion by rolling circularly round,--like tumblers, who,
with their legs in the air, tumble round and round. We account for the
production of three sexes by supposing that, at the beginning, the
male was produced from the sun, the female from the earth; and that
sex which participated in both sexes, from the moon, by reason of the
androgynous nature of the moon. They were round, and their mode of
proceeding was round, from the similarity which must needs subsist
between them and their parent.
“They were strong also, and had aspiring thoughts. They it was who
levied war against the Gods; and what Homer writes concerning Ephialtus
and Otus, that they sought to ascend heaven and dethrone the Gods, in
reality relates to this primitive people. Jupiter and the other Gods
debated what was to be done in this emergency. For neither could they
prevail on themselves to destroy them, as they had the giants, with
thunder, so that the race should be abolished; for in that case they
would be deprived of the honours of the sacrifices which they were in
the custom of receiving from them; nor could they permit a continuance
of their insolence and impiety. Jupiter, with some difficulty having
desired silence, at length spoke. ‘I think,’ said he, ‘I have contrived
a method by which we may, by rendering the human race more feeble,
quell the insolence which they exercise, without proceeding to their
utter destruction. I will cut each of them in half; and so they will at
once be weaker and more useful on account of their numbers. They shall
walk upright on two legs. If they show any more insolence, and will not
keep quiet, I will cut them up in half again, so they shall go about
hopping on one leg.’
“So saying, he cut human beings in half, as people cut eggs before
they salt them, or as I have seen eggs cut with hairs. He ordered
Apollo to take each one as he cut him, and turn his face and half
his neck towards the operation, so that by contemplating it he might
become more cautious and humble; and then, to cure him, Apollo turned
the face round, and drawing the skin upon what we now call the belly,
like a contracted pouch, and leaving one opening, that which is
called the navel, tied it in the middle. He then smoothed many other
wrinkles, and moulded the breast with much such an instrument as the
leather-cutters use to smooth the skins upon the block. He left only
a few wrinkles in the belly, near the navel, to serve as a record of
its former adventure. Immediately after this division, as each desired
to possess the other half of himself, these divided people threw their
arms around and embraced each other, seeking to grow together; and from
this resolution to do nothing without the other half, they died of
hunger and weakness: when one half died and the other was left alive,
that which was thus left sought the other and folded it to its bosom;
whether that half were an entire woman (for we now call it a woman) or
a man; and thus they perished. But Jupiter, pitying them, thought of
another contrivance. In this manner is generation now produced, by the
union of male and female; so that from the embrace of a man and woman
the race is propagated.
“From this period, mutual love has naturally existed between human
beings; that reconciler and bond of union of their original nature,
which seeks to make two one, and to heal the divided nature of man.
Every one of us is thus the half of what may be properly termed a man,
and like a pselta cut in two, is the imperfect portion of an entire
whole, perpetually necessitated to seek the half belonging to him.
“Such as I have described is ever an affectionate lover and a faithful
friend, delighting in that which is in conformity with his own nature.
Whenever, therefore, any such as I have described are impetuously
struck, through the sentiment of their former union, with love and
desire and the want of community, they are unwilling to be divided
even for a moment. These are they who devote their whole lives to each
other, with a vain and inexpressible longing to obtain from each other
something they know not what; for it is not merely the sensual delights
of their intercourse for the sake of which they dedicate themselves to
each other with such serious affection; but the soul of each manifestly
thirsts for, from the other, something which there are no words to
describe, and divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely the
footsteps of its obscure desire. If Vulcan should say to persons thus
affected, ‘My good people, what is it that you want with one another?’
And if, while they were hesitating what to answer, he should proceed
to ask, ‘Do you not desire the closest union and singleness to exist
between you, so that you may never be divided night or day? If so, I
will melt you together, and make you grow into one, so that both in
life and death ye may be undivided. Consider, is this what you desire?
Will it content you if you become that which I propose?’ We all know
that no one would refuse such an offer, but would at once feel that
this was what he had ever sought; and intimately to mix and melt and to
be melted together with his beloved, so that one should be made out of
two.
“The cause of this desire is, that according to our original nature,
we were once entire. The desire and the pursuit of integrity and union
is that which we all love. First, as I said, we were entire, but now
we have been dwindled through our own weakness, as the Arcadians by
the Lacedemonians. There is reason to fear, if we are guilty of any
additional impiety towards the Gods, that we may be cut in two again,
and may go about like those figures painted on the columns, divided
through the middle of our nostrils, as thin as lispæ. On which account
every man ought to be exhorted to pay due reverence to the Gods, that
we may escape so severe a punishment, and obtain those things which
Love, our general and commander, incites us to desire; against whom
let none rebel by exciting the hatred of the Gods. For if we continue
on good terms with them, we may discover and possess those lost and
concealed objects of our love; a good-fortune which now befalls to few.
“I assert, then, that the happiness of all, both men and women,
consists singly in the fulfilment of their love, and in that possession
of its objects by which we are in some degree restored to our ancient
nature. If this be the completion of felicity, that must necessarily
approach nearest to it, in which we obtain the possession and society
of those whose natures most intimately accord with our own. And if
we would celebrate any God as the author of this benefit, we should
justly celebrate Love with hymns of joy; who, in our present condition,
brings good assistance in our necessity, and affords great hopes, if
we persevere in piety towards the Gods, that he will restore us to our
original state, and confer on us the complete happiness alone suited to
our nature.
“Such, Eryximachus, is my discourse on the subject of Love; different
indeed from yours, which I nevertheless entreat you not to turn into
ridicule, that we may not interrupt what each has separately to deliver
on the subject.”
“I will refrain at present,” said Eryximachus, “for your discourse
delighted me. And if I did not know that Socrates and Agathon
were profoundly versed in the science of love affairs, I should
fear that they had nothing new to say, after so many and such
various imaginations. As it is, I confide in the fertility of their
geniuses.”--“Your part of the contest, at least, was strenuously
fought, Eryximachus,” said Socrates, “but if you had been in the
situation in which I am, or rather shall be, after the discourse of
Agathon, like me, you would then have reason to fear, and be reduced to
your wits’ end.”--“Socrates,” said Agathon, “wishes to confuse me with
the enchantments of his wit, sufficiently confused already with the
expectation I see in the assembly in favour of my discourse.”--“I must
have lost my memory, Agathon,” replied Socrates, “if I imagine that you
could be disturbed by a few private persons, after having witnessed
your firmness and courage in ascending the rostrum with the actors,
and in calmly reciting your compositions in the presence of so great
an assembly as that which decreed you the prize of tragedy.”--“What
then, Socrates,” retorted Agathon, “do you think me so full of the
theatre as to be ignorant that the judgment of a few wise is more
awful than that of a multitude of others, to one who rightly balances
the value of their suffrages?”--“I should judge ill indeed, Agathon,”
answered Socrates, “in thinking you capable of any rude and unrefined
conception, for I well know that if you meet with any whom you consider
wise, you esteem such alone of more value than all others. But we
are far from being entitled to this distinction, for we were also of
that assembly, and to be numbered among the rest. But should you meet
with any who are really wise, you would be careful to say nothing in
their presence which you thought they would not approve--is it not
so?”--“Certainly,” replied Agathon.--“You would not then exercise
the same caution in the presence of the multitude in which they were
included?”--“My dear Agathon,” said Phædrus, interrupting him, “if
you answer all the questions of Socrates, they will never have an
end; he will urge them without conscience so long as he can get any
person, especially one who is so beautiful, to dispute with him. I own
it delights me to hear Socrates discuss; but at present, I must see
that Love is not defrauded of the praise, which it is my province to
exact from each of you. Pay the God his due, and then reason between
yourselves if you will.”
“Your admonition is just, Phædrus,” replied Agathon, “nor need any
reasoning I hold with Socrates impede me: we shall find many future
opportunities for discussion. I will begin my discourse then; first
having defined what ought to be the subject of it. All who have
already spoken seem to me not so much to have praised Love, as to
have felicitated mankind on the many advantages of which that deity
is the cause; what he is, the author of these great benefits, none
have yet declared. There is one mode alone of celebration which would
comprehend the whole topic, namely, first to declare what are those
benefits, and then what he is who is the author of those benefits,
which are the subject of our discourse. Love ought first to be praised,
and then his gifts declared. I assert, then, that although all the
Gods are immortally happy, Love, if I dare trust my voice to express
so awful a truth, is the happiest, and most excellent, and the most
beautiful. That he is the most beautiful is evident; first, O Phædrus,
from this circumstance, that he is the youngest of the Gods; and,
secondly, from his fleetness, and from his repugnance to all that
is old; for he escapes with the swiftness of wings from old age; a
thing in itself sufficiently swift, since it overtakes us sooner than
there is need; and which Love, who delights in the intercourse of the
young, hates, and in no manner can be induced to enter into community
with. The ancient proverb, which says that like is attracted by like,
applies to the attributes of Love. I concede many things to you, O
Phædrus, but this I do not concede, that Love is more ancient than
Saturn and Jupiter. I assert that he is not only the youngest of the
Gods, but invested with everlasting youth. Those ancient deeds among
the Gods recorded by Hesiod and Parmenides, if their relations are to
be considered as true, were produced not by Love, but by Necessity. For
if Love had been then in Heaven, those violent and sanguinary crimes
never would have taken place; but there would ever have subsisted that
affection and peace, in which the Gods now live, under the influence of
Love.
“He is young, therefore, and being young is tender and soft. There were
need of some poet like Homer to celebrate the delicacy and tenderness
of Love. For Homer says, that the goddess Calamity is delicate, and
that her feet are tender. ‘Her feet are soft,’ he says, ‘for she treads
not upon the ground, but makes her path upon the heads of men.’ He
gives as an evidence of her tenderness, that she walks not upon that
which is hard, but that which is soft. The same evidence is sufficient
to make manifest the tenderness of Love. For Love walks not upon the
earth, nor over the heads of men, which are not indeed very soft; but
he dwells within, and treads on the softest of existing things, having
established his habitation within the souls and inmost nature of Gods
and men; not indeed in all souls--for wherever he chances to find a
hard and rugged disposition, there he will not inhabit, but only where
it is most soft and tender. Of needs must he be the most delicate of
all things, who touches lightly with his feet only the softest parts of
those things which are the softest of all.
“He is then the youngest and the most delicate of all divinities; and
in addition to this, he is, as it were, the most moist and liquid.
For if he were otherwise, he could not, as he does, fold himself
around everything, and secretly flow out and into every soul. His
loveliness, that which Love possesses far beyond all other things, is
a manifestation of the liquid and flowing symmetry of his form; for
between deformity and Love there is eternal contrast and repugnance.
His life is spent among flowers, and this accounts for the immortal
fairness of his skin; for the winged Love rests not in his flight on
any form, or within any soul the flower of whose loveliness is faded,
but there remains most willingly where is the odour and radiance of
blossoms, yet unwithered. Concerning the beauty of the God, let this be
sufficient, though many things must remain unsaid. Let us next consider
the virtue and power of Love.
“What is most admirable in Love is, that he neither inflicts nor
endures injury in his relations either with Gods or men. Nor if he
suffers any thing does he suffer it through violence, nor doing any
thing does he act it with violence, for Love is never even touched
with violence. Every one willingly administers every thing to Love;
and that which every one voluntarily concedes to another, the laws,
which are the kings of the republic, decree that is just for him to
possess. In addition to justice, Love participates in the highest
temperance; for if temperance is defined to be the being superior to
and holding under dominion pleasures and desires; then Love, than whom
no pleasure is more powerful, and who is thus more powerful than all
persuasions and delights, must be excellently temperate. In power and
valour Mars cannot contend with Love: the love of Venus possesses Mars;
the possessor is always superior to the possessed, and he who subdues
the most powerful must of necessity be the most powerful of all.
“The justice and temperance and valour of the God have been thus
declared;--there remains to exhibit his wisdom. And first, that, like
Eryximachus, I may honour my own profession, the God is a wise poet;
so wise that he can even make a poet one who was not before: for every
one, even if before he were ever so undisciplined, becomes a poet as
soon as he is touched by Love;--a sufficient proof that Love is a great
poet, and well skilled in that science according to the discipline
of music. For what any one possesses not, or knows not, that can he
neither give nor teach another. And who will deny that the divine
poetry, by which all living things are produced upon the earth, is not
harmonised by the wisdom of Love? Is it not evident that Love was the
author of all the arts of life with which we are acquainted, and that
he whose teacher has been Love, becomes eminent and illustrious, whilst
he who knows not Love, remains forever unregarded and obscure? Apollo
invented medicine, and divination, and archery, under the guidance
of desire and Love; so that Apollo was the disciple of Love. Through
him the Muses discovered the arts of literature, and Vulcan that of
moulding brass, and Minerva the loom, and Jupiter the mystery of the
dominion which he now exercises over gods and men. So were the Gods
taught and disciplined by the love of that which is beautiful; for
there is no love towards deformity.
“At the origin of things, as I have before said, many fearful deeds are
reported to have been done among the Gods, on account of the dominion
of Necessity. But so soon as this deity sprang forth from the desire
which forever tends in the universe towards that which is lovely, then
all blessings descended upon all living things, human and divine. Love
seems to me, O Phædrus, a divinity the most beautiful and the best of
all, and the author to all others of the excellencies with which his
own nature is endowed. Nor can I restrain the poetic enthusiasm which
takes possession of my discourse, and bids me declare that Love is
the divinity who creates peace among men, and calm upon the sea, the
windless silence of storms, repose and sleep in sadness. Love divests
us of all alienation from each other, and fills our vacant hearts with
overflowing sympathy; he gathers us together in such social meetings
as we now delight to celebrate, our guardian and our guide in dances,
and sacrifices, and feasts. Yes, Love, who showers benignity upon the
world, and before whose presence all harsh passions flee and perish;
the author of all soft affections; the destroyer of all ungentle
thoughts; merciful, mild; the object of the admiration of the wise, and
the delight of gods; possessed by the fortunate, and desired by the
unhappy, therefore unhappy because they possess him not; the father of
grace, and delicacy, and gentleness, and delight, and persuasion, and
desire; the cherisher of all that is good, the abolisher of all evil;
our most excellent pilot, defence, saviour and guardian in labour and
in fear, in desire and in reason; the ornament and governor of all
things human and divine; the best, the loveliest; in whose footsteps
every one ought to follow, celebrating him excellently in song, and
bearing each his part in that divinest harmony which Love sings to all
things which live and are, soothing the troubled minds of Gods and men.
This, O Phædrus, is what I have to offer in praise of the divinity;
partly composed, indeed, of thoughtless and playful fancies, and partly
of such serious ones as I could well command.”
No sooner had Agathon ceased, than a loud murmur of applause arose from
all present; so becomingly had the fair youth spoken, both in praise
of the God, and in extenuation of himself. Then Socrates, addressing
Eryximachus, said, “Was not my fear reasonable, son of Acumenus? Did
I not divine what has, in fact, happened,--that Agathon’s discourse
would be so wonderfully beautiful, as to preoccupy all interest in
what I should say?”--“You, indeed, divined well so far, O Socrates,”
said Eryximachus, “that Agathon would speak eloquently, but not that,
therefore, you would be reduced to any difficulty.”--“How, my good
friend, can I or any one else be otherwise than reduced to difficulty,
who speak after a discourse so various and so eloquent, and which
otherwise had been sufficiently wonderful, if, at the conclusion,
the splendour of the sentences, and the choice selection of the
expressions, had not struck all the hearers with astonishment; so that
I, who well know that I can never say anything nearly so beautiful as
this, would, if there had been any escape, have run away for shame. The
story of Gorgias came into my mind, and I was afraid lest in reality
I should suffer what Homer describes; and lest Agathon, scanning my
discourse with the head of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to
stone for speechlessness. I immediately perceived how ridiculously
I had engaged myself with you to assume a part in rendering praise
to love, and had boasted that I was well skilled in amatory matters,
being so ignorant of the manner in which it is becoming to render him
honour, as I now perceive myself to be. I, in my simplicity, imagined
that the truth ought to be spoken concerning each of the topics of
our praise, and that it would be sufficient, choosing those which
are the most honourable to the God, to place them in as luminous an
arrangement as we could. I had, therefore, great hopes that I should
speak satisfactorily, being well aware that I was acquainted with the
true foundations of the praise which we have engaged to render. But
since, as it appears, our purpose has been, not to render Love his
due honour, but to accumulate the most beautiful and the greatest
attributes of his divinity, whether they in truth belong to it or not,
and that the proposed question is not how Love ought to be praised, but
how we should praise him most eloquently, my attempt must of necessity
fail. It is on this account, I imagine, that in your discourses you
have attributed everything to Love, and have described him to be the
author of such and so great effects as, to those who are ignorant of
his true nature, may exhibit him as the most beautiful and the best of
all things. Not, indeed, to those who know the truth. Such praise has a
splendid and imposing effect, but as I am unacquainted with the art of
rendering it, my mind, which could not foresee what would be required
of me, absolves me from that which my tongue promised. Farewell, then,
for such praise I can never render.
“But if you desire, I will speak what I feel to be true; and that I
may not expose myself to ridicule, I entreat you to consider that I
speak without entering into competition with those who have preceded
me. Consider, then, Phædrus, whether you will exact from me such a
discourse, containing the mere truth with respect to Love, and composed
of such unpremeditated expressions as may chance to offer themselves to
my mind.”--Phædrus and the rest bade him speak in the manner which he
judged most befitting.--“Permit me, then, O Phædrus, to ask Agathon
a few questions, so that, confirmed by his agreement with me, I may
proceed.”--“Willingly,” replied Phædrus, “ask.”--Then Socrates thus
began:--
“I applaud, dear Agathon, the beginning of your discourse, where you
say we ought first to define and declare what Love is, and then his
works. This rule I particularly approve. But, come, since you have
given us a discourse of such beauty and majesty concerning Love, you
are able, I doubt not, to explain this question, whether Love is
the love of something or nothing? I do not ask you of what parents
Love is; for the inquiry, of whether Love is the love of any father
or mother, would be sufficiently ridiculous. But if I were asking
you to describe that which a father is, I should ask, not whether a
father was the love of any one, but whether a father was the father
of any one or not; you would undoubtedly reply, that a father was the
father of a son or daughter; would you not?”--“Assuredly.”--“You would
define a mother in the same manner?”--“Without doubt.”--“Yet bear
with me, and answer a few more questions, for I would learn from you
that which I wish to know. If I should inquire, in addition, is not a
brother, through the very nature of his relation, the brother of some
one?”--“Certainly.”--“Of a brother or sister, is he not?”--“Without
question.”--“Try to explain to me then the nature of Love; Love is the
love of something or nothing?”--“Of something, certainly.”
“Observe and remember this concession. Tell me yet farther, whether
Love desires that of which it is the Love or not?”--“It desires it,
assuredly.”--“Whether possessing that which it desires and loves, or
not possessing it, does it desire and love?”--“Not possessing it, I
should imagine.”--“Observe now, whether it does not appear, that, of
necessity, desire desires that which it wants and does not possess,
and no longer desires that which it no longer wants: this appears
to me, Agathon, of necessity to be; how does it appear to you?”--“It
appears so to me also.”--“Would any one who was already illustrious,
desire to be illustrious; would any one already strong, desire to
be strong? From what has already been conceded, it follows that he
would not. If any one already strong, should desire to be strong; or
any one already swift, should desire to be swift; or any one already
healthy, should desire to be healthy, it must be concluded that they
still desired the advantages of which they already seemed possessed.
To destroy the foundation of this error, observe, Agathon, that each
of these persons must possess the several advantages in question, at
the moment present to our thoughts, whether he will or no. And, now, is
it possible that those advantages should be at that time the objects
of his desire? For, if any one should say, being in health, ‘I desire
to be in health;’ being rich, ‘I desire to be rich, and thus still
desire those things which I already possess;’ we might say to him,
‘You, my friend, possess health, and strength, and riches; you do not
desire to possess now, but to continue to possess them in future; for,
whether you will or no, they now belong to you. Consider then, whether,
when you say that you desire things present to you, and in your own
possession, you say anything else than that you desire the advantages
to be for the future also in your possession.’ What else could he
reply?”--“Nothing, indeed.”--“Is not Love, then, the love of that
which is not within its reach, and which cannot hold in security, for
the future, those things of which it obtains a present and transitory
possession?”--“Evidently.”--“Love, therefore, and everything else that
desires anything, desires that which is absent and beyond his reach,
that which it has not, that which is not itself, that which it wants;
such are the things of which there are desire and love?”--“Assuredly.”
“Come,” said Socrates, “let us review your concessions. Is Love
anything else than the love first of something; and, secondly, of
those things of which it has need?”--“Nothing.”--“Now, remember of
those things you said in your discourse, that Love was the love--if
you wish I will remind you. I think you said something of this kind,
that all the affairs of the gods were admirably disposed through the
love of the things which are beautiful; for, there was no love of
things deformed; did you not say so?”--“I confess that I did.”--“You
said what was most likely to be true, my friend; and if the matter be
so, the love of beauty must be one thing, and the love of deformity
another.”--“Certainly.”--“It is conceded, then, that Love loves that
which he wants but possesses not?”--“Yes, certainly.”--“But Love
wants and does not possess beauty?”--“Indeed it must necessarily
follow.”--“What, then! call you that beautiful which has need of beauty
and possesses not?”--“Assuredly no.”--“Do you still assert, then,
that Love is beautiful, if all that we have said be true?”--“Indeed,
Socrates,” said Agathon, “I am in danger of being convicted of
ignorance, with respect to all that I then spoke.”--“You spoke most
eloquently, my dear Agathon; but bear with my questions yet a moment.
You admit that things which are good are also beautiful?”--“No
doubt.”--“If Love, then, be in want of beautiful things, and things
which are good are beautiful, he must be in want of things which are
good?”--“I cannot refute your arguments, Socrates.”--“You cannot refute
truth, my dear Agathon: to refute Socrates is nothing difficult.
“But I will dismiss these questionings. At present let me endeavour,
to the best of my power, to repeat to you, on the basis of the points
which have been agreed upon between me and Agathon, a discourse
concerning Love, which I formerly heard from the prophetess Diotima,
who was profoundly skilled in this and many other doctrines, and who,
ten years before the pestilence, procured to the Athenians, through
their sacrifices, a delay of the disease; for it was she who taught me
the science of things relating to Love.
“As you well remarked, Agathon, we ought to declare who and what
is Love, and then his works. It is easiest to relate them in the
same order as the foreign prophetess observed when, questioning
me, she related them. For I said to her much the same things that
Agathon has just said to me--that Love was a great deity, and that
he was beautiful; and she refuted me with the same reasons as I
have employed to refute Agathon, compelling me to infer that he was
neither beautiful nor good, as I said.--‘What then,’ I objected, ‘O
Diotima, is Love ugly and evil?’--‘Good words, I entreat you,’ said
Diotima; ‘do you think that every thing which is not beautiful, must
of necessity be ugly?’--‘Certainly.’--‘And everything that is not
wise, ignorant? Do you not perceive that there is something between
ignorance and wisdom?’--‘What is that?’--‘To have a right opinion or
conjecture. Observe, that this kind of opinion, for which no reason can
be rendered, cannot be called knowledge; for how can that be called
knowledge, which is without evidence or reason? Nor ignorance, on the
other hand; for how can that be called ignorance which arrives at the
persuasion of that which it really is? A right opinion is something
between understanding and ignorance.’--I confessed that what she
alleged was true.--‘Do not then say,’ she continued, ‘that what is
not beautiful is of necessity deformed, nor what is not good is of
necessity evil; nor, since you have confessed that Love is neither
beautiful nor good, infer, therefore, that he is deformed or evil, but
rather something intermediate.’
“‘But,’ I said, ‘love is confessed by all to be a great God.’--‘Do
you mean, when you say all, all those who know, or those who know
not, what they say?’--‘All collectively.’--‘And how can that be,
Socrates?’ said she laughing; ‘how can he be acknowledged to be a great
God, by those who assert that he is not even a God at all?’--‘And who
are they?’ I said--‘You for one, and I for another.’--‘How can you
say that, Diotima?’--‘Easily,’ she replied, ‘and with truth; for tell
me, do you not own that all the Gods are beautiful and happy? or will
you presume to maintain that any God is otherwise?’--‘By Jupiter, not
I!’--‘Do you not call those alone happy who possess all things that
are beautiful and good?’--‘Certainly.’--‘You have confessed that Love,
through his desire for things beautiful and good, possesses not those
materials of happiness.’--‘Indeed such was my concession.’--‘But how
can we conceive a God to be without the possession of what is beautiful
and good?’--‘In no manner, I confess.’--‘Observe, then, that you do
not consider Love to be a God.’--‘What, then,’ I said, ‘is Love a
mortal?’--‘By no means.’--‘But what, then?’--‘Like those things which I
have before instanced, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but something
intermediate.’--‘What is that, O Diotima?’--‘A great dæmon, Socrates;
and everything dæmoniacal holds an intermediate place between what is
divine and what is mortal.’
“‘What is his power and nature?’ I inquired.--‘He interprets and makes
a communication between divine and human things, conveying the prayers
and sacrifices of men to the Gods, and communicating the commands
and directions concerning the mode of worship most pleasing to them,
from Gods to men. He fills up that intermediate space between these
two classes of beings, so as to bind together, by his own power, the
whole universe of things. Through him subsist all divination, and the
science of sacred things as it relates to sacrifices, and expiations,
and disenchantments, and prophecy, and magic. The divine nature cannot
immediately communicate with what is human, but all that intercourse
and converse which is conceded by the Gods to men, both whilst they
sleep and when they wake, subsists through the intervention of Love;
and he who is wise in the science of this intercourse is supremely
happy, and participates in the dæmoniacal nature; whilst he who is
wise in any other science or art, remains a mere ordinary slave. These
dæmons are, indeed, many and various, and one of them is Love.’
“‘Who are the parents of Love?’ I inquired.--‘The history of what you
ask,’ replied Diotima, ‘is somewhat long; nevertheless I will explain
it to you. On the birth of Venus the Gods celebrated a great feast,
and among them came Plenty, the son of Metis. After supper, Poverty,
observing the profusion, came to beg, and stood beside the door. Plenty
being drunk with nectar, for wine was not yet invented, went out into
Jupiter’s garden, and fell into a deep sleep. Poverty wishing to have
a child by Plenty, on account of her low estate, lay down by him, and
from his embraces conceived Love. Love is, therefore, the follower and
servant of Venus, because he was conceived at her birth, and because by
nature he is a lover of all that is beautiful, and Venus was beautiful.
And since Love is the child of Poverty and Plenty, his nature and
fortune participate in that of his parents. He is for ever poor, and
so far from being delicate and beautiful, as mankind imagine, he is
squalid and withered; he flies low along the ground, and is homeless
and unsandalled; he sleeps without covering before the doors, and in
the unsheltered streets; possessing thus far his mother’s nature, that
he is ever the companion of want. But, inasmuch as he participates in
that of his father, he is for ever scheming to obtain things which are
good and beautiful; he is fearless, vehement, and strong; a dreadful
hunter, for ever weaving some new contrivance; exceedingly cautious
and prudent, and full of resources; he is also, during his whole
existence, a philosopher, a powerful enchanter, a wizard, and a subtle
sophist. And, as his nature is neither mortal nor immortal, on the same
day when he is fortunate and successful, he will at one time flourish,
and then die away, and then, according to his father’s nature, again
revive. All that he acquires perpetually flows away from him, so that
Love is never either rich or poor, and holding for ever an intermediate
state between ignorance and wisdom. The case stands thus;--no God
philosophises or desires to become wise, for he is wise; nor, if there
exist any other being who is wise, does he philosophise. Nor do the
ignorant philosophise, for they desire not to become wise; for this
is the evil of ignorance, that he who has neither intelligence, nor
virtue, nor delicacy of sentiment, imagines that he possesses all
those things sufficiently. He seeks not, therefore, that possession,
of whose want he is not aware.’--‘Who, then, O Diotima,’ I inquired,
‘are philosophers, if they are neither the ignorant nor the wise?’--‘It
is evident, even to a child, that they are those intermediate persons,
among whom is Love. For Wisdom is one of the most beautiful of all
things; Love is that which thirsts for the beautiful, so that Love is
of necessity a philosopher, philosophy being an intermediate state
between ignorance and wisdom. His parentage accounts for his condition,
being the child of a wise and well provided father, and of a mother
both ignorant and poor.
“‘Such is the dæmoniacal nature, my dear Socrates; nor do I wonder at
your error concerning Love, for you thought, as I conjecture from what
you say, that Love was not the lover but the beloved, and thence, well
concluded that he must be supremely beautiful; for that which is the
object of Love must indeed be fair, and delicate, and perfect, and
most happy; but Love inherits, as I have declared, a totally opposite
nature.’--‘Your words have persuasion in them, O stranger,’ I said;
‘be it as you say. But this Love, what advantages does he afford to
men?’--‘I will proceed to explain it to you, Socrates. Love being such
and so produced as I have described, is, indeed, as you say, the love
of things which are beautiful. But if any one should ask us, saying:
O Socrates and Diotima, why is Love the love of beautiful things? Or,
in plainer words, what does the lover of that which is beautiful,
love in the object of his love, and seek from it?’--‘He seeks,’ I
said, interrupting her, ‘the property and possession of it.’--‘But
that,’ she replied, ‘might still be met with another question, What
has he, who possesses that which is beautiful?’--‘Indeed, I cannot
immediately reply.’--‘But, if changing the beautiful for good, any one
should inquire,--I ask, O Socrates, what is that which he who loves
that which is good, loves in the object of his love?’--‘To be in his
possession,’ I replied.--‘And what has he, who has the possession of
good?’--‘This question is of easier solution, he is happy.’--‘Those who
are happy, then, are happy through the possession; and it is useless
to inquire what he desires, who desires to be happy; the question
seems to have a complete reply. But do you think that this wish and
this love are common to all men, and that all desire that that which
is good should be for ever present to them?’--‘Certainly, common to
all.’--‘Why do we not say then, Socrates, that every one loves? if,
indeed, all love perpetually the same thing? But we say that some love,
and some do not.’--‘Indeed I wonder why it is so.’--‘Wonder not,’ said
Diotima, ‘for we select a particular species of love, and apply to it
distinctively, the appellation of that which is universal.’----
“‘Give me an example of such a select application.’--‘Poetry; which is
a general name signifying every cause whereby anything proceeds from
that which is not, into that which is; so that the exercise of every
inventive art is poetry, and all such artists poets. Yet they are
not called poets, but distinguished by other names; and one portion
or species of poetry, that which has relation to music and rhythm,
is divided from all others, and known by the name belonging to all.
For this is alone properly called poetry, and those who exercise the
art of this species of poetry, poets. So with respect to Love. Love
is indeed universally all that earnest desire for the possession of
happiness and that which is good; the greatest and the subtlest love,
and which inhabits the heart of every living being; but those who seek
this object through the acquirement of wealth, or the exercise of the
gymnastic arts, or philosophy, are not said to love, nor are called
lovers; one species alone is called love, and those alone are said to
be lovers, and to love, who seek the attainment of the universal desire
through one species of love, which is peculiarly distinguished by the
name belonging to the whole. It is asserted by some, that they love,
who are seeking the lost half of their divided being. But I assert,
that Love is neither the love of half nor of the whole, unless, my
friend, it meets with that which is good; since men willingly cut off
their own hands and feet, if they think that they are the cause of
evil to them. Nor do they cherish and embrace that which may belong
to themselves, merely because it is their own; unless, indeed, any
one should choose to say, that that which is good is attached to his
own nature and is his own, whilst that which is evil is foreign and
accidental; but love nothing but that which is good. Does it not appear
so to you?’--‘Assuredly.’--‘Can we then simply affirm that men love
that which is good?’--‘Without doubt.’--‘What, then, must we not add,
that, in addition to loving that which is good, they love that it
should be present to themselves?’--‘Indeed that must be added.’--‘And
not merely that it should be present, but that it should ever be
present?’--‘This also must be added.’
“‘Love, then, is collectively the desire in men that good should
be for ever present to them.’--‘Most true.’--‘Since this is the
general definition of Love, can you explain in what mode of attaining
its object, and in what species of actions, does Love peculiarly
consist?’--‘If I knew what you ask, O Diotima, I should not have so
much wondered at your wisdom, nor have sought you out for the purpose
of deriving improvement from your instructions.’--‘I will tell you,’
she replied: ‘Love is the desire of generation in the beautiful, both
with relation to the body and the soul.’--‘I must be a diviner to
comprehend what you say, for, being such as I am, I confess that I do
not understand it.’--‘But I will explain it more clearly. The bodies
and the souls of all human beings are alike pregnant with their future
progeny, and when we arrive at a certain age, our nature impels us to
bring forth and propagate. This nature is unable to produce in that
which is deformed, but it can produce in that which is beautiful.
The intercourse of the male and female in generation, a divine work,
through pregnancy and production, is, as it were, something immortal in
mortality. These things cannot take place in that which is incongruous;
for that which is deformed is incongruous, but that which is beautiful
is congruous with what is mortal and divine. Beauty is, therefore,
the fate, and the Juno Lucina to generation. Wherefore, whenever that
which is pregnant with the generative principle, approaches that which
is beautiful, it becomes transported with delight, and is poured forth
in overflowing pleasure, and propagates. But when it approaches that
which is deformed it is contracted by sadness, and being repelled and
checked, it does not produce, but retains unwillingly that with which
it is pregnant. Wherefore, to one pregnant, and, as it were, already
bursting with the load of his desire, the impulse towards that which
is beautiful is intense, on account of the great pain of retaining
that which he has conceived. Love, then, O Socrates, is not as you
imagine the love of the beautiful.’--‘What, then?’--‘Of generation and
production in the beautiful.’--‘Why then of generation?’--‘Generation
is something eternal and immortal in mortality. It necessarily, from
what has been confessed, follows, that we must desire immortality
together with what is good, since Love is the desire that good be
for ever present to us. Of necessity Love must also be the desire of
immortality.’
“Diotima taught me all this doctrine in the discourse we had together
concerning Love; and, in addition, she inquired, ‘What do you think,
Socrates, is the cause of this love and desire? Do you not perceive
how all animals, both those of the earth and of the air, are affected
when they desire the propagation of their species, affected even to
weakness and disease by the impulse of their love; first, longing
to be mixed with each other, and then seeking nourishment for their
offspring, so that the feeblest are ready to contend with the strongest
in obedience to this law, and to die for the sake of their young, or to
waste away with hunger, and do or suffer anything so that they may not
want nourishment. It might be said that human beings do these things
through reason, but can you explain why other animals are thus affected
through love?’--I confessed that I did not know.--‘Do you imagine
yourself,’ said she, ‘to be skilful in the science of Love, if you are
ignorant of these things?’--‘As I said before, O Diotima, I come to
you, well knowing how much I am in need of a teacher. But explain to
me, I entreat you, the cause of these things, and of the other things
relating to Love.’--‘If,’ said Diotima, ‘you believe that Love is of
the same nature as we have mutually agreed upon, wonder not that such
are its effects. For the mortal nature seeks, so far as it is able, to
become deathless and eternal. But it can only accomplish this desire
by generation, which for ever leaves another new in place of the old.
For, although each human being be severally said to live, and be the
same from youth to old age, yet, that which is called the same, never
contains within itself the same things, but always is becoming new by
the loss and change of that which it possessed before; both the hair
and the flesh, and the bones, and the entire body.
“‘And not only does this change take place in the body, but also with
respect to the soul. Manners, morals, opinions, desires, pleasures,
sorrows, fears; none of these ever remain unchanged in the same
persons; but some die away, and others are produced. And, what is yet
more strange is, that not only does some knowledge spring up, and
another decay, and that we are never the same with respect to our
knowledge, but that each several object of our thoughts suffers the
same revolution. That which is called meditation, or the exercise of
memory, is the science of the escape or departure of memory; for,
forgetfulness is the going out of knowledge; and meditation, calling
up a new memory in the place of that which has departed, preserves
knowledge; so that, though for ever displaced and restored, it seems to
be the same. In this manner every thing mortal is preserved: not that
it is constant and eternal, like that which is divine; but that in the
place of what has grown old and is departed, it leaves another new like
that which it was itself. By this contrivance, O Socrates, does what
is mortal, the body and all other things, partake of immortality; that
which is immortal, is immortal in another manner. Wonder not, then, if
every thing by nature cherishes that which was produced from itself,
for this earnest Love is a tendency towards eternity.’
“Having heard this discourse, I was astonished, and asked, ‘Can these
things be true, O wisest Diotima?’ And she, like an accomplished
sophist, said, ‘Know well, O Socrates, that if you only regard that
love of glory which inspires men, you will wonder at your own
unskilfulness in not having discovered all that I now declare. Observe
with how vehement a desire they are affected to become illustrious and
to prolong their glory into immortal time, to attain which object, far
more ardently than for the sake of their children, all men are ready to
engage in many dangers, and expend their fortunes, and submit to any
labours and incur any death. Do you believe that Alcestis would have
died in the place of Admetus, or Achilles for the revenge of Patroclus,
or Codrus for the kingdom of his posterity, if they had not believed
that the immortal memory of their actions, which we now cherish, would
have remained after their death? Far otherwise; all such deeds are done
for the sake of ever-living virtue, and this immortal glory which they
have obtained; and inasmuch as any one is of an excellent nature, so
much the more is he impelled to attain this reward. For they love what
is immortal.
“‘Those whose bodies alone are pregnant with this principle of
immortality are attracted by women, seeking through the production
of children what they imagine to be happiness and immortality and an
enduring remembrance; but they whose souls are far more pregnant than
their bodies, conceive and produce that which is more suitable to the
soul. What is suitable to the soul? Intelligence, and every other power
and excellence of the mind; of which all poets, and all other artists
who are creative and inventive, are the authors. The greatest and most
admirable wisdom is that which regulates the government of families
and states, and which is called moderation and justice. Whosoever,
therefore, from his youth feels his soul pregnant with the conception
of these excellences, is divine; and when due time arrives, desires to
bring forth; and wandering about, he seeks the beautiful in which he
may propagate what he has conceived; for there is no generation in
that which is deformed; he embraces those bodies which are beautiful
rather than those which are deformed, in obedience to the principle
which is within him, which is ever seeking to perpetuate itself. And
if he meets, in conjunction with loveliness of form, a beautiful,
generous, and gentle soul, he embraces both at once, and immediately
undertakes to educate this object of his love, and is inspired with an
overflowing persuasion to declare what is virtue, and what he ought to
be who would attain to its possession, and what are the duties which
it exacts. For, by the intercourse with, and as it were, the very
touch of that which is beautiful, he brings forth and produces what he
had formerly conceived; and nourishes and educates that which is thus
produced together with the object of his love, whose image, whether
absent or present, is never divided from his mind. So that those who
are thus united are linked by a nobler community and a firmer love,
as being the common parents of a lovelier and more endearing progeny
than the parents of other children. And every one who considers what
posterity Homer and Hesiod, and the other great poets, have left behind
them, the sources of their own immortal memory and renown, or what
children of his soul Lycurgus has appointed to be the guardians, not
only of Lacedæmon, but of all Greece; or what an illustrious progeny
of laws Solon has produced, and how many admirable achievements, both
among the Greeks and Barbarians, men have left as the pledges of that
love which subsisted between them and the beautiful, would choose
rather to be the parent of such children than those in a human shape.
For divine honours have often been rendered to them on account of such
children, but on account of those in human shape, never.
“‘Your own meditation, O Socrates, might perhaps have initiated you
in all these things which I have already taught you on the subject
of Love. But those perfect and sublime ends to which these are only
the means, I know not that you would have been competent to discover.
I will declare them, therefore, and will render them as intelligible
as possible: do you meanwhile strain all your attention to trace the
obscure depth of the subject. He who aspires to love rightly, ought
from his earliest youth to seek an intercourse with beautiful forms,
and first to make a single form the object of his love, and therein
to generate intellectual excellences. He ought, then, to consider
that beauty in whatever form it resides is the brother of that beauty
which subsists in another form; and if he ought to pursue that which
is beautiful in form, it would be absurd to imagine that beauty is not
one and the same thing in all forms, and would therefore remit much
of his ardent preference towards one, through his perception of the
multitude of claims upon his love. In addition, he would consider the
beauty which is in souls more excellent than that which is in form.
So that one endowed with an admirable soul, even though the flower of
the form were withered, would suffice him as the object of his love
and care, and the companion with whom he might seek and produce such
conclusions as tend to the improvement of youth; so that it might
be led to observe the beauty and the conformity which there is in
the observation of its duties and the laws, and to esteem little the
mere beauty of the outward form. He would then conduct his pupil to
science, so that he might look upon the loveliness of wisdom; and that
contemplating thus the universal beauty, no longer would he unworthily
and meanly enslave himself to the attractions of one form in love,
nor one subject of discipline or science, but would turn towards the
wide ocean of intellectual beauty, and from the sight of the lovely
and majestic forms which it contains, would abundantly bring forth his
conceptions in philosophy; until, strengthened and confirmed, he should
at length steadily contemplate one science, which is the science of
this universal beauty.
“‘Attempt, I entreat you, to mark what I say with as keen an
observation as you can. He who has been disciplined to this point
in Love, by contemplating beautiful objects gradually, and in their
order, now arriving at the end of all that concerns Love, on a sudden
beholds a beauty wonderful in its nature. This is it, O Socrates, for
the sake of which all the former labours were endured. It is eternal,
unproduced, indestructible; neither subject to increase nor decay:
not, like other things, partly beautiful and partly deformed; not at
one time beautiful and at another time not; not beautiful in relation
to one thing and deformed in relation to another; not here beautiful
and there deformed; not beautiful in the estimation of one person and
deformed in that of another; nor can this supreme beauty be figured
to the imagination like a beautiful face, or beautiful hands, or any
portion of the body, nor like any discourse, nor any science. Nor
does it subsist in any other that lives or is, either in earth, or
in heaven, or in any other place; but it is eternally uniform and
consistent, and monoeidic with itself. All other things are beautiful
through a participation of it, with this condition, that although they
are subject to production and decay, it never becomes more or less, or
endures any change. When any one, ascending from a correct system of
Love, begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he already touches the
consummation of his labour. For such as discipline themselves upon this
system, or are conducted by another beginning to ascend through these
transitory objects which are beautiful, towards that which is beauty
itself, proceeding as on steps from the love of one form to that of
two, and from that of two, to that of all forms which are beautiful;
and from beautiful forms to beautiful habits and institutions, and
from institutions to beautiful doctrines; until, from the meditation
of many doctrines, they arrive at that which is nothing else than
the doctrine of the supreme beauty itself, in the knowledge and
contemplation of which at length they repose.
“‘Such a life as this, my dear Socrates,’ exclaimed the stranger
Prophetess, ’spent in the contemplation of the beautiful, is the
life for men to live; which if you chance ever to experience, you
will esteem far beyond gold and rich garments, and even those lovely
persons whom you and many others now gaze on with astonishment, and are
prepared neither to eat nor drink so that you may behold and live for
ever with these objects of your love! What then shall we imagine to be
the aspect of the supreme beauty itself, simple, pure, uncontaminated
with the intermixture of human flesh and colours, and all other idle
and unreal shapes attendant on mortality; the divine, the original,
the supreme, the monoeidic beautiful itself? What must be the life of
him who dwells with and gazes on that which it becomes us all to seek?
Think you not that to him alone is accorded the prerogative of bringing
forth, not images and shadows of virtue, for he is in contact not
with a shadow but with reality; with virtue itself, in the production
and nourishment of which he becomes dear to the Gods, and if such a
privilege is conceded to any human being, himself immortal.’
“Such, O Phædrus, and my other friends, was what Diotima said.
And being persuaded by her words, I have since occupied myself in
attempting to persuade others, that it is not easy to find a better
assistant than Love in seeking to communicate immortality to our human
natures. Wherefore I exhort every one to honour Love; I hold him in
honour, and chiefly exercise myself in amatory matters, and exhort
others to do so; and now and ever do I praise the power and excellence
of Love, in the best manner that I can. Let this discourse, if it
pleases you, Phædrus, be considered as an encomium of Love; or call it
by what other name you will.”
The whole assembly praised his discourse, and Aristophanes was on the
point of making some remarks on the allusion made by Socrates to him
in a part of his discourse, when suddenly they heard a loud knocking
at the door of the vestibule, and a clamour as of revellers, attended
by a flute-player.--“Go, boys,” said Agathon, “and see who is there:
if they are any of our friends, call them in; if not, say that we have
already done drinking.”--A minute afterwards, they heard the voice of
Alcibiades in the vestibule excessively drunk and roaring out:--“Where
is Agathon? Lead me to Agathon!”--The flute-player, and some of his
companions then led him in, and placed him against the door-post,
crowned with a thick crown of ivy and violets, and having a quantity
of fillets on his head.--“My friends,” he cried out, “hail! I am
excessively drunk already, but I’ll drink with you, if you will. If
not, we will go away after having crowned Agathon, for which purpose I
came. I assure you that I could not come yesterday, but I am now here
with these fillets round my temples, that from my own head I may crown
his who, with your leave, is the most beautiful and wisest of men. Are
you laughing at me because I am drunk? Ay, I know what I say is true,
whether you laugh or not. But tell me at once whether I shall come in,
or no. Will you drink with me?”
Agathon and the whole party desired him to come in, and recline among
them; so he came in, led by his companions. He then unbound his fillets
that he might crown Agathon, and though Socrates was just before his
eyes, he did not see him, but sat down by Agathon, between Socrates and
him, for Socrates moved out of the way to make room for him. When he
sat down, he embraced Agathon and crowned him; and Agathon desired the
slaves to untie his sandals, that he might make a third, and recline
on the same couch. “By all means,” said Alcibiades, “but what third
companion have we here?” And at the same time turning round and seeing
Socrates, he leaped up and cried out:--“O Hercules! what have we here?
You, Socrates, lying in ambush for me wherever I go! and meeting me
just as you always do, when I least expected to see you! And, now, what
are you come here for? Why have you chosen to recline exactly in this
place, and not near Aristophanes, or any one else who is, or wishes
to be ridiculous, but have contrived to take your place beside the
most delightful person of the whole party?”--“Agathon,” said Socrates,
“see if you cannot defend me. I declare my friendship for this man is
a bad business: from the moment that I first began to know him I have
never been permitted to converse with, or so much as look upon any one
else. If I do, he is so jealous and suspicious that he does the most
extravagant things, and hardly refrains from beating me. I entreat you
to prevent him from doing anything of that kind at present. Procure
a reconciliation: or, if he perseveres in attempting any violence, I
entreat you to defend me.”--“Indeed,” said Alcibiades, “I will not be
reconciled to you; I shall find another opportunity to punish you for
this. But now,” said he, addressing Agathon, “lend me some of those
fillets, that I may crown the wonderful head of this fellow, lest I
incur the blame, that having crowned you, I neglected to crown him who
conquers all men with his discourses, not yesterday alone as you did,
but ever.”
Saying this he took the fillets, and having bound the head of
Socrates, and again having reclined, said: “Come, my friends, you
seem to be sober enough. You must not flinch, but drink, for that
was your agreement with me before I came in. I choose as president,
until you have drunk enough--myself. Come, Agathon, if you have got
a great goblet, fetch it out. But no matter, that wine-cooler will
do; bring it, boy!” And observing that it held more than eight cups,
he first drank it off, and then ordered it to be filled for Socrates,
and said:--“Observe, my friends, I cannot invent any scheme against
Socrates, for he will drink as much as any one desires him, and not
be in the least drunk.” Socrates, after the boy had filled up, drank
it off; and Eryximachus said:--“Shall we then have no conversation or
singing over our cups, but drink down stupidly, just as if we were
thirsty?” And Alcibiades said: “Ah, Eryximachus, I did not see you
before; hail, you excellent son of a wise and excellent father!”--“Hail
to you also,” replied Eryximachus, “but what shall we do?”--“Whatever
you command, for we ought to submit to your directions; a physician is
worth a hundred common men. Command us as you please.”--“Listen then,”
said Eryximachus, “before you came in, each of us had agreed to deliver
as eloquent a discourse as he could in praise of Love, beginning at
the right hand; all the rest of us have fulfilled our engagement; you
have not spoken, and yet have drunk with us: you ought to bear your
part in the discussion; and having done so, command what you please to
Socrates, who shall have the privilege of doing so to his right-hand
neighbour, and so on to the others.”--“Indeed, there appears some
justice in your proposal, Eryximachus, though it is rather unfair to
induce a drunken man to set his discourse in competition with that
of those who are sober. And, besides, did Socrates really persuade
you that what he just said about me was true, or do you not know that
matters are in fact exactly the reverse of his representation? For I
seriously believe that, should I praise in his presence, be he god or
man, any other beside himself, he would not keep his hands off me. But
I assure you, Socrates, I will praise no one beside yourself in your
presence.”
“Do so, then,” said Eryximachus, “praise Socrates if you
please.”--“What,” said Alcibiades, “shall I attack him, and punish
him before you all?”--“What have you got into your head now,” said
Socrates, “are you going to expose me to ridicule, and to misrepresent
me? Or what are you going to do?”--“I will only speak the truth; will
you permit me on this condition?”--“I not only permit, but exhort
you to say all the truth you know,” replied Socrates. “I obey you
willingly,” said Alcibiades, “and if I advance anything untrue, do you,
if you please, interrupt me, and convict me of misrepresentation, for
I would never willingly speak falsely. And bear with me if I do not
relate things in their order, but just as I remember them, for it is
not easy for a man in my present condition to enumerate systematically
all your singularities.
“I will begin the praise of Socrates by comparing him to a certain
statue. Perhaps he will think that this statue is introduced for
the sake of ridicule, but I assure you that it is necessary for the
illustration of truth. I assert, then, that Socrates is exactly like
those Silenuses that sit in the sculptors’ shops, and which are carved
holding flutes or pipes, but which, when divided in two, are found
to contain withinside the images of the gods. I assert that Socrates
is like the satyr Marsyas. That your form and appearance are like
these satyrs’, I think that even you will not venture to deny; and
how like you are to them in all other things, now hear. Are you not
scornful and petulant? If you deny this, I will bring witnesses. Are
you not a piper, and far more wonderful a one than he? For Marsyas,
and whoever now pipes the music that he taught, for that music which
is of heaven, and described as being taught by Marsyas, enchants men
through the power of the mouth. For if any musician, be he skilful or
not, awakens this music, it alone enables him to retain the minds of
men, and from the divinity of its nature makes evident those who are in
want of the gods and initiation. You differ only from Marsyas in this
circumstance, that you effect without instruments, by mere words, all
that he can do. For when we hear Pericles, or any other accomplished
orator, deliver a discourse, no one, as it were, cares any thing about
it. But when any one hears you, or even your words related by another,
though ever so rude and unskilful a speaker, be that person a woman,
man or child, we are struck and retained, as it were, by the discourse
clinging to our mind.
“If I was not afraid that I am a great deal too drunk, I would confirm
to you by an oath the strange effects which I assure you I have
suffered from his words, and suffer still; for when I hear him speak,
my heart leaps up far more than the hearts of those who celebrate
the Corybantic mysteries; my tears are poured out as he talks, a
thing I have seen happen to many others beside myself. I have heard
Pericles and other excellent orators, and have been pleased with their
discourses, but I suffered nothing of this kind; nor was my soul ever
on those occasions disturbed and filled with self-reproach, as if it
were slavishly laid prostrate. But this Marsyas here has often affected
me in the way I describe, until the life which I lead seemed hardly
worth living. Do not deny it, Socrates, for I well know that if even
now I chose to listen to you, I could not resist, but should again
suffer the same effects. For, my friends, he forces me to confess
that while I myself am still in want of many things, I neglect my own
necessities, and attend to those of the Athenians. I stop my ears,
therefore, as from the Syrens, and flee away as fast as possible, that
I may not sit down beside him and grow old in listening to his talk.
For this man has reduced me to feel the sentiment of shame, which I
imagine no one would readily believe was in me; he alone inspires me
with remorse and awe. For I feel in his presence my incapacity of
refuting what he says, or of refusing to do that which he directs;
but when I depart from him, the glory which the multitude confers
overwhelms me. I escape, therefore, and hide myself from him, and when
I see him I am overwhelmed with humiliation, because I have neglected
to do what I have confessed to him ought to be done; and often and
often have I wished that he were no longer to be seen among men. But if
that were to happen, I well know that I should suffer far greater pain;
so that where I can turn, or what I can do with this man, I know not.
All this have I and many others suffered from the pipings of this satyr.
“And observe, how like he is to what I said, and what a wonderful power
he possesses. Know that there is not one of you who is aware of the
real nature of Socrates; but since I have begun, I will make him plain
to you. You observe how passionately Socrates affects the intimacy of
those who are beautiful, and how ignorant he professes himself to be;
appearances in themselves excessively Silenic. This, my friends, is the
external form with which, like one of the sculptured Sileni, he has
clothed himself; for if you open him, you will find within admirable
temperance and wisdom. For he cares not for mere beauty, but despises
more than any one can imagine all external possessions, whether it be
beauty or wealth, or glory, or any other thing for which the multitude
felicitates the possessor. He esteems these things and us who honour
them, as nothing, and lives among men, making all the objects of their
admiration the playthings of his irony. But I know not if any one of
you have ever seen the divine images which are within, when he has been
opened and is serious. I have seen them, and they are so supremely
beautiful, so golden, so divine, and wonderful, that everything which
Socrates commands surely ought to be obeyed, even like the voice of a
God.
“At one time we were fellow-soldiers, and had our mess together in
the camp before Potidæa. Socrates there overcame not only me, but
every one beside, in endurance of toils: when, as often happens in a
campaign, we were reduced to few provisions, there were none who could
sustain hunger like Socrates; and when we had plenty, he alone seemed
to enjoy our military fare. He never drank much willingly, but when
he was compelled he conquered all even in that to which he was least
accustomed; and what is most astonishing, no person ever saw Socrates
drunk either then or at any other time. In the depth of winter (and the
winters there are excessively rigid,) he sustained calmly incredible
hardships; and amongst other things, whilst the frost was intolerably
severe, and no one went out of their tents, or if they went out, wrapt
themselves up carefully, and put fleeces under their feet, and bound
their legs with hairy skins, Socrates went out only with the same cloak
on that he usually wore, and walked barefoot upon the ice; more easily,
indeed, than those who had sandalled themselves so delicately: so that
the soldiers thought that he did it to mock their want of fortitude.
It would indeed be worth while to commemorate all that this brave man
did and endured in that expedition. In one instance he was seen early
in the morning, standing in one place wrapt in meditation; and as
he seemed not to be able to unravel the subject of his thoughts, he
still continued to stand as inquiring and discussing within himself,
and when noon came, the soldiers observed him, and said to one
another--‘Socrates has been standing there thinking, ever since the
morning.’ At last some Ionians came to the spot, and having supped, as
it was summer, bringing their blankets, they lay down to sleep in the
cool; they observed that Socrates continued to stand there the whole
night until morning, and that, when the sun rose, he saluted it with a
prayer and departed.
“I ought not to omit what Socrates is in battle. For in that battle
after which the generals decreed to me the prize of courage, Socrates
alone of all men was the saviour of my life, standing by me when I had
fallen and was wounded, and preserving both myself and my arms from the
hands of the enemy. On that occasion I entreated the generals to decree
the prize, as it was most due, to him. And this, O Socrates, you cannot
deny, that the generals wishing to conciliate a person of my rank,
desired to give me the prize, you were far more earnestly desirous than
the generals that this glory should be attributed not to yourself, but
me.
“But to see Socrates when our army was defeated and scattered in flight
at Delius, was a spectacle worthy to behold. On that occasion I was
among the cavalry, and he on foot, heavily armed. After the total rout
of our troops, he and Laches retreated together; I came up by chance,
and seeing them, bade them be of good cheer, for that I would not leave
them. As I was on horseback, and therefore less occupied by a regard of
my own situation, I could better observe than at Potidæa the beautiful
spectacle exhibited by Socrates on this emergency. How superior was
he to Laches in presence of mind and courage! Your representation of
him on the stage, O Aristophanes, was not wholly unlike his real self
on this occasion, for he walked and darted his regards around with a
majestic composure, looking tranquilly both on his friends and enemies;
so that it was evident to every one, even from afar, that whoever
should venture to attack him would encounter a desperate resistance. He
and his companion thus departed in safety; for those who are scattered
in flight are pursued and killed, whilst men hesitate to touch those
who exhibit such a countenance as that of Socrates even in defeat.
“Many other and most wonderful qualities might well be praised in
Socrates; but such as these might singly be attributed to others. But
that which is unparalleled in Socrates, is, that he is unlike, and
above comparison, with all other men, whether those who have lived in
ancient times, or those who exist now. For it may be conjectured, that
Brasidas and many others are such as was Achilles. Pericles deserves
comparison with Nestor and Antenor; and other excellent persons of
various times may, with probability, be drawn into comparison with
each other. But to such a singular man as this, both himself and his
discourses are so uncommon, no one, should he seek, would find a
parallel among the present or the past generations of mankind; unless
they should say that he resembled those with whom I lately compared
him, for, assuredly, he and his discourses are like nothing but the
Silen and the Satyrs. At first I forgot to make you observe how like
his discourses are to those Satyrs when they are opened, for, if
any one will listen to the talk of Socrates, it will appear to him
at first extremely ridiculous; the phrases and expressions which he
employs, fold around his exterior the skin, as it were, of a rude
and wanton Satyr. He is always talking about great market-asses, and
brass-founders, and leather-cutters, and skin-dressers; and this is
his perpetual custom, so that any dull and unobservant person might
easily laugh at his discourse. But if any one should see it opened,
as it were, and get within the sense of his words, he would then find
that they alone of all that enters into the mind of man to utter, had
a profound and persuasive meaning, and that they were most divine; and
that they presented to the mind innumerable images of every excellence,
and that they tended towards objects of the highest moment, or rather
towards all that he who seeks the possession of what is supremely
beautiful and good need regard as essential to the accomplishment of
his ambition.
“These are the things, my friends, for which I praise Socrates.”
Alcibiades having said this, the whole party burst into a laugh at
his frankness, and Socrates said, “You seem to be sober enough,
Alcibiades, else you would not have made such a circuit of words, only
to hide the main design for which you made this long speech, and which,
as it were carelessly, you just throw in at the last; now, as if you
had not said all this for the mere purpose of dividing me and Agathon?
You think that I ought to be your friend, and to care for no one else.
I have found you out; it is evident enough for what design you invented
all this Satyrical and Silenic drama. But, my dear Agathon, do not let
his device succeed. I entreat you to permit no one to throw discord
between us.”--“No doubt,” said Agathon, “he sat down between us only
that he might divide us; but this shall not assist his scheme, for I
will come and sit near you.”--“Do so,” said Socrates, “come, there is
room for you by me.”--“Oh, Jupiter!” exclaimed Alcibiades, “what I
endure from that man! He thinks to subdue every way; but, at least, I
pray you, let Agathon remain between us.”--“Impossible,” said Socrates,
“you have just praised me; I ought to praise him sitting at my right
hand. If Agathon is placed beside you, will he not praise me before
I praise him? Now, my dear friend, allow the young man to receive
what praise I can give him. I have a great desire to pronounce his
encomium.”--“Quick, quick, Alcibiades,” said Agathon, “I cannot stay
here, I must change my place, or Socrates will not praise me.”--Agathon
then arose to take his place near Socrates.
He had no sooner reclined than there came in a number of revellers--for
some one who had gone out had left the door open--and took their places
on the vacant couches, and everything became full of confusion; and no
order being observed, every one was obliged to drink a great quantity
of wine. Eryximachus, and Phædrus, and some others, said Aristodemus,
went home to bed; that, for his part, he went to sleep on his couch,
and slept long and soundly--the nights were then long--until the cock
crew in the morning. When he awoke he found that some were still fast
asleep, and others had gone home, and that Aristophanes, Agathon, and
Socrates had alone stood it out, and were still drinking out of a
great goblet which they passed round and round. Socrates was disputing
between them. The beginning of their discussion Aristodemus said that
he did not recollect, because he was asleep; but it was terminated
by Socrates forcing them to confess, that the same person is able to
compose both tragedy and comedy, and that the foundations of the tragic
and comic arts were essentially the same. They, rather convicted than
convinced, went to sleep. Aristophanes first awoke, and then, it being
broad daylight, Agathon. Socrates, having put them to sleep, went away,
Aristodemus following him, and coming to the Lyceum he washed himself,
as he would have done anywhere else, and after having spent the day
there in his accustomed manner, went home in the evening.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
ION;
OR, OF THE ILIAD.
Translated from Plato.
Socrates _and_ Ion.
_Socrates._ Hail to thee, O Ion! from whence returnest thou amongst us
now?--from thine own native Ephesus?
_Ion._ No, Socrates; I come from Epidaurus and the feasts in honour of
Æsculapius.
_Socrates._ Had the Epidaurians instituted a contest of rhapsody in
honour of the God?
_Ion._ And not in rhapsodies alone; there were contests in every
species of music.
_Socrates._ And in which did you contend? And what was the success of
your efforts?
_Ion._ I bore away the first prize at the games, O Socrates.
_Socrates._ Well done! You have now only to consider how you shall win
the Panathenæa.
_Ion._ That may also happen, God willing.
_Socrates._ Your profession, O Ion, has often appeared to me an
enviable one. For, together with the nicest care of your person, and
the most studied elegance of dress, it imposes upon you the necessity
of a familiar acquaintance with many and excellent poets, and
especially with Homer, the most admirable of them all. Nor is it merely
because you can repeat the verses of this great poet, that I envy you,
but because you fathom his inmost thoughts. For he is no rhapsodist
who does not understand the whole scope and intention of the poet, and
is not capable of interpreting it to his audience. This he cannot do
without a full comprehension of the meaning of the author he undertakes
to illustrate; and worthy, indeed, of envy are those who can fulfil
these conditions.
_Ion._ Thou speakest truth, O Socrates. And, indeed, I have expended
my study particularly on this part of my profession. I flatter myself
that no man living excels me in the interpretation of Homer; neither
Metrodorus of Lampsacus, nor Stesimbrotus the Thasian, nor Glauco, nor
any other rhapsodist of the present times can express so many various
and beautiful thoughts upon Homer as I can.
_Socrates._ I am persuaded of your eminent skill, O Ion. You will not,
I hope, refuse me a specimen of it?
_Ion._ And, indeed, it would be worth your while to hear me declaim
upon Homer. I deserve a golden crown from his admirers.
_Socrates._ And I will find leisure some day or other to request you
to favour me so far. At present, I will only trouble you with one
question. Do you excel in explaining Homer alone, or are you conscious
of a similar power with regard to Hesiod and Archilochus?
_Ion._ I possess this high degree of skill with regard to Homer alone,
and I consider that sufficient.
_Socrates._ Are there any subjects upon which Homer and Hesiod say the
same things?
_Ion._ Many, as it seems to me.
_Socrates._ Whether do you demonstrate these things better in Homer or
Hesiod?
_Ion._ In the same manner, doubtless; inasmuch as they say the same
words with regard to the same things.
_Socrates._ But with regard to those things in which they
differ;--Homer and Hesiod both treat of divination, do they not?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ Do you think that you or a diviner would make the best
exposition, respecting all that these poets say of divination, both as
they agree and as they differ?
_Ion._ A diviner probably.
_Socrates._ Suppose you were a diviner, do you not think that you
could explain the discrepancies of those poets on the subject of your
profession, if you understand their agreement?
_Ion._ Clearly so.
_Socrates._ How does it happen then that you are possessed of skill to
illustrate Homer, and not Hesiod, or any other poet in an equal degree?
Is the subject-matter of the poetry of Homer different from all other
poets’? Does he not principally treat of war and social intercourse,
and of the distinct functions and characters of the brave man and the
coward, the professional and private person, the mutual relations which
subsist between the Gods and men; together with the modes of their
intercourse, the phænomena of Heaven, the secrets of Hades, and the
origin of Gods and heroes? Are not these the materials from which Homer
wrought his poem?
_Ion._ Assuredly, O Socrates.
_Socrates._ And the other poets, do they not treat of the same matter?
_Ion._ Certainly: but not like Homer.
_Socrates._ How! Worse?
_Ion._ Oh! far worse.
_Socrates._ Then Homer treats of them better than they?
_Ion._ Oh! Jupiter!--how much better!
_Socrates._ Amongst a number of persons employed in solving a problem
of arithmetic, might not a person know, my dear Ion, which had given
the right answer?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ The same person who had been aware of the false one, or
some other?
_Ion._ The same, clearly.
_Socrates._ That is, some one who understood arithmetic?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ Among a number of persons giving their opinions on
the wholesomeness of different foods, whether would one person be
capable to pronounce upon the rectitude of the opinions of those who
judged rightly, and another on the erroneousness of those which were
incorrect, or would the same person be competent to decide respecting
them both?
_Ion._ The same, evidently.
_Socrates._ What would you call that person?
_Ion._ A physician.
_Socrates._ We may assert then, universally, that the same person who
is competent to determine the truth, is competent also to determine the
falsehood of whatever assertion is advanced on the same subject; and,
it is manifest, that he who cannot judge respecting the falsehood, or
unfitness of what is said upon a given subject, is equally incompetent
to determine upon its truth or beauty?
_Ion._ Assuredly.
_Socrates._ The same person would then be competent or incompetent for
both?
_Ion._ Yes.
_Socrates._ Do you not say that Homer and the other poets, and among
them Hesiod and Archilochus, speak of the same things, but unequally;
one better and the other worse?
_Ion._ And I speak truth.
_Socrates._ But if you can judge of what is well said by the one, you
must also be able to judge of what is ill said by another, inasmuch as
it expresses less correctly.
_Ion._ It should seem so.
_Socrates._ Then, my dear friend, we should not err if we asserted that
Ion possessed a like power of illustration respecting Homer and all
other poets; especially since he confesses that the same person must be
esteemed a competent judge of all those who speak on the same subjects;
inasmuch as those subjects are understood by him when spoken of by one,
and the subject-matter of almost all the poets is the same.
_Ion._ What can be the reason then, O Socrates, that when any other
poet is the subject of conversation I cannot compel my attention,
and I feel utterly unable to declaim anything worth talking of, and
positively go to sleep? But when any one makes mention of Homer, my
mind applies itself without effort to the subject; I awaken as if it
were from a trance, and a profusion of eloquent expressions suggest
themselves involuntarily?
_Socrates._ It is not difficult to suggest the cause of this, my dear
friend. You are evidently unable to declaim on Homer according to art
and knowledge; for did your art endow you with this faculty, you would
be equally capable of exerting it with regard to any other of the
poets. Is not poetry, as an art or a faculty, a thing entire and one?
_Ion._ Assuredly.
_Socrates._ The same mode of consideration must be admitted with
respect to all arts which are severally one and entire. Do you desire
to hear what I understand by this, O Ion?
_Ion._ Yes, by Jupiter, Socrates, I am delighted with listening to you
wise men.
_Socrates._ It is you who are wise, my dear Ion; you rhapsodists,
actors, and the authors of the poems you recite. I, like an
unprofessional and private man, can only speak the truth. Observe how
common, vulgar, and level to the comprehension of any one, is the
question which I now ask relative to the same consideration belonging
to one entire art. Is not painting an art whole and entire?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ Did you ever know a person competent to judge of the
paintings of Polygnotus, the son of Aglaophon, and incompetent to
judge of the production of any other painter; who, on the supposition
of the works of other painters being exhibited to him, was wholly at
a loss, and very much inclined to go to sleep, and lost all faculty
of reasoning on the subject; but when his opinion was required of
Polygnotus, or any one single painter you please, awoke, paid attention
to the subject, and discoursed on it with great eloquence and sagacity?
_Ion._ Never, by Jupiter!
_Socrates._ Did you ever know any one very skilful in determining
the merits of Dædalus, the son of Metion, Epius, the son of Panopus,
Theodorus the Samian, or any other great sculptor, who was immediately
at a loss, and felt sleepy the moment any other sculptor was mentioned?
_Ion._ I never met with such a person certainly.
_Socrates._ Nor, do I think, that you ever met with a man professing
himself a judge of poetry and rhapsody, and competent to criticise
either Olympus, Thamyris, Orpheus, or Phemius of Ithaca, the
rhapsodist, who, the moment he came to Ion the Ephesian, felt
himself quite at a loss, and utterly incompetent to judge whether he
rhapsodised well or ill.
_Ion._ I cannot refute you, Socrates, but of this I am conscious to
myself: that I excel all men in the copiousness and beauty of my
illustrations of Homer, as all who have heard me will confess, and with
respect to other poets, I am deserted of this power. It is for you to
consider what may be the cause of this distinction.
_Socrates._ I will tell you, O Ion, what appears to me to be the cause
of this inequality of power. It is that you are not master of any art
for the illustration of Homer, but it is a divine influence which moves
you, like that which resides in the stone called magnet by Euripides,
and Heraclea by the people. For not only does this stone possess the
power of attracting iron rings, but it can communicate to them the
power of attracting other rings; so that you may see sometimes a long
chain of rings, and other iron substances, attached and suspended
one to the other by this influence. And as the power of the stone
circulates through all the links of this series, and attaches each
to each, so the Muse, communicating through those whom she has first
inspired, to all others capable of sharing in the inspiration, the
influence of that first enthusiasm, creates a chain and a succession.
For the authors of those great poems which we admire, do not attain
to excellence through the rules of any art, but they utter their
beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it
were, _possessed_ by a spirit not their own. Thus the composers of
lyrical poetry create those admired songs of theirs in a state of
divine insanity, like the Corybantes, who lose all control over
their reason in the enthusiasm of the sacred dance; and, during this
supernatural possession, are excited to the rhythm and harmony which
they communicate to men. Like the Bacchantes, who, when possessed by
the God, draw honey and milk from the rivers, in which, when they come
to their senses, they find nothing but simple water. For the souls of
the poets, as poets tell us, have this peculiar ministration in the
world. They tell us that these souls, flying like bees from flower
to flower, and wandering over the gardens and the meadows, and the
honey-flowing fountains of the Muses, return to us laden with the
sweetness of melody; and arrayed as they are in the plumes of rapid
imagination, they speak truth. For a Poet is indeed a thing ethereally
light, winged, and sacred, nor can he compose anything worth calling
poetry until he becomes inspired, and, as it were, mad, or whilst any
reason remains in him. For whilst a man retains any portion of the
thing called reason, he is utterly incompetent to produce poetry or
to vaticinate. Thus, those who declaim various and beautiful poetry
upon any subject, as for instance upon Homer, are not enabled to do so
by art or study; but every rhapsodist or poet, whether dithyrambic,
encomiastic, choral, epic, or iambic, is excellent in proportion
to the extent of his participation in the divine influence, and
the degree in which the Muse itself has descended on him. In other
respects, poets may be sufficiently ignorant and incapable. For they
do not compose according to any art which they have acquired, but
from the impulse of the divinity within them; for did they know any
rules of criticism according to which they could compose beautiful
verses upon one subject, they would be able to exert the same faculty
with respect to all or any other. The God seems purposely to have
deprived all poets, prophets, and soothsayers of every particle of
reason and understanding, the better to adapt them to their employment
as his ministers and interpreters; and that we, their auditors, may
acknowledge that those who write so beautifully, are possessed,
and address us, inspired by the God. Tynnicus the Chalcidean, is a
manifest proof of this, for he never before composed any poem worthy
to be remembered; and yet, was the author of that Pæan which everybody
sings, and which excels almost every other hymn, and which he himself
acknowledges to have been inspired by the Muse. And, thus, it appears
to me that the God proves beyond a doubt, that these transcendent
poems are not human as the work of men, but divine as coming from
the God. Poets then are the interpreters of the divinities--each
being possessed by some one deity; and to make this apparent, the God
designedly inspires the worst poets with the sublimest verse. Does it
seem to you that I am in the right, O Ion?
_Ion._ Yes, by Jupiter! My mind is enlightened by your words, O
Socrates, and it appears to me that great poets interpret to us through
some divine election of the God.
_Socrates._ And do not you rhapsodists interpret poets?
_Ion._ We do.
_Socrates._ Thus you interpret the interpreters?
_Ion._ Evidently.
_Socrates._ Remember this, and tell me; and do not conceal that
which I ask. When you declaim well, and strike your audience with
admiration; whether you sing of Ulysses rushing upon the threshold of
his palace, discovering himself to the suitors, and pouring his shafts
out at his feet; or of Achilles assailing Hector; or those affecting
passages concerning Andromache, or Hecuba, or Priam, are you then
self-possessed? or, rather, are you not rapt and filled with such
enthusiasm by the deeds you recite, that you fancy yourself in Ithaca
or Troy, or wherever else the poem transports you?
_Ion._ You speak most truly, Socrates, nor will I deny it; for, when
I recite of sorrow my eyes fill with tears; and, when of fearful or
terrible deeds, my hair stands on end, and my heart beats fast.
_Socrates._ Tell me, Ion, can we call him in his senses, who weeps
while dressed in splendid garments, and crowned with a golden coronal,
not losing any of these things? and is filled with fear when surrounded
by ten thousand friendly persons, not one among whom desires to despoil
or injure him?
_Ion._ To say the truth, we could not.
_Socrates._ Do you often perceive your audience moved also?
_Ion._ Many among them, and frequently. I, standing on the rostrum,
see them weeping, with eyes fixed earnestly on me, and overcome by my
declamation. I have need so to agitate them; for if they weep, I laugh,
taking their money; if they should laugh, I must weep, going without it.
_Socrates._ Do you not perceive that your auditor is the last link of
that chain which I have described as held together through the power
of the magnet? You rhapsodists and actors are the middle links, of
which the poet is the first--and through all these the God influences
whichever mind he selects, as they conduct this power one to the
other; and thus, as rings from the stone, so hangs a long series of
chorus-dancers, teachers, and disciples from the Muse. Some poets are
influenced by one Muse, some by another; we call them possessed, and
this word really expresses the truth, for they are held. Others, who
are interpreters, are inspired by the first links, the poets, and are
filled with enthusiasm, some by one, some by another; some by Orpheus,
some by Musæus, but the greater number are possessed and inspired by
Homer. You, O Ion, are influenced by Homer. If you recite the works
of any other poet, you get drowsy, and are at a loss what to say; but
when you hear any of the compositions of that poet you are roused, your
thoughts are excited, and you grow eloquent;--for what you say of Homer
is not derived from any art or knowledge, but from divine inspiration
and possession. As the Corybantes feel acutely the melodies of him by
whom they are inspired, and abound with verse and gesture for his songs
alone, and care for no other; thus, you, O Ion, are eloquent when you
expound Homer, and are barren of words with regard to every other poet.
And this explains the question you asked, wherefore Homer, and no other
poet, inspires you with eloquence. It is that you are thus excellent in
your praise, not through science but from divine inspiration.
_Ion._ You say the truth, Socrates. Yet, I am surprised that you should
be able to persuade me that I am possessed and insane when I praise
Homer. I think I shall not appear such to you when you hear me.
_Socrates._ I desire to hear you, but not before you have answered me
this one question. What subject does Homer treat best? for, surely, he
does not treat all equally.
_Ion._ You are aware that he treats of every thing.
_Socrates._ Does Homer mention subjects on which you are ignorant?
_Ion._ What can those be?
_Socrates._ Does not Homer frequently dilate on various arts--on
chariot-driving, for instance? if I remember the verses I will repeat
them.
_Ion._ I will repeat them, for I remember them.
_Socrates._ Repeat what Nestor says to his son Antilochus, counselling
him to be cautious in turning, during the chariot-race at the funeral
games of Patroclus.
_Ion_ (_repeats_).
Αὐτὸς δὲ κλινθῆναι εϋπλέκτῳ ἐνὶ δίφρῳ
Ἧκ’ ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ τοῖιν ἀτὰρ τὸν δεξιὸν ἵππον
Κένσαι ὁμοκλήσας, εἶξαί τέ οἱ ἡνία χερσίν.
Ἐν νύσσῃ δέ τοι ἵππος ἀριστερὸς ἐγχριμφθήτω,
Ὡς ἄν τοι πλήμνη γε δοάσσεται ἄκρον ἱκέσθαι
Κύκλου ποιητοῖο· λίθου δ’ ἀλέασθαι ἐπαυρεῖν.
_Il._ ψ. 335.
_Socrates._ Enough. Now, O Ion, would a physician or a charioteer be
the better judge as to Homer’s sagacity on this subject?
_Ion._ Of course, a charioteer.
_Socrates._ Because he understands the art--or from what other reason?
_Ion._ From his knowledge of the art.
_Socrates._ For one science is not gifted with the power of judging of
another--a steersman, for instance, does not understand medicine?
_Ion._ Without doubt.
_Socrates._ Nor a physician, architecture?
_Ion._ Of course not.
_Socrates._ Is it not thus with every art? If we are adepts in one, we
are ignorant of another. But first, tell me, do not all arts differ one
from the other?
_Ion._ They do.
_Socrates._ For you, as well as I, can testify that when we say an art
is the knowledge of one thing, we do not mean that it is the knowledge
of another.
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ For, if each art contained the knowledge of all things,
why should we call them by different names? we do so that we may
distinguish them one from the other. Thus, you as well as I, know that
these are five fingers; and if I asked you whether we both meant the
same thing or another, when we speak of arithmetic--would you not say
the same?
_Ion._ Yes.
_Socrates._ And tell me, when we learn one art we must both learn the
same things with regard to it; and other things if we learn another?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ And he who is not versed in an art, is not a good judge of
what is said or done with respect to it?
_Ion._ Certainly not.
_Socrates._ To return to the verses which you just recited, do you
think that you or a charioteer would be better capable of deciding
whether Homer had spoken rightly or not?
_Ion._ Doubtless a charioteer.
_Socrates._ For you are a rhapsodist, and not a charioteer?
_Ion._ Yes.
_Socrates._ And the art of reciting verses is different from that of
driving chariots?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ And if it is different, it supposes a knowledge of
different things?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ And when Homer introduces Hecamede, the concubine of
Nestor, giving Machaon a posset to drink, and he speaks thus:--
Οἴνῳ πραμνείῳ, φησίν· ἐπὶ δ’ αἴγειον κνῆ τυρὸν
Κνήστι χαλκείῃ· παρὰ δὲ κρόμιον ποτῷ ὄψον.
_Il._ λʹ. 639.
does it belong to the medical or rhapsodical art, to determine whether
Homer speaks rightly on this subject?
_Ion._ The medical.
_Socrates._ And when he says--
Ἡ δὲ μολυβδαίνῃ ἰκέλη ἐς βυσσὸν ἵκανεν,
Ἥ τε κατ’ ἀγραύλοιο βοὸς κέρας ἐμμεμαυῖα
Ἔρχεται ὠμηστῇσι μετ’ ἰχθύσι πῆμα φέρουσα.
_Il._ ωʹ. 80.
does it belong to the rhapsodical or the piscatorial art, to determine
whether he speaks rightly or not?
_Ion._ Manifestly to the piscatorial art.
_Socrates._ Consider whether you are not inspired to make some such
demand as this to me:--Come, Socrates, since you have found in Homer
an accurate description of these arts, assist me also in the inquiry
as to his competence on the subject of soothsayers and divination; and
how far he speaks well or ill on such subjects; for he often treats of
them in the Odyssey, and especially when he introduces Theoclymenus the
Soothsayer of the Melampians, prophesying to the Suitors:--
Δαίμονι, τί κακὸν τόδε πάσχετε; νυκτὶ μὲν ὑμέων
Εἱλύαται κεφαλαί τε προσωπά τε νέρθε τε γυῖα,
Οἰμωγὴ δὲ δέδηε, δεδάκρυνται δὲ παρειαί.
Εἰδώλων τε πλέον πρόθυρον, πλείη δὲ καὶ αὐλὴ
Ἱεμένων ἕρεβόσδε ὑπὸ ζόφον· ἠέλιος δὲ
Οὐρανοῦ ἐξαπόλωλε, κακὴ δ’ ἐπδέδρομεν ἁχλύς.
_Odyss._ υ. 351.
Often too in the Iliad, as at the battle at the walls; for he there
says--
Ὄρνις γάρ σφιν ἐπῆλθε περησέμεναι μεμαῶσιν,
Αἰετὸς ὑψιπέτης, ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ λαὸν ἐέργων,
Φοινήεντα δράκοντα φέρων ὀνύχεσσι πέλωρον,
Ζωὸν, ἔτ’ ἀσπαίροντα· καὶ οὔπω λήθετο χάρμης.
Κόψε γὰρ αὐτὸν ἔχοντα κατὰ στῆθος παρὰ δειρὴν,
Ἰδνωθεὶς ὀπίσω. ὁ δ’ ἀπὸ ἕθεν ἧκε χαμάζε
Ἀλγήσας ὀδύνῃσι, μέσῳ δ’ ἐγκάββαλ’ ὁμίλῳ·
Αὐτὸς δὲ κλάγξας ἕπετο πνοιῇς ἀνέμοιο.
_Il._ μʹ.
I assert, it belongs to a soothsayer both to observe and to judge
respecting such appearances as these.
_Ion._ And you assert the truth, O Socrates.
_Socrates._ And you also, my dear Ion. For we have in our turn recited
from the Odyssey and the Iliad, passages relating to vaticination, to
medicine and the piscatorial art; and as you are more skilled in Homer
than I can be, do you now make mention of whatever relates to the
rhapsodist and his art; for a rhapsodist is competent above all other
men to consider and pronounce on whatever has relation to his art.
_Ion._ Or with respect to everything else mentioned by Homer.
_Socrates._ Do not be so forgetful as to say everything. A good memory
is particularly necessary for a rhapsodist.
_Ion._ And what do I forget?
_Socrates._ Do you not remember that you admitted the art of reciting
verses was different from that of driving chariots?
_Ion._ I remember.
_Socrates._ And did you not admit that being different, the subjects of
its knowledge must also be different?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ You will not assert that the art of rhapsody is that of
universal knowledge; a rhapsodist may be ignorant of some things.
_Ion._ Except, perhaps, such things as we now discuss, O Socrates.
_Socrates._ What do you mean by _such_ subjects, besides those which
relate to other arts? And with which among them do you profess a
competent acquaintance, since not with all?
_Ion._ I imagine that the rhapsodist has a perfect knowledge of what
it is becoming for a man to speak--what for a woman; what for a slave,
what for a free man; what for the ruler, what for him who is governed.
_Socrates._ How! do you think that a rhapsodist knows better than a
pilot what the captain of a ship in a tempest ought to say?
_Ion._ In such a circumstance I allow that the pilot would know best.
_Socrates._ Has the rhapsodist or the physician the clearest knowledge
of what ought to be said to a sick man?
_Ion._ In that case the physician.
_Socrates._ But you assert that he knows what a slave ought to say?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ To take for example, in the driving of cattle; a rhapsodist
would know much better than the herdsman what ought to be said to a
slave engaged in bringing back a herd of oxen run wild?
_Ion._ No, indeed.
_Socrates._ But what a woman should say concerning spinning wool?
_Ion._ Of course not.
_Socrates._ He would know, however, what a man, who is a general,
should say when exhorting his troops?
_Ion._ Yes; a rhapsodist would know that.
_Socrates._ How! is rhapsody and strategy the same art?
_Ion._ I know what it is fitting for a general to say.
_Socrates._ Probably because you are learned in war, O Ion. For if you
are equally expert in horsemanship and playing on the harp, you would
know whether a man rode well or ill. But if I should ask you which
understands riding best, a horseman or a harper, what would you answer?
_Ion._ A horseman, of course.
_Socrates._ And if you knew a good player on the harp, you would in the
same way say that he understood harp-playing and not riding?
_Ion._ Certainly.
_Socrates._ Since you understand strategy, you can tell me which is the
most excellent, the art of war or rhapsody?
_Ion._ One does not appear to me to excel the other.
_Socrates._ One is not better than the other, say you? Do you say that
tactics and rhapsody are two arts or one?
_Ion._ They appear to me to be the same.
_Socrates._ Then a good rhapsodist is also a good general.
_Ion._ Of course.
_Socrates._ And a good general is a good rhapsodist?
_Ion._ I do not say that.
_Socrates._ You said that a good rhapsodist was also a good general.
_Ion._ I did.
_Socrates._ Are you not the best rhapsodist in Greece?
_Ion._ By far, O Socrates.
_Socrates._ And you are also the most excellent general among the
Greeks?
_Ion._ I am. I learned the art from Homer.
_Socrates._ How is it then, by Jupiter, that being both the best
general and the best rhapsodist among us, you continually go about
Greece rhapsodising, and never lead our armies? Does it seem to you
that the Greeks greatly need golden-crowned rhapsodists, and have no
want of generals?
_Ion._ My native town, O Socrates, is ruled by yours, and requires no
general for her wars;--and neither will your city nor the Lacedemonians
elect me to lead their armies--you think your own generals sufficient.
_Socrates._ My good Ion, are you acquainted with Apollodorus the
Cyzicenian?
_Ion._ Who do you mean?
_Socrates._ He whom, though a stranger, the Athenians often elected
general; and Phanosthenes the Andrian, and Heraclides the Clazomenian,
all foreigners, but whom this city has chosen, as being great men, to
lead its armies, and to fill other high offices. Would not, therefore,
Ion the Ephesian be elected and honoured if he were esteemed capable?
Were not the Ephesians originally from Athens, and is Ephesus the least
of cities? But if you spoke true, Ion, and praise Homer according to
art and knowledge, you have deceived me,--since you declared that
you were learned on the subject of Homer, and would communicate your
knowledge to me--but you have disappointed me, and are far from keeping
your word. For you will not explain in what you are so excessively
clever, though I greatly desire to learn; but, as various as Proteus,
you change from one thing to another, and to escape at last, you
disappear in the form of a general, without disclosing your Homeric
wisdom. If, therefore, you possess the learning which you promised to
expound on the subject of Homer, you deceive me and are false. But if
you are eloquent on the subject of this Poet, not through knowledge,
but by inspiration, being possessed by him, ignorant the while of the
wisdom and beauty you display, then I allow that you are no deceiver.
Choose then whether you will be considered false or inspired?
_Ion._ It is far better, O Socrates, to be thought inspired.
_Socrates._ It is better both for you and for us, O Ion, to say that
you are the inspired, and not the learned, eulogist of Homer.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
MENEXENUS,
OR
THE FUNERAL ORATION.
A Fragment.
Socrates _and_ Menexenus.
_Socrates._ Whence comest thou, O Menexenus? from the forum?
_Menexenus._ Even so; and from the senate-house.
_Socrates._ What was thy business with the senate? Art thou persuaded
that thou hast attained to that perfection of discipline and
philosophy, from which thou mayest aspire to undertake greater matters?
Wouldst thou, at thine age, my wonderful friend, assume to thyself the
government of us who are thine elders, lest thy family should at any
time fail in affording us a protector?
_Menexenus._ Thou, O Socrates, shouldst permit and counsel me to enter
into public life. I would earnestly endeavour to fit myself for the
attempt. If otherwise, I would abstain. On the present occasion, I went
to the senate-house, merely from having heard that the senate was about
to elect one to speak concerning those who are dead. Thou knowest that
the celebration of their funeral approaches?
_Socrates._ Assuredly. But whom have they chosen?
_Menexenus._ The election is deferred until to-morrow; I imagine that
either Dion or Archinus will be chosen.
_Socrates._ In truth, Menexenus, the condition of him who dies in
battle is, in every respect, fortunate and glorious. If he is poor, he
is conducted to his tomb with a magnificent and honourable funeral,
amidst the praises of all; if even he were a coward, his name is
included in a panegyric pronounced by the most learned men; from which
all the vulgar expressions, which unpremeditated composition might
admit, have been excluded by the careful labour of leisure; who praise
so admirably, enlarging upon every topic remotely or immediately
connected with the subject, and blending so eloquent a variety of
expressions, that, praising in every manner the state of which we are
citizens, and those who have perished in battle, and the ancestors who
preceded our generation, and ourselves who yet live, they steal away
our spirits as with enchantment. Whilst I listen to their praises, O
Menexenus, I am penetrated with a very lofty conception of myself, and
overcome by their flatteries. I appear to myself immeasurably more
honourable and generous than before, and many of the strangers who
are accustomed to accompany me, regard me with additional veneration,
after having heard these relations; they seem to consider the whole
state, including me, much more worthy of admiration, after they have
been soothed into persuasion by the orator. The opinion thus inspired
of my own majesty will last me more than three days sometimes, and the
penetrating melody of the words descends through the ears into the
mind, and clings to it; so that it is often three or four days before I
come to my senses sufficiently to perceive in what part of the world I
am, or succeed in persuading myself that I do not inhabit one of the
islands of the blessed. So skilful are these orators of ours.
_Menexenus._ Thou always laughest at the orators, O Socrates. On the
present occasion, however, the unforeseen election will preclude the
person chosen from the advantages of a preconcerted speech: the speaker
will probably be reduced to the necessity of extemporising.
_Socrates._ How so, my good friend? Every one of the candidates has,
without doubt, his oration prepared; and if not, there were little
difficulty, on this occasion, of inventing an unpremeditated speech.
If, indeed, the question were of Athenians, who should speak in the
Peloponnesus; or of Peloponnesians, who should speak at Athens, an
orator who would persuade and be applauded, must employ all the
resources of his skill. But to the orator who contends for the
approbation of those whom he praises, success will be little difficult.
_Menexenus._ Is that thy opinion, O Socrates?
_Socrates._ In truth it is.
_Menexenus._ Shouldst thou consider thyself competent to pronounce this
oration, if thou shouldst be chosen by the senate?
_Socrates._ There would be nothing astonishing if I should consider
myself equal to such an undertaking. My mistress in oratory was perfect
in the science which she taught, and had formed many other excellent
orators, and one of the most eminent among the Greeks, Pericles, the
son of Xantippus.
_Menexenus._ Who is she? Assuredly thou meanest Aspasia.
_Socrates._ Aspasia, and Connus the son of Metrobius, the two
instructors. From the former of these I learned rhetoric, and from the
latter music. There would be nothing wonderful if a man so educated
should be capable of great energy of speech. A person who should have
been instructed in a manner totally different from me; who should have
learned rhetoric from Antiphon the son of Rhamnusius, and music from
Lampses, would be competent to succeed in such an attempt as praising
the Athenians to the Athenians.
_Menexenus._ And what shouldst thou have to say, if thou wert chosen to
pronounce the oration?
_Socrates._ Of my own, probably nothing. But yesterday I heard Aspasia
declaim a funeral oration over these same persons. She had heard, as
thou sayest, that the Athenians were about to choose an orator, and she
took the occasion of suggesting a series of topics proper for such an
orator to select; in part extemporaneously, and in part such as she had
already prepared. I think it probable that she composed the oration by
interweaving such fragments of oratory as Pericles might have left.
_Menexenus._ Rememberest thou what Aspasia said?
_Socrates._ Unless I am greatly mistaken. I learned it from her; and
she is so good a school-mistress, that I should have been beaten if I
had not been perfect in my lesson.
_Menexenus._ Why not repeat it to me?
_Socrates._ I fear lest my mistress be angry, should I publish her
discourse.
_Menexenus._ O, fear not. At least deliver a discourse; you will do
what is exceedingly delightful to me, whether it be of Aspasia or any
other. I entreat you to do me this pleasure.
_Socrates._ But you will laugh at me, who, being old, attempt to repeat
a pleasant discourse.
_Menexenus._ O no, Socrates; I entreat you to speak, however it may be.
_Socrates._ I see that I must do what you require. In a little while,
if you should ask me to strip naked and dance, I shall be unable to
refuse you, at least, if we are alone. Now, listen. She spoke thus, if
I recollect, beginning with the dead, in whose honour the oration is
supposed to have been delivered.
[Decoration]
FRAGMENTS
FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO.
I. But it would be almost impossible to build your city in such a
situation that it would need no imposts?--Impossible.--Other persons
would then be required, who might undertake to conduct from another
city those things of which they stood in need?--Certainly.--But the
merchant who should return to his own city, without any of those
articles which it needed, would return empty-handed. It will be
necessary, therefore, not only to produce a sufficient supply, but
such articles, both in quantity and in kind, as may be required to
remunerate those who conduct the imports. There will be needed then
more husbandmen, and other artificers, in our city. There will be
needed also other persons who will undertake the conveyance of the
imports and the exports, and these persons are called merchants. If the
commerce which these necessities produce is carried on by sea, other
persons will be required who are accustomed to nautical affairs. And,
in the city itself, how shall the products of each man’s labour be
transported from one to another; those products, for the sake of the
enjoyment and the ready distribution of which, they were first induced
to institute a civil society?--By selling and buying, surely.--A
market and money, as a symbol of exchange, arises out of this
necessity?--Evidently.--When the husbandman, or any other artificer,
brings the produce of his labours to the public place, and those who
desire to barter their produce for it do not happen to arrive exactly
at the same time, would he not lose his time, and the profit of it,
if he were to sit in the market waiting for them?--Assuredly.--But,
there are persons, who, perceiving this, will take upon themselves the
arrangement between the buyer and the seller. In constituted civil
societies, those who are employed on this service, ought to be the
infirm, and unable to perform any other; but, exchanging on one hand
for money, what any person comes to sell, and giving the articles thus
bought for a similar equivalent to those who might wish to buy.
II. Description of a frugal enjoyment of the goods of the world.
III. But with this system of life some are not contented. They must
have beds and tables, and other furniture. They must have scarce
ointments and perfumes, women, and a thousand superfluities of the same
character. The things which we mentioned as sufficient, houses, and
clothes, and food, are not enough. Painting and mosaic-work must be
cultivated, and works in gold and ivory. The society must be enlarged
in consequence. This city, which is of a healthy proportion, will not
suffice, but it must be replenished with a multitude of persons, whose
occupations are by no means indispensable. Huntsmen and mimics, persons
whose occupation it is to arrange forms and colours, persons whose
trade is the cultivation of the more delicate arts, poets and their
ministers, rhapsodists, actors, dancers, manufacturers of all kinds of
instruments and schemes of female dress, and an immense crowd of other
ministers to pleasure and necessity. Do you not think we should want
schoolmasters, tutors, nurses, hair-dressers, barbers, manufacturers
and cooks? Should we not want pig-drivers, which were not wanted
in our more modest city, in this one, and a multitude of others to
administer to other animals, which would then become necessary articles
of food,--or should we not?--Certainly we should.--Should we not want
physicians much more, living in this manner than before? The same tract
of country would no longer provide sustenance for the state. Must we
then not usurp from the territory of our neighbours, and then we should
make aggressions, and so we have discovered the origin of war; which is
the principal cause of the greatest public and private calamities.--C.
xi.
IV. And first, we must improve upon the composers of fabulous histories
in verse, to compose them according to the rules of moral beauty; and
those not composed according to the rules must be rejected; and we must
persuade mothers and nurses to teach those which we approve to their
children, and to form their minds by moral fables, far more than their
bodies by their hands.--Lib. ii.
V. ON THE DANGER OF THE STUDY OF ALLEGORICAL COMPOSITION
(IN A LARGE SENSE) FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
For a young person is not competent to judge what portions of a
fabulous composition are allegorical and what literal; but the opinions
produced by a literal acceptation of that which has no meaning, or a
bad one, except in an allegorical sense, are often irradicable.--Lib ii.
VI.--God then, since he is good, cannot be, as is vulgarly supposed,
the cause of all things; he is the cause, indeed, of very few things.
Among the great variety of events which happen in the course of human
affairs, evil prodigiously overbalances good in everything which
regards men. Of all that is good there can be no other cause than God;
but some other cause ought to be discovered for evil, which should
never be imputed as an effect to God.--L. ii.
VII.--Plato’s doctrine of punishment, as laid down [here], is refuted
by his previous reasonings.
VIII.--THE UNCHANGEABLE NATURE OF GOD.
Do you think that God is like a vulgar conjuror, and that he is capable
for the sake of effect, of assuming, at one time, one form, and at
another time, another? Now, in his own character, converting his proper
form into a multitude of shapes, now deceiving us, and offering vain
images of himself to our imagination? Or do you think that God is
single and one, and least of all things capable of departing from his
permanent nature and appearance?
IX.--THE PERMANENCY OF WHAT IS EXCELLENT.
But everything, in proportion as it is excellent, either in art or
nature, or in both, is least susceptible of receiving change from any
external influence.
X.--AGAINST SUPERSTITIOUS TALES.
Nor should mothers terrify their children by these fables, that Gods go
about in the night-time, resembling strangers, in all sorts of forms:
at once blaspheming the Gods and rendering their children cowardly.
XI.--THE TRUE ESSENCE OF FALSEHOOD AND ITS ORIGIN.
Know you not that, that which is truly false, if it may be permitted me
so to speak, all, both gods and men detest?--How do you mean?--Thus:
No person is willing to falsify in matters of the highest concern to
himself concerning those matters, but fears, above all things, lest he
should accept falsehood.--Yet, I understand you not.--You think that
I mean something profound. I say that no person is willing in his own
mind to receive or to assert a falsehood, to be ignorant, to be in
error, to possess that which is not true. This is truly to be called
falsehood, this ignorance and error in the mind itself. What is usually
called falsehood, or deceit in words, is but a voluntary imitation of
what the mind itself suffers in the involuntary possession of that
falsehood, an image of later birth, and scarcely, in a strict and
complete sense, deserving the name of falsehood.--Lib. ii.
XII.--AGAINST A BELIEF IN HELL.
If they are to possess courage, are not those doctrines alone to be
taught, which render death least terrible? Or do you conceive that
any man can be brave who is subjected to a fear of death? that he who
believes the things that are related of hell, and thinks that they
are truth, will prefer in battle, death to slavery, or defeat?--Lib.
iii.--_Then follows a criticism on the poetical accounts of hell._
XIII.--ON GRIEF.
We must then abolish the custom of lamenting and commiserating the
deaths of illustrious men. Do we assert that an excellent man will
consider it anything dreadful that his intimate friend, who is also an
excellent man, should die?--By no means (_an excessive refinement_). He
will abstain then from lamenting over his loss, as if he had suffered
some great evil?--Surely.--May we not assert in addition, that such
a person as we have described suffices to himself for all purposes
of living well and happily, and in no manner needs the assistance
or society of another? that he would endure with resignation the
destitution of a son, or a brother, or possessions, or whatever
external adjuncts of life might have been attached to him? and that,
on the occurrence of such contingencies, he would support them with
moderation and mildness, by no means bursting into lamentations, or
resigning himself to despondence?--Lib. iii.
_Then he proceeds to allege passages of the poets in which opposite
examples were held up to approbation and imitation._
XIV.--THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY CONSTANT IMITATION.
Do you not apprehend that imitations, if they shall have been practised
and persevered in from early youth, become established in the habits
and nature, in the gestures of the body, and the tones of the voice,
and lastly, in the intellect itself?--C. iii.
XV.--ON THE EFFECT OF BAD TASTE IN ART.
Nor must we restrict the poets alone to an exhibition of the example
of virtuous manners in their compositions, but all other artists must
be forbidden, either in sculpture, or painting, or architecture, to
employ their skill upon forms of an immoral, unchastened, monstrous,
or illiberal type, either in the forms of living beings, or in
architectural arrangements. And the artist capable of this employment
of his art, must not be suffered in our community, lest those destined
to be guardians of the society, nourished upon images of deformity and
vice, like cattle upon bad grass, gradually gathering and depasturing
every day a little, may ignorantly establish one great evil composed of
these many evil things, in their minds.--C. iii.
_The monstrous figures called Arabesques, however in some of them is
to be found a mixture of a truer and simpler taste, which are found in
the ruined palaces of the Roman Emperors, bear, nevertheless, the same
relation to the brutal profligacy and killing luxury which required
them, as the majestic figures of Castor and Pollux, and the simple
beauty of the sculpture of the frieze of the Parthenon, bear to the
more beautiful and simple manners of the Greeks of that period. With
a liberal interpretation, a similar analogy might be extended into
literary composition._
XVI.--AGAINST THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS.
What better evidence can you require of a corrupt and pernicious
system of discipline in a state, than that not merely persons of base
habits and plebeian employments, but men who pretend to have received
a liberal education, require the assistance of lawyers and physicians,
and those too who have attained to a singular degree (so desperate are
these diseases of body and mind) of skill. Do you not consider it an
abject necessity, a proof of the deepest degradation, to need to be
instructed in what is just or what is needful, as by a master and a
judge, with regard to your personal knowledge and suffering?
_What would Plato have said to a priest, such as his office is in
modern times?_--C. iii.
XVII.--ON MEDICINE.
Do you not think it an abject thing to require the assistance of the
medicinal art, not for the cure of wounds, or such external diseases as
result from the accidents of the seasons (επητειην), but on account of
sloth and the superfluous indulgences which we have already condemned;
this being filled with wind and water, like holes in earth, and
compelling the elegant successors of Æsculapius to invent new names,
flatulences, and catarrhs, &c., for the new diseases which are the
progeny of your luxury and sloth?--L. iii.
XVIII.--THE EFFECT OF THE DIETETIC SYSTEM.
Herodicus being pædotribe (παιδοτρίβης, _Magister palæstræ_), and his
health becoming weak, united the gymnastic with the medical art, and
having condemned himself to a life of weariness, afterwards extended
the same pernicious system to others. He made his life a long death.
For humouring the disease, mortal in its own nature, to which he was
subject, without being able to cure it, he postponed all other purposes
to the care of medicating himself, and through his whole life was
subject to an access of his malady, if he departed in any degree from
his accustomed diet, and by the employment of this skill, dying by
degrees, he arrived at an old age.--L. iii.
Æsculapius never pursued these systems, nor Machaon or Podalirius. They
never undertook the treatment of those whose frames were inwardly and
thoroughly diseased, so to prolong a worthless existence, and bestow
on a man a long and wretched being, during which they might generate
children in every respect the inheritors of their infirmity.--L. iii.
XIX.--AGAINST WHAT IS FALSELY CALLED “KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD.”
A man ought not to be a good judge until he be old; because he
ought not have acquired a knowledge of what injustice is, until his
understanding has arrived at maturity: not apprehending its nature from
a consideration of its existence in himself; but having contemplated
it distinct from his own nature in that of others, for a long time,
until he shall perceive what an evil it is, not from his own experience
and its effects within himself, but from his observations of them as
resulting in others. Such a one were indeed an honourable judge, and
a good; for he who has a good mind, is good. But that judge who is
considered so wise, who having himself committed great injustice, is
supposed to be qualified for the detection of it in others, and who is
quick to suspect, appears keen, indeed, as long as he associates with
those who resemble him; because, deriving experience from the example
afforded by a consideration of his own conduct and character, he acts
with caution; but when he associates with men of universal experience
and real virtue, he exposes the defects resulting from such experience
as he possesses, by distrusting men unreasonably and mistaking true
virtue, having no example of it within himself with which to compare
the appearances manifested in others: yet, such a one finding more
associates who are virtuous than such as are wise, necessarily appears,
both to himself and others, rather to be wise than foolish.--But we
ought rather to search for a wise and good judge; one who has examples
within himself of that upon which he is to pronounce.--C. iii.
XX.--Those who use gymnastics unmingled with music become too savage,
whilst those who use music unmingled with gymnastics, become more
delicate than is befitting.
[Decoration]
ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO.
[_Prefatory note by Mrs. Shelley._]
It is well known that when Socrates was condemned to death,
his friends made arrangements for his escape from prison
and his after security; of which he refused to avail
himself, from the reason, that a good citizen ought to
obey the laws of his country. On this Shelley makes the
following remarks--
The reply is simple, Indeed, your city cannot subsist, because the
laws are no longer of avail. For how can the laws be said to exist,
when those who deserve to be nourished in the Prytanea at the public
expense, are condemned to suffer the penalties only due to the most
atrocious criminals; whilst those against, and to protect from whose
injustice, the laws were framed, live in honour and security? I neither
overthrow your state, nor infringe your laws. Although you have
inflicted an injustice on me, which is sufficient, according to the
opinions of the multitude, to authorise me to consider you and me as in
a state of warfare; yet, had I the power, so far from inflicting any
revenge, I would endeavour to overcome you by benefits. All that I do
at present is, that which the peaceful traveller would do, who, caught
by robbers in a forest, escapes from them whilst they are engaged in
the division of the spoil. And this I do, when it would not only be
indifferent, but delightful to me to die, surrounded by my friends,
secure of the inheritance of glory, and escaping, after such a life as
mine, from the decay of mind and body which must soon begin to be my
portion should I live. But I prefer the good, which I have it in my
power yet to perform.
Such are the arguments which overturn the sophism placed in the mouth
of Socrates by Plato. But there are others which prove that he did well
to die.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
THE ASSASSINS.
A Fragment of a Romance.
CHAPTER I.
Jerusalem, goaded on to resistance by the incessant usurpations and
insolence of Rome, leagued together its discordant factions to rebel
against the common enemy and tyrant. Inferior to their foe in all but
the unconquerable hope of liberty, they surrounded their city with
fortifications of uncommon strength, and placed in array before the
temple a band rendered desperate by patriotism and religion. Even the
women preferred to die, rather than survive the ruin of their country.
When the Roman army approached the walls of the sacred city, its
preparations, its discipline, and its numbers, evinced the conviction
of its leader, that he had no common barbarians to subdue. At the
approach of the Roman army, the strangers withdrew from the city.
Among the multitudes which from every nation of the East had assembled
at Jerusalem, was a little congregation of Christians. They were
remarkable neither for their numbers nor their importance. They
contained among them neither philosophers nor poets. Acknowledging
no laws but those of God, they modelled their conduct towards their
fellow-men by the conclusions of their individual judgment on the
practical application of these laws. And it was apparent from the
simplicity and severity of their manners, that this contempt for
human institutions had produced among them a character superior in
singleness and sincere self-apprehension to the slavery of pagan
customs and the gross delusions of antiquated superstition. Many of
their opinions considerably resembled those of the sect afterwards
known by the name of Gnostics. They esteemed the human understanding
to be the paramount rule of human conduct; they maintained that the
obscurest religious truth required for its complete elucidation no more
than the strenuous application of the energies of mind. It appeared
impossible to them that any doctrine could be subversive of social
happiness which is not capable of being confuted by arguments derived
from the nature of existing things. With the devoutest submission to
the law of Christ, they united an intrepid spirit of inquiry as to
the correctest mode of acting in particular instances of conduct that
occur among men. Assuming the doctrines of the Messiah concerning
benevolence and justice for the regulation of their actions, they could
not be persuaded to acknowledge that there was apparent in the divine
code any prescribed rule whereby, for its own sake, one action rather
than another, as fulfilling the will of their great Master, should be
preferred.
The contempt with which the magistracy and priesthood regarded this
obscure community of speculators, had hitherto protected them from
persecution. But they had arrived at that precise degree of eminence
and prosperity which is peculiarly obnoxious to the hostility of the
rich and powerful. The moment of their departure from Jerusalem was the
crisis of their future destiny. Had they continued to seek a precarious
refuge in a city of the Roman empire, this persecution would not have
delayed to impress a new character on their opinions and their conduct;
narrow views, and the illiberality of sectarian patriotism, would not
have failed speedily to obliterate the magnificence and beauty of their
wild and wonderful condition.
Attached from principle to peace, despising and hating the pleasures
and the customs of the degenerate mass of mankind, this unostentatious
community of good and happy men fled to the solitudes of Lebanon. To
Arabians and enthusiasts the solemnity and grandeur of these desolate
recesses possessed peculiar attractions. It well accorded with the
justice of their conceptions on the relative duties of man towards his
fellow in society, that they should labour in unconstrained equality
to dispossess the wolf and the tiger of their empire, and establish on
its ruins the dominion of intelligence and virtue. No longer would the
worshippers of the God of Nature be indebted to a hundred hands for
the accommodation of their simple wants. No longer would the poison of
a diseased civilization embrue their very nutriment with pestilence.
They would no longer owe their very existence to the vices, the fears,
and the follies of mankind. Love, friendship, and philanthropy, would
now be the characteristic disposers of their industry. It is for his
mistress or his friend that the labourer consecrates his toil; others
are mindful, but he is forgetful, of himself. “God feeds the hungry
ravens, and clothes the lilies of the fields, and yet Solomon in all
his glory is not like to one of these.”
Rome was now the shadow of her former self. The light of her grandeur
and loveliness had passed away. The latest and the noblest of her
poets and historians had foretold in agony her approaching slavery and
degradation. The ruins of the human mind, more awful and portentous
than the desolation of the most solemn temples, threw a shade of
gloom upon her golden palaces which the brutal vulgar could not see,
but which the mighty felt with inward trepidation and despair. The
ruins of Jerusalem lay defenceless and uninhabited upon the burning
sands; none visited, but in the depth of solemn awe, this accursed and
solitary spot. Tradition says that there was seen to linger among the
scorched and shattered fragments of the temple, one being, whom he that
saw dared not to call man, with clasped hands, immoveable eyes, and a
visage horribly serene. Not on the will of the capricious multitude,
nor the constant fluctuations of the many and the weak, depends the
change of empires and religions. These are the mere insensible elements
from which a subtler intelligence moulds its enduring statuary. They
that direct the changes of this mortal scene breathe the decrees of
their dominion from a throne of darkness and of tempest. The power of
man is great.
After many days of wandering, the Assassins pitched their tents in
the valley of Bethzatanai. For ages had this fertile valley lain
concealed from the adventurous search of man, among mountains of
everlasting snow. The men of elder days had inhabited this spot.
Piles of monumental marble and fragments of columns that in their
integrity almost seemed the work of some intelligence more sportive
and fantastic than the gross conceptions of mortality, lay in heaps
beside the lake, and were visible beneath its transparent waves. The
flowering orange-tree, the balsam, and innumerable odoriferous shrubs,
grew wild in the desolated portals. The fountain tanks had overflowed,
and amid the luxuriant vegetation of their margin, the yellow snake
held its unmolested dwelling. Hither came the tiger and the bear to
contend for those once domestic animals who had forgotten the secure
servitude of their ancestors. No sound, when the famished beast of
prey had retreated in despair from the awful desolation of this place,
at whose completion he had assisted, but the shrill cry of the stork,
and the flapping of his heavy wings from the capital of the solitary
column, and the scream of the hungry vulture baffled of its only
victim. The lore of ancient wisdom was sculptured in mystic characters
on the rocks. The human spirit and the human hand had been busy here
to accomplish its profoundest miracles. It was a temple dedicated to
the god of knowledge and of truth. The palaces of the Caliphs and the
Cæsars might easily surpass these ruins in magnitude and sumptuousness:
but they were the design of tyrants and the work of slaves. Piercing
genius and consummate prudence had planned and executed Bethzatanai.
There was deep and important meaning in every lineament of its
fantastic sculpture. The unintelligible legend, once so beautiful and
perfect, so full of poetry and history, spoke, even in destruction,
volumes of mysterious import, and obscure significance.
But in the season of its utmost prosperity and magnificence, art
might not aspire to vie with nature in the valley of Bethzatanai. All
that was wonderful and lovely was collected in this deep seclusion.
The fluctuating elements seemed to have been rendered everlastingly
permanent in forms of wonder and delight. The mountains of Lebanon
had been divided to their base to form this happy valley; on every
side their icy summits darted their white pinnacles into the clear
blue sky, imaging, in their grotesque outline, minarets, and ruined
domes, and columns worn with time. Far below, the silver clouds rolled
their bright volumes in many beautiful shapes, and fed the eternal
springs, that, spanning the dark chasms like a thousand radiant
rainbows, leaped into the quiet vale, then, lingering in many a dark
glade among the groves of cypress and of palm, lost themselves in the
lake. The immensity of these precipitous mountains with their starry
pyramids of snow, excluded the sun, which overtopped not, even in its
meridian, their overhanging rocks. But a more heavenly and serener
light was reflected from their icy mirrors, which, piercing through
the many-tinted clouds, produced lights and colours of inexhaustible
variety. The herbage was perpetually verdant, and clothed the darkest
recesses of the caverns and the woods.
Nature, undisturbed, had become an enchantress in these solitudes; she
had collected here all that was wonderful and divine from the armoury
of her omnipotence. The very winds breathed health and renovation, and
the joyousness of youthful courage. Fountains of crystalline water
played perpetually among the aromatic flowers, and mingled a freshness
with their odour. The pine boughs became instruments of exquisite
contrivance, among which every varying breeze waked music of new and
more delightful melody. Meteoric shapes, more effulgent than the
moonlight, hung on the wandering clouds, and mixed in discordant dance
around the spiral fountains. Blue vapours assumed strange lineaments
under the rocks and among the ruins, lingering like ghosts with
slow and solemn step. Through a dark chasm to the east, in the long
perspective of a portal glittering with the unnumbered riches of the
subterranean world, shone the broad moon, pouring in one yellow and
unbroken stream her horizontal beams. Nearer the icy region, autumn and
spring held an alternate reign. The sere leaves fell and choked the
sluggish brooks; the chilling fogs hung diamonds on every spray; and in
the dark cold evening the howling winds made melancholy music in the
trees. Far above, shone the bright throne of winter, clear, cold, and
dazzling. Sometimes there was seen the snow-flakes to fall before the
sinking orb of the beamless sun, like a shower of fiery sulphur. The
cataracts, arrested in their course, seemed, with their transparent
columns, to support the dark-browed rocks. Sometimes the icy whirlwind
scooped the powdery snow aloft, to mingle with the hissing meteors, and
scatter spangles through the rare and rayless atmosphere.
Such strange scenes of chaotic confusion and harrowing sublimity,
surrounding and shutting in the vale, added to the delights of its
secure and voluptuous tranquillity. No spectator could have refused to
believe that some spirit of great intelligence and power had hallowed
these wild and beautiful solitudes to a deep and solemn mystery.
The immediate effect of such a scene, suddenly presented to the
contemplation of mortal eyes, is seldom the subject of authentic
record. The coldest slave of custom cannot fail to recollect some few
moments in which the breath of spring or the crowding clouds of sunset,
with the pale moon shining through their fleecy skirts, or the song of
some lonely bird perched on the only tree of an unfrequented heath,
has awakened the touch of nature. And they were Arabians who entered
the valley of Bethzatanai; men who idolized nature and the God of
nature; to whom love and lofty thoughts, and the apprehensions of an
uncorrupted spirit, were sustenance and life. Thus securely excluded
from an abhorred world, all thought of its judgment was cancelled by
the rapidity of their fervid imaginations. They ceased to acknowledge,
or deigned not to advert to, the distinctions with which the majority
of base and vulgar minds control the longings and struggles of the soul
towards its place of rest. A new and sacred fire was kindled in their
hearts and sparkled in their eyes. Every gesture, every feature, the
minutest action, was modelled to beneficence and beauty by the holy
inspiration that had descended on their searching spirits. The epidemic
transport communicated itself through every heart with the rapidity of
a blast from heaven. They were already disembodied spirits; they were
already the inhabitants of paradise. To live, to breathe, to move, was
itself a sensation of immeasurable transport. Every new contemplation
of the condition of his nature brought to the happy enthusiast an
added measure of delight, and impelled to every organ, where mind is
united with external things, a keener and more exquisite perception of
all that they contain of lovely and divine. To love, to be beloved,
suddenly became an insatiable famine of his nature, which the wide
circle of the universe, comprehending beings of such inexhaustible
variety and stupendous magnitude of excellence appeared too narrow and
confined to satiate.
Alas, that these visitings of the spirit of life should fluctuate and
pass away! That the moments when the human mind is commensurate with
all that it can conceive of excellent and powerful, should not endure
with its existence and survive its most momentous change! But the
beauty of a vernal sunset, with its overhanging curtains of empurpled
cloud, is rapidly dissolved, to return at some unexpected period, and
spread an alleviating melancholy over the dark vigils of despair.
It is true the enthusiasm of overwhelming transport which had inspired
every breast among the Assassins is no more. The necessity of daily
occupation and the ordinariness of that human life, the burthen of
which it is the destiny of every human being to bear, had smothered,
not extinguished, that divine and eternal fire. Not the less indelible
and permanent were the impressions communicated to all; not the more
unalterably were the features of their social character modelled and
determined by its influence.
CHAPTER II.
Rome had fallen. Her senate-house had become a polluted den of thieves
and liars; her solemn temples, the arena of theological disputants, who
made fire and sword the missionaries of their inconceivable beliefs.
The city of the monster Constantine, symbolising, in the consequences
of its foundation, the wickedness and weakness of his successors,
feebly imaged with declining power the substantial eminence of the
Roman name. Pilgrims of a new and mightier faith crowded to visit the
lonely ruins of Jerusalem, and weep and pray before the sepulchre of
the Eternal God. The earth was filled with discord, tumult, and ruin.
The spirit of disinterested virtue had armed one-half of the civilised
world against the other. Monstrous and detestable creeds poisoned and
blighted the domestic charities. There was no appeal to natural love,
or ancient faith, from pride, superstition, and revenge.
Four centuries had passed thus terribly characterised by the most
calamitous revolutions. The Assassins, meanwhile, undisturbed by the
surrounding tumult, possessed and cultivated their fertile valley. The
gradual operation of their peculiar condition had matured and perfected
the singularity and excellence of their character. That cause, which
had ceased to act as an immediate and overpowering excitement, became
the unperceived law of their lives, and sustenance of their natures.
Their religious tenets had also undergone a change, corresponding with
the exalted condition of their moral being. The gratitude which they
owed to the benignant Spirit by which their limited intelligences had
not only been created but redeemed, was less frequently adverted to,
became less the topic of comment or contemplation; not, therefore, did
it cease to be their presiding guardian, the guide of their inmost
thoughts, the tribunal of appeal for the minutest particulars of their
conduct. They learned to identify this mysterious benefactor with the
delight that is bred among the solitary rocks, and has its dwelling
alike in the changing colours of the clouds and the inmost recesses of
the caverns. Their future also no longer existed, but in the blissful
tranquillity of the present. Time was measured and created by the
vices and the miseries of men, between whom and the happy nation of
the Assassins there was no analogy nor comparison. Already had their
eternal peace commenced. The darkness had passed away from the open
gates of death.
The practical results produced by their faith and condition upon
their external conduct were singular and memorable. Excluded from the
great and various community of mankind, these solitudes became to
them a sacred hermitage, in which all formed, as it were, one being,
divided against itself by no contending will or factious passions.
Every impulse conspired to one end, and tended to a single object.
Each devoted his powers to the happiness of the other. Their republic
was the scene of the perpetual contentions of benevolence; not the
heartless and assumed kindness of commercial man, but the genuine
virtue that has a legible superscription in every feature of the
countenance, and every motion of the frame. The perverseness and
calamities of those who dwelt beyond the mountains that encircled
their undisturbed possessions, were unknown and unimagined. Little
embarrassed by the complexities of civilised society, they knew not
to conceive any happiness that can be satiated without participation,
or that thirsts not to reproduce and perpetually generate itself. The
path of virtue and felicity was plain and unimpeded. They clearly
acknowledged, in every case, that conduct to be entitled to preference
which would obviously produce the greatest pleasure. They could not
conceive an instance in which it would be their duty to hesitate, in
causing, at whatever expense, the greatest and most unmixed delight.
Hence arose a peculiarity which only failed to germinate in uncommon
and momentous consequences, because the Assassins had retired from
the intercourse of mankind, over whom other motives and principles of
conduct than justice and benevolence prevail. It would be a difficult
matter for men of such a sincere and simple faith, to estimate the
final results of their intentions, among the corrupt and slavish
multitude. They would be perplexed also in their choice of the means,
whereby their intentions might be fulfilled. To produce immediate pain
or disorder for the sake of future benefit, is consonant, indeed,
with the purest religion and philosophy, but never fails to excite
invincible repugnance in the feelings of the many. Against their
predilections and distastes an Assassin, accidentally the inhabitant of
a civilised community, would wage unremitting hostility from principle.
He would find himself compelled to adopt means which they would abhor,
for the sake of an object which they could not conceive that he should
propose to himself. Secure and self-enshrined in the magnificence and
pre-eminence of his conceptions, spotless as the light of heaven, he
would be the victim among men of calumny and persecution. Incapable
of distinguishing his motives, they would rank him among the vilest
and most atrocious criminals. Great, beyond all comparison with them,
they would despise him in the presumption of their ignorance. Because
his spirit burned with an unquenchable passion for their welfare,
they would lead him, like his illustrious master, amidst scoffs, and
mockery, and insult, to the remuneration of an ignominious death.
Who hesitates to destroy a venomous serpent that has crept near his
sleeping friend, except the man who selfishly dreads lest the malignant
reptile should turn its fury on himself? And if the poisoner has
assumed a human shape, if the bane be distinguished only from the
viper’s venom by the excess and extent of its devastation, will the
saviour and avenger here retract and pause, entrenched behind the
superstition of the indefeasible divinity of man? Is the human form,
then, the mere badge of a prerogative for unlicensed wickedness and
mischief? Can the power derived from the weakness of the oppressed,
or the ignorance of the deceived, confer the right in security to
tyrannise and defraud?
The subject of regular governments, and the disciple of established
superstition, dares not to ask this question. For the sake of the
eventual benefit, he endures what he esteems a transitory evil, and
the moral degradation of man disquiets not his patience. But the
religion of an Assassin imposes other virtues than endurance, when his
fellow-men groan under tyranny, or have become so bestial and abject
that they cannot feel their chains. An Assassin believes that man is
eminently man, and only then enjoys the prerogatives of his privileged
condition, when his affections and his judgment pay tribute to the
God of Nature. The perverse, and vile, and vicious--what were they?
Shapes of some unholy vision, moulded by the spirit of Evil, which
the sword of the merciful destroyer should sweep from this beautiful
world. Dreamy nothings; phantasms of misery and mischief, that hold
their death-like state on glittering thrones, and in the loathsome
dens of poverty. No Assassin would submissively temporise with vice,
and in cold charity become a pander to falsehood and desolation. His
path through the wilderness of civilized society would be marked with
the blood of the oppressor and the ruiner. The wretch, whom nations
tremblingly adore, would expiate in his throttling grasp a thousand
licensed and venerable crimes.
How many holy liars and parasites, in solemn guise, would his saviour
arm drag from their luxurious couches, and plunge in the cold charnel,
that the green and many-legged monsters of the slimy grave might eat
off at their leisure the lineaments of rooted malignity and detested
cunning. The respectable man--the smooth, smiling, polished villain,
whom all the city honours; whose very trade is lies and murder; who
buys his daily bread with the blood and tears of men, would feed the
ravens with his limbs. The Assassin would cater nobly for the eyeless
worms of earth, and the carrion fowls of heaven.
Yet here, religion and human love had imbued the manners of those
solitary people with inexpressible gentleness and benignity. Courage
and active virtue, and the indignation against vice, which becomes
a hurrying and irresistible passion, slept like the imprisoned
earthquake, or the lightning shafts that hang in the golden clouds
of evening. They were innocent, but they were capable of more than
innocence; for the great principles of their faith were perpetually
acknowledged and adverted to; nor had they forgotten, in this
uninterrupted quiet, the author of their felicity.
Four centuries had thus worn away without producing an event. Men had
died, and natural tears had been shed upon their graves, in sorrow that
improves the heart. Those who had been united by love had gone to death
together, leaving to their friends the bequest of a most sacred grief,
and of a sadness that is allied to pleasure. Babes that hung upon
their mothers’ breasts had become men; men had died; and many a wild
luxuriant weed that overtopped the habitations of the vale, had twined
its roots around their disregarded bones. Their tranquil state was like
a summer sea, whose gentle undulations disturb not the reflected stars,
and break not the long still line of the rainbow hues of sunrise.
CHAPTER III.
Where all is thus calm, the slightest circumstance is recorded and
remembered. Before the sixth century had expired one incident occurred,
remarkable and strange. A young man, named Albedir, wandering in the
woods, was startled by the screaming of a bird of prey, and, looking
up, saw blood fall, drop by drop, from among the intertwined boughs of
a cedar. Having climbed the tree, he beheld a terrible and dismaying
spectacle. A naked human body was impaled on the broken branch. It was
maimed and mangled horribly; every limb bent and bruised into frightful
distortion, and exhibiting a breathing image of the most sickening
mockery of life. A monstrous snake had scented its prey from among the
mountains--and above hovered a hungry vulture. From amidst this mass of
desolated humanity, two eyes, black and inexpressibly brilliant, shone
with an unearthly lustre. Beneath the blood-stained eye-brows their
steady rays manifested the serenity of an immortal power, the collected
energy of a deathless mind, spell-secured from dissolution. A bitter
smile of mingled abhorrence and scorn distorted his wounded lip--he
appeared calmly to observe and measure all around--self-possession had
not deserted the shattered mass of life.
The youth approached the bough on which the breathing corpse was hung.
As he approached, the serpent reluctantly unwreathed his glittering
coils, and crept towards his dark and loathsome cave. The vulture,
impatient of his meal, fled to the mountain, that re-echoed with his
hoarse screams. The cedar branches creaked with their agitating weight,
faintly, as the dismal wind arose. All else was deadly silent.
At length a voice issued from the mangled man. It rattled in hoarse
murmurs from his throat and lungs--his words were the conclusion of
some strange mysterious soliloquy. They were broken, and without
apparent connexion, completing wide intervals of inexpressible
conceptions.
“The great tyrant is baffled, even in success. Joy! joy! to his
tortured foe! Triumph to the worm whom he tramples under his feet!
Ha! His suicidal hand might dare as well abolish the mighty frame of
things! Delight and exultation sit before the closed gates of death!--I
fear not to dwell beneath their black and ghastly shadow. Here thy
power may not avail! Thou createst--’tis mine to ruin and destroy.--I
was thy slave--I am thy equal, and thy foe.--Thousands tremble before
thy throne, who, at my voice, shall dare to pluck the golden crown
from thine unholy head!” He ceased. The silence of noon swallowed up
his words. Albedir clung tighter to the tree--he dared not for dismay
remove his eyes. He remained mute in the perturbation of deep and
creeping horror.
“Albedir!” said the same voice, “Albedir! in the name of God, approach.
He that suffered me to fall, watches thee;--the gentle and merciful
spirits of sweet human love delight not in agony and horror. For
pity’s sake approach, in the name of thy good God, approach, Albedir!”
The tones were mild and clear as the responses of Æolian music. They
floated to Albedir’s ear like the warm breath of June that lingers in
the lawny groves, subduing all to softness. Tears of tender affection
started into his eyes. It was as the voice of a beloved friend. The
partner of his childhood, the brother of his soul, seemed to call for
aid, and pathetically to remonstrate with delay. He resisted not the
magic impulse, but advanced towards the spot, and tenderly attempted
to remove the wounded man. He cautiously descended the tree with his
wretched burthen, and deposited it on the ground.
A period of strange silence intervened. Awe and cold horror were slowly
succeeding to the softer sensations of tumultuous pity, when again he
heard the silver modulations of the same enchanting voice. “Weep not
for me, Albedir! What wretch so utterly lost, but might inhale peace
and renovation from this paradise! I am wounded, and in pain; but
having found a refuge in this seclusion, and a friend in you, I am
worthier of envy than compassion. Bear me to your cottage secretly:
I would not disturb your gentle partner by my appearance. She must
love me more dearly than a brother. I must be the playmate of your
children; already I regard them with a father’s love. My arrival must
not be regarded as a thing of mystery and wonder. What, indeed, but
that men are prone to error and exaggeration, is less inexplicable,
than that a stranger, wandering on Lebanon, fell from the rocks into
the vale? Albedir,” he continued, and his deepening voice assumed awful
solemnity, “in return for the affection with which I cherish thee and
thine, thou owest this submission.”
Albedir implicitly submitted; not even a thought had power to refuse
its deference. He reassumed his burthen, and proceeded towards the
cottage. He watched until Khaled should be absent, and conveyed the
stranger into an apartment appropriated for the reception of those
who occasionally visited their habitation. He desired that the door
should be securely fastened, and that he might not be visited until the
morning of the following day.
Albedir waited with impatience for the return of Khaled. The
unaccustomed weight of even so transitory a secret hung on his
ingenuous and unpractised nature, like a blighting, clinging curse. The
stranger’s accents had lulled him to a trance of wild and delightful
imagination. Hopes, so visionary and aerial, that they had assumed no
denomination, had spread themselves over his intellectual frame, and,
phantoms as they were, had modelled his being to their shape. Still his
mind was not exempt from the visitings of disquietude and perturbation.
It was a troubled stream of thought, over whose fluctuating waves
unsearchable fate seemed to preside, guiding its unforeseen
alternations with an inexorable hand. Albedir paced earnestly the
garden of his cottage, revolving every circumstance attendant on the
incident of the day. He re-imaged with intense thought the minutest
recollections of the scene. In vain--he was the slave of suggestions
not to be controlled. Astonishment, horror, and awe--tumultuous
sympathy, and a mysterious elevation of soul, hurried away all activity
of judgment, and overwhelmed, with stunning force, every attempt at
deliberation or inquiry.
His reveries were interrupted at length by the return of Khaled.
She entered the cottage, that scene of undisturbed repose, in the
confidence that change might as soon overwhelm the eternal world, as
disturb this inviolable sanctuary. She started to behold Albedir.
Without preface or remark, he recounted with eager haste the
occurrences of the day. Khaled’s tranquil spirit could hardly keep
pace with the breathless rapidity of his narration. She was bewildered
with staggering wonder even to hear his confused tones, and behold his
agitated countenance.
CHAPTER IV.
On the following morning Albedir arose at sunrise, and visited the
stranger. He found him already risen, and employed in adorning the
lattice of his chamber with flowers from the garden. There was
something in his attitude and occupation singularly expressive of his
entire familiarity with the scene. Albedir’s habitation seemed to have
been his accustomed home. He addressed his host in a tone of gay and
affectionate welcome, such as never fails to communicate by sympathy
the feelings from which it flows.
“My friend,” said he, “the balm of the dew of our vale is sweet; or is
this garden the favoured spot where the winds conspire to scatter the
best odours they can find? Come, lend me your arm awhile, I feel very
weak.” He motioned to walk forth, but, as if unable to proceed, rested
on the seat beside the door. For a few moments they were silent, if the
interchange of cheerful and happy looks is to be called silence. At
last he observed a spade that rested against the wall. “You have only
one spade, brother,” said he; “you have only one, I suppose, of any of
the instruments of tillage. Your garden ground, too, occupies a certain
space which it will be necessary to enlarge. This must be quickly
remedied. I cannot earn my supper of to-night, nor of to-morrow; but
thenceforward, I do not mean to eat the bread of idleness. I know that
you would willingly perform the additional labour which my nourishment
would require; I know, also, that you would feel a degree of pleasure
in the fatigue arising from this employment, but I shall contest with
you such pleasures as these, and such pleasures as these alone.” His
eyes were somewhat wan, and the tone of his voice languid as he spoke.
As they were thus engaged, Khaled came towards them. The stranger
beckoned to her to sit beside him, and taking her hands within his
own, looked attentively on her mild countenance. Khaled inquired if
he had been refreshed by sleep. He replied by a laugh of careless
and inoffensive glee; and placing one of her hands within Albedir’s,
said, “If this be sleep, here in this odorous vale, where these sweet
smiles encompass us, and the voices of those who love are heard--if
these be the visions of sleep, sister, those who lie down in misery
shall arise lighter than the butterflies. I came from amid the tumult
of a world, how different from this! I am unexpectedly among you, in
the midst of a scene such as my imagination never dared to promise.
I must remain here--I must not depart.” Khaled, recovering from the
admiration and astonishment caused by the stranger’s words and manner,
assured him of the happiness which she should feel in such an addition
to her society. Albedir, too, who had been more deeply impressed
than Khaled by the event of his arrival, earnestly reassured him of
the ardour of the affection with which he had inspired them. The
stranger smiled gently to hear the unaccustomed fervour of sincerity
which animated their address, and was rising to retire, when Khaled
said, “You have not yet seen our children, Maimuna and Abdallah. They
are by the water-side, playing with their favourite snake. We have
only to cross yonder little wood, and wind down a path cut in the
rock that overhangs the lake, and we shall find them beside a recess
which the shore makes there, and which a chasm, as it were, among the
rocks and woods, encloses. Do you think you could walk there?” “To
see your children, Khaled? I think I could, with the assistance of
Albedir’s arm, and yours.”--So they went through the wood of ancient
cypress, intermingled with the brightness of many-tinted blooms,
which gleamed like stars through its romantic glens. They crossed the
green meadow, and entered among the broken chasms, beautiful as they
were in their investiture of odoriferous shrubs. They came at last,
after pursuing a path which wound through the intricacies of a little
wilderness, to the borders of the lake. They stood on the rock which
overhung it, from which there was a prospect of all the miracles of
nature and of art which encircled and adorned its shores. The stranger
gazed upon it with a countenance unchanged by any emotion, but, as it
were, thoughtfully and contemplatingly. As he gazed, Khaled ardently
pressed his hand, and said, in a low yet eager voice, “Look, look,
lo there!” He turned towards her, but her eyes were not on him. She
looked below--her lips were parted by the feelings which possessed her
soul--her breath came and went regularly but inaudibly. She leaned over
the precipice, and her dark hair hanging beside her face, gave relief
to its fine lineaments, animated by such love as exceeds utterance.
The stranger followed her eyes, and saw that her children were in the
glen below; then raising his eyes, exchanged with her affectionate
looks of congratulation and delight. The boy was apparently eight years
old, the girl about two years younger. The beauty of their form and
countenance was something so divine and strange, as overwhelmed the
senses of the beholder like a delightful dream, with insupportable
ravishment. They were arrayed in a loose robe of linen, through which
the exquisite proportions of their form appeared. Unconscious that they
were observed, they did not relinquish the occupation in which they
were engaged. They had constructed a little boat of the bark of trees,
and had given it sails of interwoven feathers, and launched it on the
water. They sat beside a white flat stone, on which a small snake lay
coiled, and when their work was finished, they arose and called to the
snake in melodious tones, so that it understood their language. For it
unwreathed its shining circles and crept to the boat, into which no
sooner had it entered than the girl loosened the band which held it to
the shore, and it sailed away. Then they ran round and round the little
creek, clapping their hands, and melodiously pouring out wild sounds,
which the snake seemed to answer by the restless glancing of his neck.
At last a breath of wind came from the shore, and the boat changed its
course, and was about to leave the creek, which the snake perceived
and leaped into the water, and came to the little children’s feet. The
girl sang to it, and it leaped into her bosom, and she crossed her fair
hands over it, as if to cherish it there. Then the boy answered with a
song, and it glided from beneath her hands and crept towards him. While
they were thus employed, Maimuna looked up, and seeing her parents on
the cliff, ran to meet them up the steep path that wound around it; and
Abdallah, leaving his snake, followed joyfully.
[Decoration]
ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.
A Fragment.
The first law which it becomes a Reformer to propose and support, at
the approach of a period of great political change, is the abolition of
the punishment of death.
It is sufficiently clear that revenge, retaliation, atonement,
expiation, are rules and motives, so far from deserving a place in any
enlightened system of political life, that they are the chief sources
of a prodigious class of miseries in the domestic circles of society.
It is clear that however the spirit of legislation may appear to frame
institutions upon more philosophical maxims, it has hitherto, in
those cases which are termed criminal, done little more than palliate
the spirit, by gratifying a portion of it; and afforded a compromise
between that which is best;--the inflicting of no evil upon a sensitive
being, without a decisively beneficial result in which he should at
least participate;--and that which is worst; that he should be put to
torture for the amusement of those whom he may have injured, or may
seem to have injured.
Omitting these remoter considerations, let us inquire what _Death_ is;
that which is applied as a measure of transgressions of indefinite
shades of distinction, so soon as they shall have passed that
degree and colour of enormity, with which it is supposed no inferior
infliction is commensurate.
And first, whether death is good or evil, a punishment or a reward,
or whether it be wholly indifferent, no man can take upon himself
to assert. That that within us which thinks and feels, continues to
think and feel after the dissolution of the body, has been the almost
universal opinion of mankind, and the accurate philosophy of what I
may be permitted to term the modern Academy, by showing the prodigious
depth and extent of our ignorance respecting the causes and nature
of sensation, renders probable the affirmative of a proposition, the
negative of which it is so difficult to conceive, and the popular
arguments against which, derived from what is called the atomic system,
are proved to be applicable only to the relation which one object bears
to another, as apprehended by the mind, and not to existence itself,
or the nature of that essence which is the medium and receptacle of
objects.
The popular system of religion suggests the idea that the mind, after
death, will be painfully or pleasurably affected according to its
determinations during life. However ridiculous and pernicious we must
admit the vulgar accessories of this creed to be, there is a certain
analogy, not wholly absurd, between the consequences resulting to
an individual during life from the virtuous or vicious, prudent or
imprudent, conduct of his external actions, to those consequences which
are conjectured to ensue from the discipline and order of his internal
thoughts, as affecting his condition in a future state. They omit,
indeed, to calculate upon the accidents of disease, and temperament,
and organisation, and circumstance, together with the multitude of
independent agencies which affect the opinions, the conduct, and the
happiness of individuals, and produce determinations of the will, and
modify the judgment, so as to produce effects the most opposite in
natures considerably similar. These are those operations in the order
of the whole of nature, tending, we are prone to believe, to some
definite mighty end, to which the agencies of our peculiar nature are
subordinate; nor is there any reason to suppose, that in a future
state they should become suddenly exempt from that subordination. The
philosopher is unable to determine whether our existence in a previous
state has affected our present condition, and abstains from deciding
whether our present condition would affect us in that which may be
future. That, if we continue to exist, the manner of our existence will
be such as no inferences nor conjectures, afforded by a consideration
of our earthly experience, can elucidate, is sufficiently obvious.
The opinion that the vital principle within us, in whatever mode it
may continue to exist, must lose that consciousness of definite and
individual being which now characterises it, and become a unit in the
vast sum of action and of thought which disposes and animates the
universe, and is called God, seems to belong to that class of opinion
which has been designated as indifferent.
To compel a person to know all that can be known by the dead,
concerning that which the living fear, hope, or forget; to plunge him
into the pleasure or pain which there awaits him; to punish or reward
him in a manner and in a degree incalculable and incomprehensible by
us; to disrobe him at once from all that intertexture of good and
evil with which Nature seems to have clothed every form of individual
existence, is to inflict on him the doom of death.
A certain degree of pain and terror usually accompany the infliction of
death. This degree is infinitely varied by the infinite variety in the
temperament and opinions of the sufferers. As a measure of punishment,
strictly so considered, and as an exhibition, which, by its known
effects on the sensibility of the sufferer, is intended to intimidate
the spectators from incurring a similar liability, it is singularly
inadequate.
Firstly,--Persons of energetic character, in whom, as in men who suffer
for political crimes, there is a large mixture of enterprise, and
fortitude, and disinterestedness, and the elements, though misguided
and disarranged, by which the strength and happiness of a nation might
have been cemented, die in such a manner, as to make death appear
not evil, but good. The death of what is called a traitor, that is,
a person who, from whatever motive, would abolish the government of
the day, is as often a triumphant exhibition of suffering virtue,
as the warning of a culprit. The multitude, instead of departing
with a panic-stricken approbation of the laws which exhibited such a
spectacle, are inspired with pity, admiration and sympathy; and the
most generous among them feel an emulation to be the authors of such
flattering emotions, as they experience stirring in their bosoms.
Impressed by what they see and feel, they make no distinction between
the motives which incited the criminals to the actions for which they
suffer, or the heroic courage with which they turned into good that
which their judges awarded to them as evil, or the purpose itself
of those actions, though that purpose may happen to be eminently
pernicious. The laws in this case lose that sympathy, which it ought
to be their chief object to secure, and in a participation of which,
consists their chief strength in maintaining those sanctions by which
the parts of the social union are bound together, so as to produce, as
nearly as possible, the ends for which it is instituted.
Secondly--persons of energetic character, in communities not modelled
with philosophical skill to turn all the energies which they contain to
the purposes of common good, are prone also to fall into the temptation
of undertaking, and are peculiarly fitted for despising the perils
attendant upon consummating, the most enormous crimes. Murder, rapes,
extensive schemes of plunder, are the actions of persons belonging to
this class; and death is the penalty of conviction. But the coarseness
of organisation, peculiar to men capable of committing acts wholly
selfish, is usually found to be associated with a proportionate
insensibility to fear or pain. Their sufferings communicate to those of
the spectators, who may be liable to the commission of similar crimes,
a sense of the lightness of that event, when closely examined, which
at a distance, as uneducated persons are accustomed to do, probably
they regarded with horror. But a great majority of the spectators are
so bound up in the interests and the habits of social union that no
temptation would be sufficiently strong to induce them to a commission
of the enormities to which this penalty is assigned. The more powerful,
the richer among them,--and a numerous class of little tradesmen are
richer and more powerful than those who are employed by them, and the
employer, in general, bears this relation to the employed,--regard
their own wrongs as, in some degree, avenged, and their own rights
secured by this punishment, inflicted as the penalty of whatever crime.
In cases of murder or mutilation, this feeling is almost universal. In
those, therefore, whom this exhibition does not awaken to the sympathy
which extenuates crime and discredits the law which restrains it, it
produces feelings more directly at war with the genuine purposes of
political society. It excites those emotions which it is the chief
object of civilisation to extinguish for ever, and in the extinction
of which alone there can be any hope of better institutions than those
under which men now misgovern one another. Men feel that their revenge
is gratified, and that their security is established, by the extinction
and the sufferings of beings, in most respects resembling themselves;
and their daily occupations constraining them to a precise form in all
their thoughts, they come to connect inseparably the idea of their own
advantage with that of the death and torture of others. It is manifest
that the object of sane polity is directly the reverse; and that laws
founded upon reason, should accustom the gross vulgar to associate
their ideas of security and of interest with the reformation, and the
strict restraint, for that purpose alone, of those who might invade it.
The passion of revenge is originally nothing more than an habitual
perception of the ideas of the sufferings of the person who inflicts
an injury, as connected, as they are in a savage state, or in such
portions of society as are yet undisciplined to civilisation, with
security that that injury will not be repeated in future. This feeling,
engrafted upon superstition and confirmed by habit, at last loses sight
of the only object for which it may be supposed to have been implanted,
and becomes a passion and a duty to be pursued and fulfilled, even to
the destruction of those ends to which it originally tended. The other
passions, both good and evil, Avarice, Remorse, Love, Patriotism,
present a similar appearance; and to this principle of the mind
over-shooting the mark at which it aims, we owe all that is eminently
base or excellent in human nature; in providing for the nutriment or
the extinction of which consists the true art of the legislator.[9]
Nothing is more clear than that the infliction of punishment in
general, in a degree which the reformation and the restraint of those
who transgress the laws does not render indispensable, and none more
than death, confirms all the inhuman and unsocial impulses of men. It
is almost a proverbial remark, that those nations in which the penal
code has been particularly mild, have been distinguished from all
others by the rarity of crime. But the example is to be admitted to
be equivocal. A more decisive argument is afforded by a consideration
of the universal connexion of ferocity of manners, and a contempt of
social ties, with the contempt of human life. Governments which derive
their institutions from the existence of circumstances of barbarism and
violence, with some rare exceptions perhaps, are bloody in proportion
as they are despotic, and form the manners of their subjects to a
sympathy with their own spirit.
The spectators who feel no abhorrence at a public execution, but rather
a self-applauding superiority, and a sense of gratified indignation,
are surely excited to the most inauspicious emotions. The first
reflection of such a one is the sense of his own internal and actual
worth, as preferable to that of the victim, whom circumstances have led
to destruction. The meanest wretch is impressed with a sense of his
own comparative merit. He is one of those on whom the tower of Siloam
fell not--he is such a one as Jesus found not in all Samaria, who, in
his own soul, throws the first stone at the woman taken in adultery.
The popular religion of the country takes its designation from that
illustrious person whose beautiful sentiment I have quoted. Any one who
has stript from the doctrines of this person the veil of familiarity,
will perceive how adverse their spirit is to feelings of this nature.
[9] The savage and the illiterate are but faintly aware of the
distinction between the future and the past; they make actions
belonging to periods so distinct, the subjects of similar feelings;
they live only in the present, or in the past as it is present. It is
in this that the philosopher excels one of the many; it is this which
distinguishes the doctrine of philosophic necessity from fatalism; and
that determination of the will, by which it is the active source of
future events, from that liberty or indifference, to which the abstract
liability of irremediable actions is attached, according to the notions
of the vulgar.
This is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse and Revenge;
the one extending itself over the future, and the other over the past;
provinces in which their suggestions can only be the sources of evil.
The purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously in
future, and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing an enemy,
are the sources from which the enormous superstitions implied in the
words cited have arisen.
[Decoration]
ON LIFE.
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel,
is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the
wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its
transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are
changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which
supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and
of political systems, to life? What are the revolutions of the globe
which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is
composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns,
of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their
destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not,
because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by
the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from
an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions
of that which is its object.
If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely conceived in
his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, and planets, they not
existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon canvas, the spectacle
now afforded by the nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated it by the
wisdom of astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or had he imagined
the scenery of this earth, the mountains, the seas, and the rivers;
the grass, and the flowers, and the variety of the forms and masses of
the leaves of the woods, and the colours which attend the setting and
the rising sun, and the hues of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, these
things not before existing, truly we should have been astonished, and
it would not have been a vain boast to have said of such a man, “Non
merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.”[10] But now these
things are looked on with little wonder, and to be conscious of them
with intense delight is esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a
refined and extraordinary person. The multitude of men care not for
them. It is thus with Life--that which includes all.
What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will,
and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is
unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live
on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to
think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being! Rightly used
they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves; and this is much.
For what are we? Whence do we come? and whither do we go? Is birth the
commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What is birth and
death?
The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life,
which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which
the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us.
It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I
confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the
conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as
it is perceived.
It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, and we
must be long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid
universe of external things is “such stuff as dreams are made of.” The
shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and matter, its
fatal consequences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning
the source of all things, had early conducted me to materialism. This
materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. It
allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking. But
I was discontented with such a view of things as it afforded; man
is a being of high aspirations, “looking both before and after,”
whose “thoughts wander through eternity,” disclaiming alliance with
transience and decay; incapable of imagining to himself annihilation;
existing but in the future and the past; being, not what he is, but
what he has been and shall be. Whatever may be his true and final
destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness
and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being. Each is
at once the centre and the circumference; the point to which all things
are referred, and the line in which all things are contained. Such
contemplations as these, materialism and the popular philosophy of mind
and matter alike forbid; they are only consistent with the intellectual
system.
It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of arguments
sufficiently familiar to those inquiring minds, whom alone a writer on
abstruse subjects can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most clear
and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be found in Sir
William Drummond’s Academical Questions. After such an exposition, it
would be idle to translate into other words what could only lose its
energy and fitness by the change. Examined point by point, and word by
word, the most discriminating intellects have been able to discern no
train of thoughts in the process of reasoning, which does not conduct
inevitably to the conclusion which has been stated.
What follows from the admission? It establishes no new truth, it gives
us no additional insight into our hidden nature, neither its action
nor itself. Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build, has much
work yet remaining as pioneer for the overgrowth of ages. It makes
one step towards this object; it destroys error, and the roots of
error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the reformer in
political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy. It reduces the
mind to that freedom in which it would have acted, but for the misuse
of words and signs, the instruments of its own creation. By signs, I
would be understood in a wide sense, including what is properly meant
by that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In this latter sense, almost
all familiar objects are signs, standing, not for themselves, but for
others, in their capacity of suggesting one thought which shall lead to
a train of thoughts. Our whole life is thus an education of error.
Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct and
intense apprehension had we of the world and of ourselves! Many of the
circumstances of social life were then important to us which are now
no longer so. But that is not the point of comparison on which I mean
to insist. We less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt,
from ourselves. They seemed, as it were, to constitute one mass. There
are some persons who, in this respect, are always children. Those who
are subject to the state called reverie, feel as if their nature were
dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the surrounding
universe were absorbed into their being. They are conscious of no
distinction. And these are states which precede, or accompany, or
follow an unusually intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men grow
up this power commonly decays, and they become mechanical and habitual
agents. Thus feelings and then reasonings are the combined result of
a multitude of entangled thoughts, and of a series of what are called
impressions, planted by reiteration.
The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the
intellectual philosophy, is that of unity. Nothing exists but as
it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal between those two
classes of thought, which are vulgarly distinguished by the names of
ideas and of external objects. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning,
the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to that which
is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to
be a delusion. The words _I_, _you_, _they_, are not signs of any
actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus
indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different
modifications of the one mind.
Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous
presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one
mind. I am but a portion of it. The words _I_, and _you_, and _they_
are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally
devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to them. It
is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle a conception
as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy has conducted us. We are
on that verge where words abandon us, and what wonder if we grow dizzy
to look down the dark abyss of how little we know!
The relations of _things_ remain unchanged, by whatever system. By the
word _things_ is to be understood any object of thought, that is, any
thought upon which any other thought is employed, with an apprehension
of distinction. The relations of these remain unchanged; and such is
the material of our knowledge.
What is the cause of life? that is, how was it produced, or what
agencies distinct from life have acted or act upon life? All recorded
generations of mankind have wearily busied themselves in inventing
answers to this question; and the result has been,--Religion. Yet, that
the basis of all things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges,
mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we have any experience
of its properties, and beyond that experience how vain is argument!
cannot create, it can only perceive. It is said also to be the cause.
But cause is only a word expressing a certain state of the human mind
with regard to the manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to be
related to each other. If any one desires to know how unsatisfactorily
the popular philosophy employs itself upon this great question, they
need only impartially reflect upon the manner in which thoughts develop
themselves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable that the cause
of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind.
[Decoration]
[10] _Vide supra_, p. 35.--Ed.
[Decoration]
ON A FUTURE STATE.
It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings
in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death,--that
apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual
existence. Nor has mankind been contented with supposing that species
of existence which some philosophers have asserted; namely, the
resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of a living being
into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest particle of
these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have clung to the idea
that sensibility and thought, which they have distinguished from the
objects of it, under the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its
own nature, less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the
body is resolved into its elements, the principle which animated it
will remain perpetual and unchanged. Some philosophers--and those to
whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical
science, suppose, on the other hand, that intelligence is the mere
result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects;
and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to
the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the
tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be
absorbed into other forms.
Let us trace the reasonings which in one and the other have conducted
to these two opinions, and endeavour to discover what we ought to
think on a question of such momentous interest. Let us analyse the
ideas and feelings which constitute the contending beliefs, and
watchfully establish a discrimination between words and thoughts. Let
us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask
ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we
derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts,
which may enable us to assert, with certainty, that we do or do not
live after death.
The examination of this subject requires that it should be stript of
all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the common opinion
of men. The existence of a God, and a future state of rewards and
punishments, are totally foreign to the subject. If it be proved that
the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can
be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state. It has
been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be numbered
among the attributes of the Deity, he will undoubtedly compensate the
virtuous who suffer during life, and that he will make every sensitive
being, who does not deserve punishment, happy for ever. But this view
of the subject, which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to
develop and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we
now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, on the other hand,
that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the
universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an
inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power
survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any
supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with
it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it
will be a state of punishment or reward.
By the word death, we express that condition in which natures
resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which they were. We
no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have sensations
and apprehensions, we no longer participate in them. We know no more
than that those external organs, and all that fine texture of material
frame, without which we have no experience that life or thought can
subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad. The body is placed under
the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even
of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy,
whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer
is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against
the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The
corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have
preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch
met his like sweet and subtle fire; whose aspect spread a visionary
light upon his path--these he cannot meet again. The organs of sense
are destroyed, and the intellectual operations dependent on them have
perished with their sources. How can a corpse see or feel? its eyes are
eaten out, and its heart is black and without motion. What intercourse
can two heaps of putrid clay and crumbling bones hold together? When
you can discover where the fresh colours of the faded flower abide,
or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are
the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though
the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to
himself.
The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations common to all
men inspired by the event of death, believes that he sees with more
certainty that it is attended with the annihilation of sentiment and
thought. He observes the mental powers increase and fade with those
of the body, and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory
changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties
of the vital and intellectual principle; drunkenness and disease will
either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness or idiotcy may
utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In
old age the mind gradually withers; and as it grew and was strengthened
with the body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude.
Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so soon as the organs of
the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and
perception, and apprehension, are at an end. It is probable that what
we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation
between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest
of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist so soon as those
parts change their position with regard to each other. Thus colour,
and sound, and taste, and odour exist only relatively. But let thought
be considered as some peculiar substance, which permeates, and is the
cause of, the animation of living beings. Why should that substance
be assumed to be something essentially distinct from all others, and
exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other substance is
exempt? It differs, indeed, from all other substances, as electricity,
and light, and magnetism, and the constituent parts of air and earth,
severally differ from all others. Each of these is subject to change
and to decay, and to conversion into other forms. Yet the difference
between light and earth is scarcely greater than that which exists
between life, or thought, and fire. The difference between the two
former was never alleged as an argument for the eternal permanence of
either, in that form under which they first might offer themselves to
our notice. Why should the difference between the two latter substances
be an argument for the prolongation of the existence of one and not
the other, when the existence of both has arrived at their apparent
termination? To say that fire exists without manifesting any of the
properties of fire, such as light, heat, &c., or that the principle of
life exists without consciousness, or memory, or desire, or motive, is
to resign, by an awkward distortion of language, the affirmative of the
dispute. To say that the principle of life _may_ exist in distribution
among various forms, is to assert what cannot be proved to be either
true or false, but which, were it true, annihilates all hope of
existence after death, in any sense in which that event can belong to
the hopes and fears of men. Suppose, however, that the intellectual and
vital principle differs in the most marked and essential manner from
all other known substances; that they have all some resemblance between
themselves which it in no degree participates. In what manner can this
concession be made an argument for its imperishability? All that we
see or know perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed
from everything else. But that it survives that period, beyond which we
have no experience of its existence, such distinction and dissimilarity
affords no shadow of proof, and nothing but our own desires could have
led us to conjecture or imagine.
Have we existed before birth? It is difficult to conceive the
possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle of each
animal and plant, a power which converts the substances by which it
is surrounded into a substance homogeneous with itself. That is, the
relation between certain elementary particles of matter undergo a
change, and submit to new combinations. For when we use the words
_principle_, _power_, _cause_, &c., we mean to express no real being,
but only to class under those terms a certain series of co-existing
phenomena; but let it be supposed that this principle is a certain
substance which escapes the observation of the chemist and anatomist.
It certainly _may be_; though it is sufficiently unphilosophical to
allege the possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth. Does it
see, hear, feel, before its combination with those organs on which
sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those
ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we have not existed
before birth; if, at the period when the parts of our nature on which
thought and life depend, seem to be woven together, they are woven
together; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed
before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then
there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist
after our existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought and life
is concerned, the same will take place with regard to us, individually
considered, after death, as had place before our birth.
It is said that it is possible that we should continue to exist in
some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is a most
unreasonable presumption. It casts on the adherents of annihilation
the burthen of proving the negative of a question, the affirmative of
which is not supported by a single argument, and which, by its very
nature, lies beyond the experience of the human understanding. It is
sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any proposition, concerning which
we are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory in
itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of whatever enters into
the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly vindicated.
But it is enough that such assertions should be either contradictory
to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our experience,
that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be
demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be
persuaded.
This desire to be for ever as we are; the reluctance to a violent and
unexperienced change, which is common to all the animated and inanimate
combinations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret persuasion which
has given birth to the opinions of a future state.
[Decoration]
SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS.
I. THE MIND.
I. It is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we can think of nothing
which we have not perceived. When I say that we can think of nothing,
I mean, we can imagine nothing, we can reason of noticing, we can
remember nothing, we can foresee nothing. The most astonishing
combinations of poetry, the subtlest deductions of logic and
mathematics, are no other than combinations which the intellect makes
of sensations according to its own laws. A catalogue of all the
thoughts of the mind, and of all their possible modifications, is a
cyclopædic history of the universe.
But, it will be objected, the inhabitants of the various planets of
this and other solar systems; and the existence of a Power bearing the
same relation to all that we perceive and are, as what we call a cause
does to what we call effect, were never subjects of sensation, and yet
the laws of mind almost universally suggest, according to the various
disposition of each, a conjecture, a persuasion, or a conviction of
their existence. The reply is simple; these thoughts are also to
be included in the catalogue of existence; they are modes in which
thoughts are combined; the objection only adds force to the conclusion,
that beyond the limits of perception and thought nothing can exist.
Thoughts, or ideas, or notions, call them what you will, differ from
each other, not in kind, but in force. It has commonly been supposed
that those distinct thoughts which affect a number of persons,
at regular intervals, during the passage of a multitude of other
thoughts, which are called _real_, or _external objects_, are totally
different in kind from those which affect only a few persons, and
which recur at irregular intervals, and are usually more obscure and
indistinct, such as hallucinations, dreams, and the ideas of madness.
No essential distinction between any one of these ideas, or any class
of them, is founded on a correct observation of the nature of things,
but merely on a consideration of what thoughts are most invariably
subservient to the security and happiness of life; and if nothing
more were expressed by the distinction, the philosopher might safely
accommodate his language to that of the vulgar. But they pretend to
assert an essential difference, which has no foundation in truth, and
which suggests a narrow and false conception of universal nature, the
parent of the most fatal errors in speculation. A specific difference
between every thought of the mind is, indeed, a necessary consequence
of that law by which it perceives diversity and number; but a generic
and essential difference is wholly arbitrary. The principle of the
agreement and similarity of all thoughts, is, that they are all
thoughts; the principle of their disagreement consists in the variety
and irregularity of the occasions on which they arise in the mind. That
in which they agree, to that in which they differ, is as everything to
nothing. Important distinctions, of various degrees of force, indeed,
are to be established between them, if they were, as they may be,
subjects of ethical and œconomical discussion; but that is a question
altogether distinct.
By considering all knowledge as bounded by perception, whose operations
may be indefinitely combined, we arrive at a conception of Nature
inexpressibly more magnificent, simple and true, than accords with the
ordinary systems of complicated and partial consideration. Nor does a
contemplation of the universe, in this comprehensive and synthetical
view, exclude the subtlest analysis of its modifications and parts.
* * * * *
A scale might be formed, graduated according to the decrees of
a combined ratio of intensity, duration, connexion, periods of
recurrence, and utility, which would be the standard, according to
which all ideas might be measured, and an uninterrupted chain of nicely
shadowed distinctions would be observed, from the faintest impression
on the senses, to the most distinct combination of those impressions;
from the simplest of those combinations, to that mass of knowledge
which, including our own nature, constitutes what we call the universe.
* * * * *
We are intuitively conscious of our own existence, and of that
connexion in the train of our successive ideas, which we term our
identity. We are conscious also of the existence of other minds; but
not intuitively. Our evidence, with respect to the existence of other
minds, is founded upon a very complicated relation of ideas, which it
is foreign to the purpose of this treatise to anatomise. The basis
of this relation is, undoubtedly, a periodical recurrence of masses
of ideas, which our voluntary determinations have, in one peculiar
direction, no power to circumscribe or to arrest, and against the
recurrence of which they can only imperfectly provide. The irresistible
laws of thought constrain us to believe that the precise limits of our
actual ideas are not the actual limits of possible ideas; the law,
according to which these deductions are drawn, is called analogy; and
this is the foundation of all our inferences, from one idea to another,
inasmuch as they resemble each other.
We see trees, houses, fields, living beings in our own shape, and
in shapes more or less analogous to our own. These are perpetually
changing the mode of their existence relatively to us. To express the
varieties of these modes, we say, _we move_, _they move_; and as this
motion is continual, though not uniform, we express our conception of
the diversities of its course by--_it has been_, _it is_, _it shall
be_. These diversities are events or objects, and are essential,
considered relatively to human identity, for the existence of the human
mind. For if the inequalities, produced by what has been termed the
operations of the external universe, were levelled by the perception
of our being, uniting, and filling up their interstices, motion and
mensuration, and time, and space; the elements of the human mind being
thus abstracted, sensation and imagination cease. Mind cannot be
considered pure.
I.--WHAT METAPHYSICS ARE. ERRORS IN THE USUAL METHODS OF CONSIDERING
THEM.
We do not attend sufficiently to what passes within ourselves. We
combine words, combined a thousand times before. In our minds we assume
entire opinions; and in the expression of those opinions, entire
phrases, when we would philosophise. Our whole style of expression and
sentiment is infected with the tritest plagiarisms. Our words are dead,
our thoughts are cold and borrowed.
Let us contemplate facts; let us, in the great study of ourselves,
resolutely compel the mind to a rigid consideration of itself. We
are not content with conjecture, and inductions, and syllogisms, in
sciences regarding external objects. As in these, let us also, in
considering the phenomena of mind, severely collect those facts which
cannot be disputed. Metaphysics will thus possess this conspicuous
advantage over every other science, that each student, by attentively
referring to his own mind, may ascertain the authorities, upon which
any assertions regarding it are supported. There can thus be no
deception, we ourselves being the depositaries of the evidence of the
subject which we consider.
Metaphysics may be defined as an inquiry concerning those things
belonging to, or connected with, the internal nature of man.
It is said that mind produces motion; and it might as well have been
said, that motion produces mind.
II.--DIFFICULTY OF ANALYSING THE HUMAN MIND.
If it were possible that a person should give a faithful history of
his being, from the earliest epochs of his recollection, a picture
would be presented such as the world has never contemplated before. A
mirror would be held up to all men in which they might behold their
own recollections, and, in dim perspective, their shadowy hopes and
fears,--all that they dare not, or that daring and desiring, they could
not expose to the open eyes of day. But thought can with difficulty
visit the intricate and winding chambers which it inhabits. It is like
a river whose rapid and perpetual stream flows outwards;--like one in
dread who speeds through the recesses of some haunted pile, and dares
not look behind. The caverns of the mind are obscure, and shadowy; or
pervaded with a lustre, beautifully bright indeed, but shining not
beyond their portals. If it were possible to be where we have been,
vitally and indeed--if, at the moment of our presence there, we could
define the results of our experience,--if the passage from sensation
to reflection--from a state of passive perception to voluntary
contemplation, were not so dizzying and so tumultuous, this attempt
would be less difficult.
III.--HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON.
Most of the errors of philosophers have arisen from considering the
human being in a point of view too detailed and circumscribed. He is
not a moral, and an intellectual,--but also, and pre-eminently, an
imaginative being. His own mind is his law; his own mind is all things
to him. If we would arrive at any knowledge which should be serviceable
from the practical conclusions to which it leads, we ought to consider
the mind of man and the universe as the great whole on which to
exercise our speculations. Here, above all, verbal disputes ought to be
laid aside, though this has long been their chosen field of battle. It
imports little to inquire whether thought be distinct from the objects
of thought. The use of the words _external_ and _internal_, as applied
to the establishment of this distinction, has been the symbol and the
source of much dispute. This is merely an affair of words, and as the
dispute deserves, to say, that when speaking of the objects of thought,
we indeed only describe one of the forms of thought--or that, speaking
of thought, we only apprehend one of the operations of the universal
system of beings.
IV.--CATALOGUE OF THE PHENOMENA OF DREAMS, AS CONNECTING SLEEPING AND
WAKING.
I. Let us reflect on our infancy, and give as faithfully as possible a
relation of the events of sleep.
And first I am bound to present a faithful picture of my own peculiar
nature relatively to sleep. I do not doubt that were every individual
to imitate me, it would be found that among many circumstances peculiar
to their individual nature, a sufficiently general resemblance would
be found to prove the connexion existing between those peculiarities
and the most universal phenomena. I shall employ caution, indeed,
as to the facts which I state, that they contain nothing false or
exaggerated. But they contain no more than certain elucidations
of my own nature; concerning the degree in which it resembles, or
differs from, that of others, I am by no means accurately aware. It
is sufficient, however, to caution the reader against drawing general
inferences from particular instances.
I omit the general instances of delusion in fever or delirium, as well
as mere dreams considered in themselves. A delineation of this subject,
however inexhaustible and interesting, is to be passed over.
What is the connexion of sleeping and of waking?
II. I distinctly remember dreaming three several times,
between intervals of two or more years, the same precise
dream. It was not so much what is ordinarily called a
dream; the single image, unconnected with all other images,
of a youth who was educated at the same school with myself,
presented itself in sleep. Even now, after the lapse of
many years, I can never hear the name of this youth,
without the three places where I dreamed of him presenting
themselves distinctly to my mind.
III. In dreams, images acquire associations peculiar to
dreaming; so that the idea of a particular house, when it
recurs a second time in dreams, will have relation with
the idea of the same house, in the first time, of a nature
entirely different from that which the house excites, when
seen or thought of in relation to waking ideas.
IV. I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and
unaccountable connexion of which with the obscure parts
of my own nature, I have been irresistibly impressed. I
have beheld a scene which has produced no unusual effect
on my thoughts. After the lapse of many years I have
dreamed of this scene. It has hung on my memory, it has
haunted my thoughts, at intervals, with the pertinacity of
an object connected with human affections. I have visited
this scene again. Neither the dream could be dissociated
from the landscape, nor the landscape from the dream, nor
feelings, such as neither singly could have awakened, from
both. But the most remarkable event of this nature, which
ever occurred to me, happened five years ago at Oxford. I
was walking with a friend, in the neighbourhood of that
city, engaged in earnest and interesting conversation.
We suddenly turned the corner of a lane, and the view,
which its high banks and hedges had concealed, presented
itself. The view consisted of a windmill, standing in one
among many plashy meadows, inclosed with stone walls; the
irregular and broken ground, between the wall and the road
on which we stood; a long low hill behind the windmill, and
a grey covering of uniform cloud spread over the evening
sky. It was that season when the last leaf had just fallen
from the scant and stunted ash. The scene surely was a
common scene; the season and the hour little calculated
to kindle lawless thought; it was a tame uninteresting
assemblage of objects, such as would drive the imagination
for refuge in serious and sober talk, to the evening
fireside, and the dessert of winter fruits and wine. The
effect which it produced on me was not such as could have
been expected. I suddenly remembered to have seen that
exact scene in some dream of long[11]----
[11] _Here I was obliged to leave off, overcome by thrilling
horror._--This remark closes this fragment, which was written in
1815. I remember well his coming to me from writing it, pale and
agitated, to seek refuge in conversation from the fearful emotions it
excited.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]
[Decoration]
FRAGMENTS.
SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.
I.--PLAN OF A TREATISE ON MORALS.
That great science which regards nature and the operations of the
human mind, is popularly divided into Morals and Metaphysics. The
latter relates to a just classification, and the assignment of distinct
names to its ideas; the former regards simply the determination of
that arrangement of them which produces the greatest and most solid
happiness. It is admitted that a virtuous or moral action is that
action which, when considered in all its accessories and consequences,
is fitted to produce the highest pleasure to the greatest number of
sensitive beings. The laws according to which all pleasure, since it
cannot be equally felt by all sensitive beings, ought to be distributed
by a voluntary agent, are reserved for a separate chapter.
The design of this little treatise is restricted to the development of
the elementary principles of morals. As far as regards that purpose,
metaphysical science will be treated merely so far as a source of
negative truth; whilst morality will be considered as a science,
respecting which we can arrive at positive conclusions.
The misguided imaginations of men have rendered the ascertaining of
what _is not true_, the principal direct service which metaphysical
science can bestow upon moral science. Moral science itself is the
doctrine of the voluntary actions of man, as a sentient and social
being. These actions depend on the thoughts in his mind. But there
is a mass of popular opinion, from which the most enlightened
persons are seldom wholly free, into the truth or falsehood of
which it is incumbent on us to inquire, before we can arrive at any
firm conclusions as to the conduct which we ought to pursue in the
regulation of our own minds, or towards our fellow-beings; or before we
can ascertain the elementary laws, according to which these thoughts,
from which these actions flow, are originally combined.
* * * * *
The object of the forms according to which human society is
administered, is the happiness of the individuals composing the
communities which they regard, and these forms are perfect or imperfect
in proportion to the degree in which they promote this end.
This object is not merely the quantity of happiness enjoyed by
individuals as sensitive beings, but the mode in which it should be
distributed among them as social beings. It is not enough, if such a
coincidence can be conceived as possible, that one person or class
of persons should enjoy the highest happiness, whilst another is
suffering a disproportionate degree of misery. It is necessary that
the happiness produced by the common efforts, and preserved by the
common care, should be distributed according to the just claims of
each individual; if not, although the quantity produced should be
the same, the end of society would remain unfulfilled. The object is
in a compound proportion to the quantity of happiness produced, and
the correspondence of the mode in which it is distributed, to the
elementary feelings of man as a social being.
The disposition in an individual to promote this object is called
virtue; and the two constituent parts of virtue, benevolence and
justice, are correlative with these two great portions of the only true
object of all voluntary actions of a human being. Benevolence is the
desire to be the author of good, and justice the apprehension of the
manner in which good ought to be done.
Justice and benevolence result from the elementary laws of the human
mind.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE NATURE OF VIRTUE.
SECT. I. General View of the Nature and Objects of
Virtue.--2. The Origin and Basis of Virtue, as founded
on the Elementary Principles of Mind.--3. The Laws which
flow from the nature of Mind regulating the application of
those principles to human actions.--4. Virtue, a possible
attribute of man.
We exist in the midst of a multitude of beings like ourselves, upon
whose happiness most of our actions exert some obvious and decisive
influence.
The regulation of this influence is the object of moral science.
We know that we are susceptible of receiving painful or pleasurable
impressions of greater or less intensity and duration. That is called
good which produces pleasure; that is called evil which produces pain.
These are general names, applicable to every class of causes, from
which an over-balance of pain or pleasure may result. But when a human
being is the active instrument of generating or diffusing happiness,
the principle through which it is most effectually instrumental to that
purpose, is called virtue. And benevolence, or the desire to be the
author of good, united with justice, or an apprehension of the manner
in which that good is to be done, constitutes virtue.
But, wherefore should a man be benevolent and just? The immediate
emotions of his nature, especially in its most inartificial state,
prompt him to inflict pain, and to arrogate dominion. He desires to
heap superfluities to his own store, although others perish with
famine. He is propelled to guard against the smallest invasion of
his own liberty, though he reduces others to a condition of the most
pitiless servitude. He is revengeful, proud, and selfish. Wherefore
should he curb these propensities?
It is inquired for what reason a human being should engage in procuring
the happiness, or refrain from producing the pain of another? When a
reason is required to prove the necessity of adopting any system of
conduct, what is it that the objector demands? He requires proof of
that system of conduct being such as will most effectually promote the
happiness of mankind. To demonstrate this, is to render a moral reason.
Such is the object of Virtue.
A common sophism, which, like many others, depends on the abuse of a
metaphorical expression to a literal purpose, has produced much of the
confusion which has involved the theory of morals. It is said that no
person is bound to be just or kind, if, on his neglect, he should fail
to incur some penalty. Duty is obligation. There can be no obligation
without an obliger. Virtue is a law, to which it is the will of the
lawgiver that we should conform; which will we should in no manner
be bound to obey, unless some dreadful punishment were attached to
disobedience. This is the philosophy of slavery and superstition.
In fact, no person can be _bound_ or _obliged_, without some power
preceding to bind and oblige. If I observe a man bound hand and
foot, I know that some one bound him. But if I observe him returning
self-satisfied from the performance of some action, by which he has
been the willing author of extensive benefit, I do not infer that the
anticipation of hellish agonies, or the hope of heavenly reward, has
constrained him to such an act.[12]
* * * * *
It remains to be stated in what manner the sensations which constitute
the basis of virtue originate in the human mind; what are the laws
which it receives there; how far the principles of mind allow it to be
an attribute of a human being; and, lastly, what is the probability of
persuading mankind to adopt it as a universal and systematic motive of
conduct.
BENEVOLENCE.
There is a class of emotions which we instinctively avoid. A human
being, such as is man considered in his origin, a child a month old,
has a very imperfect consciousness of the existence of other natures
resembling itself. All the energies of its being are directed to the
extinction of the pains with which it is perpetually assailed. At
length it discovers that it is surrounded by natures susceptible of
sensations similar to its own. It is very late before children attain
to this knowledge. If a child observes, without emotion, its nurse or
its mother suffering acute pain, it is attributable rather to ignorance
than insensibility. So soon as the accents and gestures, significant of
pain, are referred to the feelings which they express, they awaken in
the mind of the beholder a desire that they should cease. Pain is thus
apprehended to be evil for its own sake, without any other necessary
reference to the mind by which its existence is perceived, than such
as is indispensable to its perception. The tendencies of our original
sensations, indeed, all have for their object the preservation of our
individual being. But these are passive and unconscious. In proportion
as the mind acquires an active power, the empire of these tendencies
becomes limited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a solitary beast,
is selfish, because its mind is incapable of receiving an accurate
intimation of the nature of pain as existing in beings resembling
itself. The inhabitant of a highly civilised community will more
acutely sympathise with the sufferings and enjoyments of others, than
the inhabitant of a society of a less degree of civilisation. He who
shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity with the
highest specimens of poetry and philosophy, will usually sympathise
more than one engaged in the less refined functions of manual labour.
Every one has experience of the fact, that to sympathise with the
sufferings of another, is to enjoy a transitory oblivion of his own.
The mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as it were, of perceiving
and abhorring evil, however remote from the immediate sphere of
sensations with which that individual mind is conversant. Imagination
or mind employed in prophetically imaging forth its objects, is that
faculty of human nature on which every gradation of its progress, nay,
every, the minutest, change, depends. Pain or pleasure, if subtly
analysed, will be found to consist entirely in prospect. The only
distinction between the selfish man and the virtuous man is, that the
imagination of the former is confined within a narrow limit, whilst
that of the latter embraces a comprehensive circumference. In this
sense, wisdom and virtue may be said to be inseparable, and criteria
of each other. Selfishness is the offspring of ignorance and mistake;
it is the portion of unreflecting infancy, and savage solitude, or of
those whom toil or evil occupations have blunted or rendered torpid;
disinterested benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination,
and has an intimate connexion with all the arts which add ornament, or
dignity, or power, or stability to the social state of man. Virtue
is thus entirely a refinement of civilised life; a creation of the
human mind; or, rather, a combination which it has made, according to
elementary rules contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by
the relations established between man and man.
All the theories which have refined and exalted humanity, or those
which have been devised as alleviations of its mistakes and evils, have
been based upon the elementary emotions of disinterestedness, which
we feel to constitute the majesty of our nature. Patriotism, as it
existed in the ancient republics, was never, as has been supposed, a
calculation of personal advantages. When Mutius Scævola thrust his hand
into the burning coals, and Regulus returned to Carthage, and Epicharis
sustained the rack silently, in the torments of which she knew that
she would speedily perish, rather than betray the conspirators to the
tyrant;[13] these illustrious persons certainly made a small estimate
of their private interest. If it be said that they sought posthumous
fame; instances are not wanting in history which prove that men have
even defied infamy for the sake of good. But there is a great error
in the world with respect to the selfishness of fame. It is certainly
possible that a person should seek distinction as a medium of personal
gratification. But the love of fame is frequently no more than a
desire that the feelings of others should confirm, illustrate, and
sympathise with, our own. In this respect it is allied with all that
draws us out of ourselves. It is the “last infirmity of noble minds.”
Chivalry was likewise founded on the theory of self-sacrifice. Love
possesses so extraordinary a power over the human heart, only because
disinterestedness is united with the natural propensities. These
propensities themselves are comparatively impotent in cases where the
imagination of pleasure to be given, as well as to be received, does
not enter into the account. Let it not be objected that patriotism, and
chivalry, and sentimental love, have been the fountains of enormous
mischief. They are cited only to establish the proposition that,
according to the elementary principles of mind, man is capable of
desiring and pursuing good for its own sake.
JUSTICE.
The benevolent propensities are thus inherent in the human mind. We are
impelled to seek the happiness of others. We experience a satisfaction
in being the authors of that happiness. Everything that lives is open
to impressions of pleasure and pain. We are led by our benevolent
propensities to regard every human being indifferently with whom we
come in contact. They have preference only with respect to those
who offer themselves most obviously to our notice. Human beings are
indiscriminating and blind; they will avoid inflicting pain, though
that pain should be attended with eventual benefit; they will seek to
confer pleasure without calculating the mischief that may result. They
benefit one at the expense of many.
There is a sentiment in the human mind that regulates benevolence in
its application as a principle of action. This is the sense of justice.
Justice, as well as benevolence, is an elementary law of human nature.
It is through this principle that men are impelled to distribute any
means of pleasure which benevolence may suggest the communication of
to others, in equal portions among an equal number of applications. If
ten men are shipwrecked on a desert island, they distribute whatever
subsistence may remain to them into equal portions among themselves.
If six of them conspire to deprive the remaining four of their share,
their conduct is termed unjust.
The existence of pain has been shown to be a circumstance which the
human mind regards with dissatisfaction, and of which it desires the
cessation. It is equally according to its nature to desire that the
advantages to be enjoyed by a limited number of persons should be
enjoyed equally by all. This proposition is supported by the evidence
of indisputable facts. Tell some ungarbled tale of a number of persons
being made the victims of the enjoyments of one, and he who would
appeal in favour of any system which might produce such an evil to
the primary emotions of our nature, would have nothing to reply. Let
two persons, equally strangers, make application for some benefit in
the possession of a third to bestow, and to which he feels that they
have an equal claim. They are both sensitive beings; pleasure and pain
affect them alike.
CHAPTER II.
It is foreign to the general scope of this little treatise to encumber
a simple argument by controverting any of the trite objections of habit
or fanaticism. But there are two; the first, the basis of all political
mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect of religious
error, which it seems useful to refute.
First, it is inquired, “Wherefore should a man be benevolent and just?”
The answer has been given in the preceding chapter.
If a man persists to inquire why he ought to promote the happiness
of mankind, he demands a mathematical or metaphysical reason for a
moral action. The absurdity of this scepticism is more apparent, but
not less real, than the exacting a moral reason for a mathematical
or metaphysical fact. If any person should refuse to admit that all
the radii of a circle are of equal length, or that human actions are
necessarily determined by motives, until it could be proved that these
radii and these actions uniformly tended to the production of the
greatest general good, who would not wonder at the unreasonable and
capricious association of his ideas?
* * * * *
The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I imagine, at this
advanced era of human intellect, be held excused from entering into a
controversy with those reasoners, if such there are, who would claim an
exemption from its decrees in favour of any one among those diversified
systems of obscure opinion respecting morals, which, under the name of
religions, have in various ages and countries prevailed among mankind.
Besides that if, as these reasoners have pretended, eternal torture
or happiness will ensue as the consequence of certain actions, we
should be no nearer the possession of a standard to determine what
actions were right and wrong, even if this pretended revelation, which
is by no means the case, had furnished us with a complete catalogue
of them. The character of actions as virtuous or vicious would by no
means be determined alone by the personal advantage or disadvantage
of each moral agent individually considered. Indeed, an action is
often virtuous in proportion to the greatness of the personal calamity
which the author willingly draws upon himself by daring to perform
it. It is because an action produces an overbalance of pleasure or
pain to the greatest number of sentient beings, and not merely because
its consequences are beneficial or injurious to the author of that
action, that it is good or evil. Nay, this latter consideration has a
tendency to pollute the purity of virtue, inasmuch as it consists in
the motive rather than in the consequences of an action. A person who
should labour for the happiness of mankind lest he should be tormented
eternally in Hell, would with reference to that motive possess as
little claim to the epithet of virtuous, as he who should torture,
imprison, and burn them alive, a more usual and natural consequence of
such principles, for the sake of the enjoyments of Heaven.
My neighbour, presuming on his strength, may direct me to perform or
to refrain from a particular action; indicating a certain arbitrary
penalty in the event of disobedience within his power to inflict. My
action, if modified by his menaces, can in no degree participate in
virtue. He has afforded me no criterion as to what is right or wrong.
A king, or an assembly of men, may publish a proclamation affixing any
penalty to any particular action, but that is not immoral because such
penalty is affixed. Nothing is more evident than that the epithet of
virtue is inapplicable to the refraining from that action on account
of the evil arbitrarily attached to it. If the action is in itself
beneficial, virtue would rather consist in not refraining from it, but
in firmly defying the personal consequences attached to its performance.
Some usurper of supernatural energy might subdue the whole globe to his
power; he might possess new and unheard-of resources for induing his
punishments with the most terrible attributes of pain. The torments
of his victims might be intense in their degree, and protracted to
an infinite duration. Still the “will of the lawgiver” would afford
no surer criterion as to what actions were right or wrong. It would
only increase the possible virtue of those who refuse to become the
instruments of his tyranny.
II.--MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE DIFFERENCE, NOT THE
RESEMBLANCE, OF PERSONS.
The internal influence, derived from the constitution of the mind from
which they flow, produces that peculiar modification of actions, which
makes them intrinsically good or evil.
To attain an apprehension of the importance of this distinction, let
us visit, in imagination, the proceedings of some metropolis. Consider
the multitude of human beings who inhabit it, and survey, in thought,
the actions of the several classes into which they are divided. Their
obvious actions are apparently uniform: the stability of human society
seems to be maintained sufficiently by the uniformity of the conduct of
its members, both with regard to themselves and with regard to others.
The labourer arises at a certain hour, and applies himself to the task
enjoined him. The functionaries of government and law are regularly
employed in their offices and courts. The trader holds a train of
conduct from which he never deviates. The ministers of religion employ
an accustomed language, and maintain a decent and equable regard. The
army is drawn forth, the motions of every soldier are such as they were
expected to be; the general commands, and his words are echoed from
troop to troop. The domestic actions of men are, for the most part,
undistinguishable one from the other, at a superficial glance. The
actions which are classed under the general appellation of marriage,
education, friendship, &c., are perpetually going on, and to a
superficial glance, are similar one to the other.
But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped of this
fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one action has, when
considered in its whole extent, any essential resemblance with any
other. Each individual, who composes the vast multitude which we have
been contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind, which, whilst the
features of the great mass of his actions remain uniform, impresses the
minuter lineaments with its peculiar hues. Thus, whilst his life, as a
whole, is like the lives of other men, in detail it is most unlike; and
the more subdivided the actions become, that is, the more they enter
into that class which have a vital influence on the happiness of others
and his own, so much the more are they distinct from those of other men.
“Those little nameless unremember’d acts
Of kindness and of love,”[14]
as well as those deadly outrages which are inflicted by a look, a
word--or less--the very refraining from some faint and most evanescent
expression of countenance; these flow from a profounder source than
the series of our habitual conduct, which, it has been already said,
derives its origin from without. These are the actions, and such as
these, which make human life what it is, and are the fountains of
all the good and evil with which its entire surface is so widely and
impartially overspread; and though they are called minute, they are
called so in compliance with the blindness of those who cannot estimate
their importance. It is in the due appreciating the general effects of
their peculiarities, and in cultivating the habit of acquiring decisive
knowledge respecting the tendencies arising out of them in particular
cases, that the most important part of moral science consists. The
deepest abyss of these vast and multitudinous caverns, it is necessary
that we should visit.
This is the difference between social and individual man. Not that this
distinction is to be considered definite, or characteristic of one
human being as compared with another; it denotes rather two classes
of agency, common in a degree to every human being. None is exempt,
indeed, from that species of influence which affects, as it were, the
surface of his being, and gives the specific outline to his conduct.
Almost all that is ostensible submits to that legislature created by
the general representation of the past feelings of mankind--imperfect
as it is from a variety of causes, as it exists in the government,
the religion, and domestic habits. Those who do not nominally, yet
actually, submit to the same power. The external features of their
conduct, indeed, can no more escape it, than the clouds can escape from
the stream of the wind; and his opinion, which he often hopes he has
dispassionately secured from all contagion of prejudice and vulgarity,
would be found, on examination, to be the inevitable excrescence of
the very usages from which he vehemently dissents. Internally all
is conducted otherwise; the efficiency, the essence, the vitality
of actions, derives its colour from what is no ways contributed to
from any external source. Like the plant, which while it derives the
accident of its size and shape from the soil in which it springs, and
is cankered, or distorted, or inflated, yet retains those qualities
which essentially divide it from all others; so that hemlock continues
to be poison, and the violet does not cease to emit its odour in
whatever soil it may grow.
We consider our own nature too superficially. We look on all that in
ourselves with which we can discover a resemblance in others; and
consider those resemblances as the materials of moral knowledge. It is
in the differences that it actually consists.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] A leaf of manuscript is wanting here, manifestly treating of
self-love and disinterestedness.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]
[13] Tacitus.
[14] Wordsworth, _Tintern Abbey_.--Ed.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
GHOST STORIES.
_Geneva, Sunday, 18th August 1816._
See Apollo’s Sexton,[15] who tells us many mysteries of his trade.
We talk of Ghosts. Neither Lord Byron nor M. G. L. seem to believe
in them; and they both agree, in the very face of reason, that none
could believe in ghosts without believing in God. I do not think that
all the persons who profess to discredit these visitations, really
discredit them; or, if they do in the daylight, are not admonished by
the approach of loneliness and midnight, to think more respectfully of
the world of shadows.
Lewis recited a poem, which he had composed at the request of the
Princess of Wales. The Princess of Wales, he premised, was not only a
believer in ghosts, but in magic and witchcraft, and asserted, that
prophecies made in her youth had been accomplished since. The tale was
of a lady in Germany.
This lady, Minna, had been exceedingly attached to her husband, and
they had made a vow that the one who died first, should return after
death to visit the other as a ghost. She was sitting one day alone
in her chamber, when she heard an unusual sound of footsteps on the
stairs. The door opened, and her husband’s spectre, gashed with a deep
wound across the forehead, and in military habiliments, entered. She
appeared startled at the apparition; and the ghost told her, that when
he should visit her in future, she would hear a passing bell toll, and
these words distinctly uttered close to her ear, “Minna, I am here.” On
inquiry, it was found that her husband had fallen in battle on the very
day she was visited by the vision. The intercourse between the ghost
and the woman continued for some time, until the latter laid aside all
terror, and indulged herself in the affection which she had felt for
him while living. One evening she went to a ball, and permitted her
thoughts to be alienated by the attentions of a Florentine gentleman,
more witty, more graceful, and more gentle, as it appeared to her,
than any person she had ever seen. As he was conducting her through
the dance, a death bell tolled. Minna, lost in the fascination of the
Florentine’s attentions, disregarded, or did not hear the sound. A
second peal, louder and more deep, startled the whole company, when
Minna heard the ghost’s accustomed whisper, and raising her eyes, saw
in an opposite mirror the reflection of the ghost, standing over her.
She is said to have died of terror.
Lewis told four other stories--all grim.
I.
A young man who had taken orders, had just been presented with a
living, on the death of the incumbent. It was in the Catholic part
of Germany. He arrived at the parsonage on a Saturday night; it
was summer, and waking about three o’clock in the morning, and it
being broad day, he saw a venerable-looking man, but with an aspect
exceedingly melancholy, sitting at a desk in the window, reading, and
two beautiful boys standing near him, whom he regarded with looks
of the profoundest grief. Presently he rose from his seat, the boys
followed him, and they were no more to be seen. The young man, much
troubled, arose, hesitating whether he should regard what he had seen
as a dream, or a waking phantasy. To divert his dejection, he walked
towards the church, which the sexton was already employed in preparing
for the morning service. The first sight that struck him was a
portrait, the exact resemblance of the man whom he had seen sitting in
his chamber. It was the custom in this district to place the portrait
of each minister, after his death, in the church.
He made the minutest inquiries respecting his predecessor, and learned
that he was universally beloved, as a man of unexampled integrity and
benevolence; but that he was the prey of a secret and perpetual sorrow.
His grief was supposed to have arisen from an attachment to a young
lady, with whom his situation did not permit him to unite himself.
Others, however, asserted, that a connexion did subsist between them,
and that even she occasionally brought to his house two beautiful boys,
the offspring of their connexion.--Nothing further occurred until the
cold weather came, and the new minister desired a fire to be lighted in
the stove of the room where he slept. A hideous stench arose from the
stove as soon as it was lighted, and, on examining it, the bones of two
male children were found within.
II.
Lord Lyttelton and a number of his friends were joined during the chase
by a stranger. He was excellently mounted, and displayed such courage,
or, rather so much desperate rashness, that no other person in the
hunt could follow him. The gentlemen, when the chase was concluded,
invited the stranger to dine with them. His conversation was something
of a wonderful kind. He astonished, he interested, he commanded the
attention of the most inert. As night came on, the company, being
weary, began to retire one by one, much later than the usual hour: the
most intellectual among them were retained latest by the stranger’s
fascination. As he perceived that they began to depart, he redoubled
his efforts to retain them. At last, when few remained, he entreated
them to stay with him; but all pleaded the fatigue of a hard day’s
chase, and all at last retired. They had been in bed about an hour,
when they were awakened by the most horrible screams, which issued
from the stranger’s room. Every one rushed towards it. The door was
locked. After a moment’s deliberation they burst it open, and found the
stranger stretched on the ground, writhing with agony, and weltering in
blood. On their entrance he arose, and collecting himself, apparently
with a strong effort, entreated them to leave him--not to disturb him,
that he would give every possible explanation in the morning. They
complied. In the morning, his chamber was found vacant, and he was seen
no more.
III.
Miles Andrews, a friend of Lord Lyttelton, was sitting one night alone
when Lord Lyttelton came in, and informed him that he was dead, and
that this was his ghost which he saw before him. Andrews pettishly told
him not to play any ridiculous tricks upon him, for he was not in a
temper to bear them. The ghost then departed. In the morning Andrews
asked his servant at what hour Lord Lyttelton had arrived. The servant
said he did not know that he had arrived, but that he would inquire.
On inquiry it was found that Lord Lyttelton had not arrived, nor had
the door been opened to any one during the whole night. Andrews sent to
Lord Lyttelton, and discovered, that he had died precisely at the hour
of the apparition.
IV.
A gentleman on a visit to a friend who lived on the skirts of an
extensive forest in the east of Germany, lost his way. He wandered
for some hours among the trees, when he saw a light at a distance. On
approaching it, he was surprised to observe, that it proceeded from the
interior of a ruined monastery. Before he knocked he thought it prudent
to look through the window. He saw a multitude of cats assembled round
a small grave, four of whom were letting down a coffin with a crown
upon it. The gentleman, startled at this unusual sight, and imagining
that he had arrived among the retreats of fiends or witches, mounted
his horse and rode away with the utmost precipitation. He arrived at
his friend’s house at a late hour, who had sat up for him. On his
arrival his friend questioned as to the cause of the traces of trouble
visible in his face. He began to recount his adventure, after much
difficulty, knowing that it was scarcely possible that his friends
should give faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned the
coffin with a crown upon it, than his friend’s cat, who seemed to have
been lying asleep before the fire, leaped up, saying--“Then I am the
King of the Cats!” and scrambled up the chimney, and was seen no more.
* * * * *
Thursday, 29th August.--We depart from Geneva, at nine in the morning.
The Swiss are very slow drivers; besides which we have Jura to
mount; we, therefore, go a very few posts to-day. The scenery is very
beautiful, and we see many magnificent views. We pass Les Rousses,
which, when we crossed in the spring, was deep in snow. We sleep at
Morrez.
* * * * *
Friday, 30th.--We leave Morrez, and arrive in the evening at Dole,
after a various day.
* * * * *
Saturday, 31st.--From Dole we go to Rouvray, where we sleep. We pass
through Dijon; and, after Dijon, take a different route than that which
we followed on the two other occasions. The scenery has some beauty
and singularity in the line of the mountains which surround the Val de
Suzon. Low, yet precipitous hills, covered with vines or woods, and
with streams, meadows, and poplars, at the bottom.
* * * * *
Sunday, September 1st.--Leave Rouvray, pass Auxerre, where we dine; a
pretty town, and arrive, at two o’clock, at Villeneuve le Guiard.
* * * * *
Monday, 2d.--From Villeneuve le Guiard, we arrive at Fontainebleau.
The scenery around this palace is wild and even savage. The soil is
full of rocks, apparently granite, which on every side break through
the ground. The hills are low, but precipitous and rough. The valleys,
equally wild, are shaded by forests. In the midst of this wilderness
stands the palace. Some of the apartments equal in magnificence
anything that I could conceive. The roofs are fretted with gold, and
the canopies of velvet. From Fontainebleau we proceed to Versailles, in
the route towards Rouen. We arrive at Versailles at nine.
* * * * *
Tuesday, 3d.--We saw the palace and gardens of Versailles and le Grand
et Petit Trianon. They surpass Fontainebleau. The gardens are full
of statues, vases, fountains, and colonnades. In all that essentially
belongs to a garden they are extraordinarily deficient. The orangery is
a stupid piece of expense. There was one orange-tree, not apparently
so old, sown in 1442. We saw only the gardens and the theatre at the
Petit Trianon. The gardens are in the English taste, and extremely
pretty. The Grand Trianon was open. It is a summer palace, light,
yet magnificent. We were unable to devote the time it deserved to
the gallery of paintings here. There was a portrait of Madame de la
Vallière, the repentant mistress of Louis XIV. She was melancholy, but
exceedingly beautiful, and was represented as holding a skull, and
sitting before a crucifix, pale, and with downcast eyes.
We then went to the great palace. The apartments are unfurnished,
but even with this disadvantage, are more magnificent than those of
Fontainebleau. They are lined with marble of various colours, whose
pedestals and capitals are gilt, and the ceiling is richly gilt with
compartments of painting. The arrangement of these materials has in
them, it is true, something effeminate and royal. Could a Grecian
architect have commanded all the labour and money which was expended
on Versailles, he would have produced a fabric which the whole world
has never equalled. We saw the Hall of Hercules, the balcony where the
King and the Queen exhibited themselves to the Parisian mob. The people
who showed us through the palace, obstinately refused to say anything
about the Revolution. We could not even find out in which chamber the
rioters of the 10th August found the king. We saw the Salle d’Opera,
where are now preserved the portraits of the kings. There was the race
of the house of Orleans, with the exception of Egalité, all extremely
handsome. There was Madame de Maintenon, and beside her a beautiful
little girl, the daughter of La Vallière. The pictures had been hidden
during the Revolution. We saw the Library of Louis XVI. The librarian
had held some place in the ancient court near Marie Antoinette. He
returned with the Bourbons, and was waiting for some better situation.
He showed us a book which he had preserved during the Revolution.
It was a book of paintings, representing a Tournament at the Court
of Louis XIV.; and it seemed that the present desolation of France,
the fury of the injured people, and all the horrors to which they
abandoned themselves, stung by their long sufferings, flowed naturally
enough from expenditures so immense, as must have been demanded by the
magnificence of this tournament. The vacant rooms of this palace imaged
well the hollow show of monarchy. After seeing these things we departed
toward Havre, and slept at Auxerre.
* * * * *
Wednesday, 4th.--We passed through Rouen, and saw the cathedral,
an immense specimen of the most costly and magnificent gothic. The
interior of the church disappoints. We saw the burial-place of Richard
Cœur de Lion and his brother. The altar of the church is a fine piece
of marble. Sleep at Yvetot.
* * * * *
Thursday, 5th.--We arrive at Havre, and wait for the packet--wind
contrary.
FRAGMENT FROM JOURNAL.
_Thursday, March 26, 1818._
In a brief journal I kept at that time, I find a few pages
in Shelley’s handwriting, descriptive of the passage over
the mountains of Les Eschelles.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]
March 26, Thursday.--We travel towards the mountains, and begin to
enter the valleys of the Alps. The country becomes covered again with
verdure and cultivation, and white chateaux and scattered cottages
among woods of old oak and walnut trees. The vines are here peculiarly
picturesque; they are trellised upon immense stakes, and the trunks
of them are moss-covered and hoary with age. Unlike the French vines,
which creep lowly on the ground, they form rows of interlaced bowers,
which, when the leaves are green and the red grapes are hanging among
those hoary branches, will afford a delightful shadow to those who sit
upon the moss underneath. The vines are sometimes planted in the open
fields, and sometimes among lofty orchards of apple and pear-trees, the
twigs of which were just becoming purple with the bursting blossoms.
We dined at Les Eschelles, a village at the foot of the mountain of
the same name, the boundaries of France and Savoy. Before this we had
been stopped at Pont Bonvoisin, where the legal limits of the French
and Sardinian territories are placed. We here heard that a Milanese
had been sent back all the way to Lyons, because his passport was
unauthorised by the Sardinian Consul, a few days before, and that
we should be subjected to the same treatment. We, in respect to the
character of our nation I suppose, were suffered to pass. Our books,
however, were, after a long discussion, sent to Chambery, to be
submitted to the censor; a priest, who admits nothing of Rousseau,
Voltaire, &c., into the dominions of the King of Sardinia. All such
books are burned.
After dinner we ascended Les Eschelles, winding along a road, cut
through perpendicular rocks, of immense elevation, by Charles Emanuel,
Duke of Savoy, in 1582. The rocks, which cannot be less than a thousand
feet in perpendicular height, sometimes overhang the road on each
side, and almost shut out the sky. The scene is like that described
in the Prometheus of Æschylus. Vast rifts and caverns in the granite
precipices, wintry mountains with ice and snow above; the loud sounds
of unseen waters within the caverns, and walls of toppling rocks, only
to be scaled as he describes, by the winged chariot of the ocean nymphs.
Under the dominion of this tyranny, the inhabitants of the fertile
valleys, bounded by these mountains, are in a state of most frightful
poverty and disease. At the foot of this ascent, were cut into the
rocks at several places, stories of the misery of the inhabitants, to
move the compassion of the traveller. One old man, lame and blind,
crawled out of a hole in the rock, wet with the perpetual melting of
the snows of above, and dripping like a shower-bath.
The country, as we descended to Chambéry, continued as beautiful;
though marked with somewhat of a softer character than before; we
arrived a little after night-fall.
[15] Matthew Gregory Lewis--so named in _English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers_. When Lewis first saw Lord Byron, he asked him
earnestly,--“Why did you call me Apollo’s sexton?” The noble poet found
it difficult to reply to this categorical species of reproof. The above
stories have, some of them, appeared in print; but, as a ghost story
depends entirely on the mode in which it is told, I think the reader
will be pleased to read these, written by Shelley, fresh from their
relation by Lewis.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]
[Decoration]
LETTERS FROM ITALY.
[Decoration]
LETTERS FROM ITALY.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Milan, April, 1818._
My dear Peacock,
Behold us arrived at length at the end of our journey--that is, within
a few miles of it--because we design to spend the summer on the
shore of the Lake of Como. Our journey was somewhat painful from the
cold--and in no other manner interesting until we passed the Alps:
of course I except the Alps themselves; but no sooner had we arrived
at Italy, than the loveliness of the earth and the serenity of the
sky made the greatest difference in my sensations. I depend on these
things for life; for in the smoke of cities, and the tumult of human
kind, and the chilling fogs and rain of our own country, I can hardly
be said to live. With what delight did I hear the woman, who conducted
us to see the triumphal arch of Augustus at Susa, speak the clear and
complete language of Italy, though half unintelligible to me, after
that nasal and abbreviated cacophony of the French! A ruined arch of
magnificent proportions, in the Greek taste, standing in a kind of road
of green lawn, overgrown with violets and primroses, and in the midst
of stupendous mountains, and a _blonde_ woman, of light and graceful
manners, something in the style of Fuseli’s Eve, were the first things
we met in Italy.
This city is very agreeable. We went to the opera last night--which is
a most splendid exhibition. The opera itself was not a favourite, and
the singers very inferior to our own. But the ballet, or rather a kind
of melodrame or pantomimic drama, was the most splendid spectacle I
ever saw. We have no Miss Melanie here--in every other respect, Milan
is unquestionably superior. The manner in which language is translated
into gesture, the complete and full effect of the whole as illustrating
the history in question, the unaffected self-possession of each of the
actors, even to the children, made this choral drama more impressive
than I could have conceived possible. The story is _Othello_, and
strange to say, it left no disagreeable impression.
I write, but I am not in the humour to write, and you must expect
longer, if not more entertaining, letters soon--that is, in a week or
so--when I am a little recovered from my journey. Pray tell us all
the news with regard to our own offspring, whom we left at nurse in
England; as well as those of our friends. Mention Cobbett and politics
too--and Hunt--to whom Mary is now writing--and particularly your own
plans and yourself. You shall hear more of me and my plans soon. My
health is improved already--and my spirits something--and I have many
literary schemes, and one in particular--which I thirst to be settled
that I may begin. I have ordered Ollier to send you some sheets &c. for
revision.
Adieu.
--Always faithfully yours, P. B. S.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Milan, April 20, 1818._
My dear Peacock,
I had no conception that the distance between us, measured by time in
respect of letters, was so great. I have but just received yours dated
the 2d--and when you will receive mine written from this city somewhat
later than the same date, I cannot know. I am sorry to hear that you
have been obliged to remain at Marlow; a certain degree of society
being almost a necessity of life, particularly as we are not to see you
this summer in Italy. But this, I suppose, must be as it is. I often
revisit Marlow in thought. The curse of this life is, that whatever is
once known, can never be unknown. You inhabit a spot, which before you
inhabit it, is as indifferent to you as any other spot upon earth, and
when, persuaded by some necessity, you think to leave it, you leave
it not; it clings to you--and with memories of things, which, in your
experience of them, gave no such promise, revenges your desertion. Time
flows on, places are changed; friends who were with us, are no longer
with us; yet what has been seems yet to be, but barren and stripped of
life. See, I have sent you a study for Nightmare Abbey.
Since I last wrote to you we have been to Como, looking for a house.
This lake exceeds any thing I ever beheld in beauty, with the exception
of the arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and narrow, and has
the appearance of a mighty river winding among the mountains and the
forests. We sailed from the town of Como to a tract of country called
the Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part
of the lake. The mountains between Como and that village, or rather
cluster of villages, are covered on high with chesnut forests (the
eating chesnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist
in time of scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge of
the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. But usually the
immediate border of this shore is composed of laurel-trees, and bay,
and myrtle, and wild-fig trees, and olives, which grow in the crevices
of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens,
which are filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. Other
flowering shrubs, which I cannot name, grow there also. On high, the
towers of village churches are seen white among the dark forests.
Beyond, on the opposite shore, which faces the south, the mountains
descend less precipitously to the lake, and although they are much
higher, and some covered with perpetual snow, there intervenes between
them and the lake a range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts
opening to the other, such as I should fancy the _abysses_ of Ida or
Parnassus. Here are plantations of olive, and orange, and lemon-trees,
which are now so loaded with fruit, that there is more fruit than
leaves,--and vineyards. This shore of the lake is one continued
village, and the Milanese nobility have their villas here. The union
of culture and the untameable profusion and loveliness of nature is
here so close, that the line where they are divided can hardly be
discovered. But the finest scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana;
so called from a fountain which ebbs and flows every three hours,
described by the younger Pliny, which is in the court-yard. This house,
which was once a magnificent palace, and is now half in ruins, we
are endeavouring to procure. It is built upon terraces _raised from_
the bottom of the lake, together with its garden, at the foot of a
semi-circular precipice, overshadowed by profound forests of chesnut.
The scene from the colonnade is the most extraordinary, at once, and
the most lovely that eye ever beheld. On one side is the mountain, and
immediately over you are clusters of cypress-trees of an astonishing
height, which seem to pierce the sky. Above you, from among the
clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of immense size, broken by the
woody rocks into a thousand channels to the lake. On the other side
is seen the blue extent of the lake and the mountains, speckled with
sails and spires. The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large,
but ill furnished and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake,
and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the
epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. We stayed at Como two days,
and have now returned to Milan, waiting the issue of our negotiation
about a house. Como is only six leagues from Milan, and its mountains
are seen from the cathedral.
This cathedral is a most astonishing work of art. It is built of white
marble, and cut into pinnacles of immense height, and the utmost
delicacy of workmanship, and loaded with sculpture. The effect of it,
piercing the solid blue with those groups of dazzling spires, relieved
by the serene depth of this Italian heaven, or by moonlight when the
stars seem gathered among those clustered shapes, is beyond any thing
I had imagined architecture capable of producing. The interior, though
very sublime, is of a more earthly character, and with its stained
glass and massy granite columns overloaded with antique figures, and
the silver lamps, that burn forever under the canopy of black cloth
beside the brazen altar and the marble fretwork of the dome, give it
the aspect of some gorgeous sepulchre. There is one solitary spot among
those aisles, behind the altar, where the light of day is dim and
yellow under the storied window, which I have chosen to visit, and read
Dante there.
I have devoted this summer, and indeed the next year, to the
composition of a tragedy on the subject of Tasso’s madness, which I
find upon inspection is, if properly treated, admirably dramatic and
poetical. But, you will say, I have no dramatic talent; very true,
in a certain sense; but I have taken the resolution to see what kind
of a tragedy a person without dramatic talent could write. It shall
be better morality than _Fazio_, and better poetry than _Bertram_,
at least. You tell me nothing of _Rhododaphne_, a book from which, I
confess, I expected extraordinary success.
Who lives in my house at Marlow now, or what is to be done with it? I
am seriously persuaded that the situation was injurious to my health,
or I should be tempted to feel a very absurd interest in who is to
be its next possessor. The expense of our journey here has been very
considerable--but we are now living at the hotel here, in a kind of
pension, which is very reasonable in respect of price, and when we
get into a ménage of our own, we have every reason to expect that we
shall experience something of the boasted cheapness of Italy. The
finest bread, made of a sifted flour, the whitest and the best I ever
tasted, is only _one English penny_ a pound. All the necessaries of
life bear a proportional relation to this. But then the luxuries, tea,
&c., are very dear,--and the English, as usual, are cheated in a way
that is quite ridiculous, if they have not their wits about them. We
do not know a single human being, and the opera, until last night, has
been always the same. Lord Byron, we hear, has taken a house for three
years, at Venice; whether we shall see him or not, I do not know. The
number of English who pass through this town is very great. They ought
to be in their own country in the present crisis. Their conduct is
wholly inexcusable. The people here, though inoffensive enough, seem
both in body and soul a miserable race. The men are hardly men; they
look like a tribe of stupid and shrivelled slaves, and I do not think
that I have seen a gleam of intelligence in the countenance of man
since I passed the Alps. The women in enslaved countries are always
better than the men; but they have tight-laced figures, and figures
and mien which express (O how unlike the French!) a mixture of the
coquette and prude, which reminds me of the worst characteristics of
the English. Everything but humanity is in much greater perfection here
than in France. The cleanliness and comfort of the inns is something
quite English. The country is beautifully cultivated; and altogether,
if you can, as one ought always to do, find your happiness in yourself,
it is a most delightful and commodious place to live in.
Adieu.--Your affectionate friend,
P. B. S.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Milan, April 30th, 1818._
My dear Peacock,
I write, simply to tell you, to direct your next letters, Poste
Restante, Pisa. We have engaged a vetturino for that city, and leave
Milan to-morrow morning. Our journey will occupy six or seven days.
Pisa is not six miles from the Mediterranean, with which it
communicates by the river Arno. We shall pass by Piacenza, Parma,
Bologna, the Apennines, and Florence, and I will endeavour to tell you
something of these celebrated places in my next letter; but I cannot
promise much, for, though my health is much improved, my spirits are
unequal, and seem to desert me when I attempt to write.
Pisa, they say, is uninhabitable in the midst of summer--we shall
do, therefore, what other people do, retire to Florence, or to the
mountains. But I will write to you our plans from Pisa, when I shall
understand them better myself.
You may easily conjecture the motives which led us to forego the
divine solitude of Como. To me, whose chief pleasure in life is the
contemplation of nature, you may imagine how great is this loss.
Let us hear from you _once a fortnight_. Do not forget those who do not
forget you.
Adieu.--Ever most sincerely yours,
P. B. Shelley.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Livorno, June 5, 1818._
My dear Peacock,
We have not heard from you since the middle of April--that is, we
have received only _one_ letter from you since our departure from
England. It necessarily follows that some accident has intercepted
them. Address, in future, to the care of Mr. Gisborne, Livorno--and I
shall receive them, though sometimes somewhat circuitously, yet always
securely.
We left Milan on the first of May, and travelled across the Apennines
to Pisa. This part of the Apennine is far less beautiful than the
Alps; the mountains are wide and wild, and the whole scenery broad and
undetermined--the imagination cannot find a home in it. The plain of
the Milanese, and that of Parma, is exquisitely beautiful--it is like
one garden, or rather cultivated wilderness; because the corn and the
meadow-grass grow under high and thick trees, festooned to one another
by regular festoons of vines. On the seventh day we arrived at Pisa,
where we remained three or four days. A large disagreeable city, almost
without inhabitants. We then proceeded to this great trading town,
where we have remained a month, and which, in a few days, we leave for
the Bagni di Lucca, a kind of watering-place situated in the depth of
the Apennines; the scenery surrounding this village is very fine.
We have made some acquaintance with a very amiable and acccomplished
lady, Mrs. Gisborne, who is the sole attraction in this most
unattractive of cities. We had no idea of spending a month here, but
she has made it even agreeable. We shall see something of Italian
society at the Bagni di Lucca, where the most fashionable people resort.
When you send my parcel--which, by-the-bye, I should request you to
direct to Mr. Gisborne--I wish you could contrive to enclose the two
last parts of Clarke’s Travels, relating to Greece, and belonging to
Hookham. You know I subscribe there still--and I have determined to
take the _Examiner_ here. You would, therefore, oblige me, by sending
it weekly, after having read it yourself, to the same direction, and so
clipped, as to make as little weight as possible.
I write as if writing where perhaps my letter may never arrive.
With every good wish from all of us, Believe me most sincerely yours,
P. B. S.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE
(LEGHORN).
_Bagni di Lucca, July 10th, 1818._
You cannot know, as some friends in England do, to whom my silence is
still more inexcusable, that this silence is no proof of forgetfulness
or neglect.
I have, in truth, nothing to say, but that I shall be happy to see you
again, and renew our delightful walks, until the desire or the duty of
seeing new things hurries us away. We have spent a month here in our
accustomed solitude, with the exception of one night at the Casino; and
the choice society of all ages, which I took care to pack up in a large
trunk before we left England, have revisited us here. I am employed
just now, having little better to do, in translating into my fainting
and inefficient periods, the divine eloquence of Plato’s Symposium;
only as an exercise, or, perhaps, to give Mary some idea of the manners
and feelings of the Athenians--so different on many subjects from that
of any other community that ever existed.
We have almost finished Ariosto--who is entertaining and graceful,
and _sometimes_ a poet. Forgive me, worshippers of a more equal and
tolerant divinity in poetry, if Ariosto pleases me less than you.
Where is the gentle seriousness, the delicate sensibility, the calm
and sustained energy, without which true greatness cannot be? He is
so cruel, too, in his descriptions; his most prized virtues are vices
almost without disguise. He constantly vindicates and embellishes
revenge in its grossest form; the most deadly superstition that ever
infested the world. How different from the tender and solemn enthusiasm
of Petrarch--or even the delicate moral sensibility of Tasso, though
somewhat obscured by an assumed and artificial style.
We read a good deal here--and we read little in Livorno. We have
ridden, Mary and I, once only, to a place called Prato Fiorito, on
the top of the mountains: the road, winding through forests, and
over torrents, and on the verge of green ravines, affords scenery
magnificently fine. I cannot describe it to you, but bid you, though
vainly, come and see. I take great delight in watching the changes of
the atmosphere here, and the growth of the thunder showers with which
the noon is often overshadowed, and which break and fade away towards
evening into flocks of delicate clouds. Our fire-flies are fading away
fast; but there is the planet Jupiter, who rises majestically over the
rift in the forest-covered mountains to the south, and the pale summer
lightning which is spread out every night, at intervals, over the
sky. No doubt Providence has contrived these things, that, when the
fire-flies go out, the low-flying owl may see her way home.
Remember me kindly to the Machinista.
With the sentiment of impatience until we see you again in the autumn,
I am, yours most sincerely,
P. B. Shelley.
TO WILLIAM GODWIN.
_Bagni di Lucca, July 25th, 1818._
My dear Godwin,
We have, as yet, seen nothing of Italy which marks it to us as the
habitation of departed greatness. The serene sky, the magnificent
scenery, the delightful productions of the climate, are known to us,
indeed, as the same with those which the ancients enjoyed. But Rome and
Naples--even Florence, are yet to see; and if we were to write you at
present a history of our impressions, it would give you no idea that we
lived in Italy.
I am exceedingly delighted with the plan you propose of a book,
illustrating the character of our calumniated republicans. It is
precisely the subject for Mary, and I imagine, that, but for the
fear of being excited to refer to books not within her reach, she
would attempt to begin it here, and order the works you notice. I am
unfortunately little skilled in English history, and the interest which
it excites in me is so feeble, that I find it a duty to attain merely
to that general knowledge of it which is indispensable.
Mary has just finished Ariosto with me, and, indeed, has attained a
very competent knowledge of Italian. She is now reading Livy. I have
been constantly occupied in literature, but have written little--except
some translations from Plato, in which I exercised myself, in the
despair of producing anything original. The Symposium of Plato seems
to me one of the most valuable pieces of all antiquity, whether we
consider the intrinsic merit of the composition, or the light which it
throws on the inmost state of manners and opinions among the ancient
Greeks. I have occupied myself in translating this, and it has excited
me to attempt an Essay upon the cause of some differences in sentiment
between the Ancients and Moderns, with respect to the subject of the
dialogue.
Two things give us pleasure in your last letters,--the resumption of
Malthus, and the favourable turn of the general election. If Ministers
do not find some means, totally inconceivable to me, of plunging the
nation in war, do you imagine that they can subsist? Peace is all that
a country, in the present state of England, seems to require, to afford
it tranquillity and leisure for attempting some remedy not to the
universal evils of all constituted society, but to the peculiar system
of misrule under which those evils have been exasperated now. I wish
that I had health or spirits that would enable me to enter into public
affairs, or that I could find words to express all that I feel and know.
The modern Italians seem a miserable people, without sensibility,
or imagination, or understanding. Their outside is polished, and an
intercourse with them seems to proceed with much facility, though it
ends in nothing, and produces nothing. The women are particularly
empty, and though possessed of the same kind of superficial grace,
are devoid of every cultivation and refinement. They have a ball at
the Casino here every Sunday, which we attend--but neither Mary nor
C---- dance. I do not know whether they refrain from philosophy or
protestantism.
I hear that poor Mary’s book is attacked most violently in the
Quarterly Review. We have heard some praise of it, and among others, an
article of Walter Scott’s in Blackwood’s Magazine.
If you should have anything to send us--and, I assure you, anything
relating to England is interesting to us--commit it to the care of
Ollier the bookseller, or P***--they send me a parcel every quarter.
My health is, I think, better, and, I imagine, continues to improve;
but I still have busy thoughts and dispiriting cares, which I would
shake off--and it is now summer.----A thousand good wishes to yourself
and your undertakings.
Ever most affectionately yours,
P. B. S.
TO MRS. SHELLEY
(BAGNI DI LUCCA).
_Florence, Thursday, 11 o’clock._ (_20th August, 1818._)
Dearest Mary,
We have been delayed in this city four hours, for the Austrian
minister’s passport, but are now on the point of setting out with a
vetturino, who engages to take us on the third day to Padua; that is,
we shall only sleep three nights on the road. * * * * * Yesterday’s
journey, performed in a one-horse cabriolet, almost without springs,
over a rough road, was excessively fatiguing. *** suffered most from
it; for, as to myself, there are occasions in which fatigue seems a
useful medicine, as I have felt no pain in my side--a most delightful
respite--since I left you. The country was various and exceedingly
beautiful. Sometimes there were those low cultivated lands, with their
vine festoons, and large bunches of grapes just becoming purple--at
others we passed between high mountains, crowned with some of the
most majestic Gothic ruins I ever saw, which frowned from the bare
precipices, or were half seen among the olive copses. As we approached
Florence, the country became cultivated to a very high degree, the
plain was filled with the most beautiful villas, and, as far as the eye
could reach, the mountains were covered with them; for the plains are
bounded on all sides by blue and misty mountains. The vines are here
trailed on low trellises of reeds interwoven into crosses to support
them, and the grapes, now almost ripe, are exceedingly abundant. You
everywhere meet those teams of beautiful white oxen, which are now
labouring the little vine-divided fields with their Virgilian ploughs
and carts. Florence itself, that is the Lung’ Arno (for I have seen
no more), I think is the most beautiful city I have yet seen. It is
surrounded with cultivated hills, and from the bridge which crosses the
broad channel of the Arno, the view is the most animated and elegant
I ever saw. You see three or four bridges, one apparently supported
by Corinthian pillars, and the white sails of the boats, relieved by
the deep green of the forest, which comes to the water’s edge, and
the sloping hills covered with bright villas on every side. Domes and
steeples rise on all sides, and the cleanliness is remarkably great. On
the other side there are the foldings of the Vale of Arno above; first
the hills of olive and vine, then the chesnut woods, and then the blue
and misty pine forests, which invest the aerial Apennines, that fade
in the distance. I have seldom seen a city so lovely at first sight as
Florence.
We shall travel hence within a few hours, with the speed of the post,
since the distance is 190 miles, and we are to do it in three days,
besides the half day, which is somewhat more than sixty miles a day.
We have now got a comfortable carriage and two mules, and, thanks to
Paolo, have made a very decent bargain, comprising everything, to
Padua. I should say we had delightful fruit for breakfast,--figs, very
fine--and peaches, unfortunately gathered before they were ripe, whose
smell was like what one fancies of the wakening of Paradise flowers.
Well, my dearest Mary, are you very lonely? Tell me truth, my sweetest,
do you ever cry? I shall hear from you once at Venice, and once on
my return here. If you love me you will keep up your spirits--and,
at all events, tell me truth about it; for, I assure you, I am not
of a disposition to be flattered by your sorrow, though I should be
by your cheerfulness; and, above all, by seeing such fruits of my
absence as were produced when we were at Geneva. What acquaintances
have you made? I might have travelled to Padua with a German, who had
just come from Rome, and had scarce recovered from a malaria fever,
caught in the Pontine Marshes, a week or two since; and I conceded
to ***’s entreaties--and to _your_ absent suggestions, and omitted
the opportunity, although I have no great faith in such species
of contagion. It is not very hot--not at all too much so for my
sensations, and the only thing that incommodes me are the gnats at
night, who roar like so many humming tops in one’s ear--and I do not
always find zanzariere. How is Willmouse and little Clara? They must
be kissed for me--and you must particularly remember to speak my name
to William, and see that he does not quite forget me before I return.
Adieu--my dearest girl, I think that we shall soon meet. I shall write
again from Venice. Adieu, dear Mary!
I have been reading the “Noble Kinsmen,” in which, with the exception
of that lovely scene, to which you added so much grace in reading
to me, I have been disappointed. The Jailor’s Daughter is a poor
imitation, and deformed. The whole story wants moral discrimination and
modesty. I do not believe Shakespeare wrote a word of it.
TO MRS. SHELLEY
(BAGNI DI LUCCA).
_Venice, Sunday morning._
(_August 23rd, 1818._)
My dearest Mary,
We arrived here last night at twelve o’clock, and it is now before
breakfast the next morning. I can, of course, tell you nothing of the
future; and though I shall not close this letter till post time, yet
I do not know exactly when that is. Yet, if you are very impatient,
look along the letter and you will see another date, when I may have
something to relate.
I came from Padua hither in a gondola, and the gondoliere, among other
things, without any hint on my part, began talking of Lord Byron. He
said he was a _giovinotto Inglese_, with a _nome stravagante_, who
lived very luxuriously, and spent great sums of money. This man, it
seems, was one of Lord Byron’s gondolieri. No sooner had we arrived
at the inn, than the waiter began talking about him--said, that he
frequented Mrs. H.’s _conversazioni_ very much.
Our journey from Florence to Padua contained nothing which may not
be related another time. At Padua, as I said, we took a gondola--and
left it at three o’clock. These gondolas are the most beautiful and
convenient boats in the world. They are finely carpeted and furnished
with black, and painted black. The couches on which you lean are
extraordinarily soft, and are so disposed as to be the most comfortable
to those who lean or sit. The windows have at will either venetian
plate-glass flowered, or venetian blinds, or blinds of black cloth
to shut out the light. The weather here is extremely cold--indeed,
sometimes very painfully so, and yesterday it began to rain. We passed
the laguna in the middle of the night in a most violent storm of wind,
rain, and lightning. It was very curious to observe the elements above
in a state of such tremendous convulsion, and the surface of the water
almost calm; for these lagunas, though five miles broad, a space enough
in a storm to sink a gondola, are so shallow that the boatmen drive the
boat along with a pole. The sea-water, furiously agitated by the wind,
shone with sparkles like stars. Venice, now hidden and now disclosed by
the driving rain, shone dimly with its lights. We were all this while
safe and comfortable. Well, adieu, dearest: I shall, as Miss Byron
says,[16] resume the pen in the evening.
* * * * *
_Sunday Night, 5 o’clock in the Morning._
Well, I will try to relate everything in its order.
* * * * *
At three o’clock I called on Lord Byron: he was delighted to see me.
He took me in his gondola across the laguna to a long sandy island,
which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When we disembarked, we
found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands of the
sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded
feelings, and questions as to my affairs, and great professions of
friendship and regard for me. He said, that if he had been in England
at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have moved heaven and
earth to have prevented such a decision. We talked of literary
matters, his Fourth Canto, which, he says, is very good, and indeed
repeated some stanzas of great energy to me. When we returned to his
palace--which,
(_The letter is here torn._)
The Hoppners are the most amiable people I ever knew. They are much
attached to each other, and have a nice little boy, seven months old.
Mr. H. paints beautifully, and this excursion, which he has just put
off, was an expedition to the Julian Alps, in this neighbourhood--for
the sake of sketching, to procure winter employment. He has only a
fortnight’s leisure, and he has sacrificed two days of it to strangers
whom he never saw before. Mrs. H. has hazel eyes and sweet looks.
(_Paper torn._)
Well, but the time presses, I am now going to the banker’s to send
you money for the journey, which I shall address to you at Florence,
Post-office. Pray come instantly to Este, where I shall be waiting in
the utmost anxiety for your arrival. You can pack up directly you get
this letter, and employ the next day on that. The day after, get up at
four o’clock, and go post to Lucca, where you will arrive at six. Then
take a vetturino for Florence to arrive the same evening. From Florence
to Este is three days’ vetturino journey--and you could not, I think,
do it quicker by the post. Make Paolo take you to good inns, as we
found very bad ones, and pray avoid the Tre Mori at Bologna, _perche
vi sono cose inespressibili nei letti_. I do not think you can, but
_try_ to get from Florence to Bologna in one day. Do not take the post,
for it is not much faster, and very expensive. I have been obliged to
decide on all these things without you: I have done for the best--and,
my own beloved Mary, you must soon come and scold me if I have done
wrong, and kiss me if I have done right--for, I am sure, I do not know
which--and it is only the event that can show. We shall at least be
saved the trouble of introduction, and have formed acquaintance with a
lady who is so good, so beautiful, so angelically mild, that were she
as wise too, she would be quite a ***. Her eyes are like a reflection
of yours. Her manners are like yours when you know and like a person.
Do you know, dearest, how this letter was written? By scraps and
patches, and interrupted every minute. The gondola is now come to take
me to the banker’s. Este is a little place, and the house found without
difficulty. I shall count four days for this letter: one day for
packing, four for coming here--and on the ninth or tenth day we shall
meet.
I am too late for the post--but I send an express to overtake it.
Enclosed is an order for fifty pounds. If you knew all that I had to
do!--
Dearest love, be well, be happy, come to me--confide in your own
constant and affectionate,
P. B. S.
Kiss the blue-eyed darlings for me, and do not let William forget me.
Clara cannot recollect me.
[16] _i.e._, Harriet Byron, in Richardson’s novel of _Sir Charles
Grandison_.--Ed.
TO MRS. SHELLEY
(_I Cappuccini--Este_).
_Padua, mezzogiorno._
(_Sept. 22, 1818._)
My best Mary,
I found at Mount Selice a favourable opportunity for going to Venice,
where I shall try to make some arrangement for you and little Ca.[17]
to come for some days, and shall meet you, if I do not write anything
in the mean time, at Padua, on Thursday morning. C. says she is obliged
to come to see the Medico, whom we missed this morning, and who has
appointed as the only hour at which he can be at leisure--half-past
eight in the morning. You must, therefore, arrange matters so that you
should come to the Stella d’Oro a little before that hour--a thing to
be accomplished only by setting out at half-past three in the morning.
You will by this means arrive at Venice very early in the day, and
avoid the heat, which might be bad for the babe, and take the time,
when she would at least sleep great part of the time. C. will return
with the return carriage, and I shall meet you, or send to you at Padua.
Meanwhile remember Charles the First--and do you be prepared to bring
at least _some_ of Myrra translated; bring the book also with you, and
the sheets of “Prometheus Unbound,” which you will find numbered from
one to twenty-six on the table of the pavilion. My poor little Clara,
how is she to-day? Indeed I am somewhat uneasy about her, and though I
feel secure that there is no danger, it would be very comfortable to
have some reasonable person’s opinion about her. The Medico at Padua is
certainly a man in great practice, but I confess he does not satisfy me.
Am I not like a wild swan to be gone so suddenly? But, in fact, to set
off alone to Venice required an exertion. I felt myself capable of
making it, and I knew that you desired it. What will not be--if so it
is destined--the lonely journey through that wide, cold France? But we
shall see.
Adieu, my dearest love--remember Charles I. and Myrra. I have been
already imagining how you will conduct some scenes. The second volume
of “St Leon” begins with this proud and true sentiment--“There is
nothing which the human mind can conceive, which it may not execute.”
Shakespeare was only a human being.
Adieu till Thursday. Your ever affectionate
P. B. S.
[17] Clara, born at Marlow, Sept. 3, 1817.--Ed.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Este, October 8, 1818._
My dear Peacock,
I have not written to you, I think, for six weeks. But I have been
on the point of writing many times, and have often felt that I had
many things to say. But I have not been without events to disturb and
distract me, amongst which is the death of my little girl. She died of
a disorder peculiar to the climate. We have all had bad spirits enough,
and I, in addition, bad health. I _intend_ to be better soon: there is
no malady, bodily or mental, which does not either kill or is killed.
We left the Baths of Lucca, I think, the day after I wrote to you--on
a visit to Venice--partly for the sake of seeing the city. We made a
very delightful acquaintance there with a Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner, the
gentleman an Englishman, and the lady a Swissesse, mild and beautiful,
and unprejudiced, in the best sense of the word. The kind attentions
of these people made our short stay at Venice very pleasant. I saw
Lord Byron, and really hardly knew him again; he is changed into the
liveliest and happiest-looking man I ever met. He read me the first
canto of his “Don Juan”--a thing in the style of Beppo, but infinitely
better, and dedicated to Southey, in ten or a dozen stanzas, more
like a mixture of wormwood and verdigris than satire. Venice is a
wonderfully fine city. The approach to it over the laguna, with its
domes and turrets glittering in a long line over the blue waves, is
one of the finest architectural delusions in the world. It seems to
have--and literally it has--its foundations in the sea. The silent
streets are paved with water, and you hear nothing but the dashing of
the oars, and the occasional cries of the gondolieri. I heard nothing
of Tasso. The gondolas themselves are things of a most romantic and
picturesque appearance; I can only compare them to moths of which a
coffin might have been the chrysalis. They are hung with black, and
painted black, and carpeted with grey; they curl at the prow and stern,
and at the former there is a nondescript beak of shining steel, which
glitters at the end of its long black mass.
The Doge’s palace, with its library, is a fine monument of aristocratic
power. I saw the dungeons, where these scoundrels used to torment
their victims. They are of three kinds--one adjoining the place of
trial, where the prisoners destined to immediate execution were kept.
I could not descend into them, because the day on which I visited it,
was festa. Another under the leads of the palace, where the sufferers
were roasted to death or madness by the ardours of an Italian sun: and
others called the Pozzi--or wells, deep underneath, and communicating
with those on the roof by secret passages--where the prisoners were
confined sometimes half up to their middles in stinking water. When
the French came here, they found only one old man in the dungeons, and
he could not speak. But Venice, which was once a tyrant, is now the
next worse thing, a slave; for in fact it ceased to be free, or worth
our regret as a nation, from the moment that the oligarchy usurped
the rights of the people. Yet, I do not imagine that it was ever so
degraded as it has been since the French, and especially the Austrian
yoke. The Austrians take sixty per cent. in taxes, and impose free
quarters on the inhabitants. A horde of German soldiers, as vicious and
more disgusting than the Venetians themselves, insult these miserable
people. I had no conception of the excess to which avarice, cowardice,
superstition, ignorance, passionless lust, and all the inexpressible
brutalities which degrade human nature, could be carried, until I had
passed a few days at Venice.
We have been living this last month near the little town from which
I date this letter, in a very pleasant villa which has been lent to
us, and we are now on the point of proceeding to Florence, Rome, and
Naples--at which last city we shall spend the winter, and return
northwards in the spring. Behind us here are the Euganean hills, not so
beautiful as those of the Bagni di Lucca, with Arquà, where Petrarch’s
house and tomb are religiously preserved and visited. At the end of our
garden is an extensive Gothic castle, now the habitation of owls and
bats, where the Medici family resided before they came to Florence. We
see before us the wide flat plains of Lombardy, in which we see the
sun and moon rise and set, and the evening star, and all the golden
magnificence of autumnal clouds. But I reserve wonder for Naples.
I have been writing--and indeed have just finished the first act of a
lyric and classical drama, to be called “Prometheus Unbound.” Will you
tell me what there is in Cicero about a drama supposed to have been
written by Æschylus under this title?
I ought to say that I have just read Malthus in a French translation.
Malthus is a very clever man, and the world would be a great gainer
if it would seriously take his lessons into consideration, if it were
capable of attending seriously to anything but mischief--but what on
earth does he mean by some of his inferences?
Yours ever faithfully,
P. B. S.
I will write again from Rome and Florence--in better spirits, and to
more agreeable purpose, I hope. You saw those beautiful stanzas in the
fourth canto[18] about the Nymph Egeria. Well, I did not whisper a word
about nympholepsy: I hope you acquit me--and I hope you will not carry
delicacy so far as to let this suppress anything nympholeptic.
[18] Of _Childe Harold_.--Ed.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Ferrara, Nov. 8th, 1818._
My dear Peacock,
We left Este yesterday on our journey towards Naples. The roads were
particularly bad; we have, therefore, accomplished only two days’
journey, of eighteen and twenty-four miles each, and you may imagine
that our horses must be tolerably good ones, to drag our carriage, with
five people and heavy luggage, through deep and clayey roads. The roads
are, however, good during the rest of the way.
The country is flat, but intersected by lines of wood, trellised with
vines, whose broad leaves are now stamped with the redness of their
decay. Every here and there one sees people employed in agricultural
labours, and the plough, the harrow, or the cart, drawn by long teams
of milk-white or dove-coloured oxen of immense size and exquisite
beauty. This, indeed, might be the country of Pasiphaes. In one
farm-yard I was shown sixty-three of these lovely oxen, tied to their
stalls, in excellent condition. A farm-yard in this part of Italy
is somewhat different from one in England. First, the house, which
is large and high, with strange-looking unpainted window-shutters,
generally closed, and dreary beyond conception. The farm-yard and
out-buildings, however, are usually in the neatest order. The
threshing-floor is not under cover, but like that described in the
Georgics, usually flattened by a broken column, and neither the mole,
nor the toad, nor the ant, can find on its area a crevice for their
dwelling. Around it, at this season, are piled the stacks of the leaves
and stalks of Indian corn, which has lately been threshed and dried
upon its surface. At a little distance are vast heaps of many-coloured
zucchi or pumpkins, some of enormous size, piled as winter food for
the hogs. There are turkeys, too, and fowls wandering about, and two
or three dogs, who bark with a sharp hylactism. The people who are
occupied with the care of these things seem neither ill-clothed nor
ill-fed, and the blunt incivility of their manners has an English air
with it, very discouraging to those who are accustomed to the impudent
and polished lying of the inhabitants of the cities. I should judge the
agricultural resources of this country to be immense, since it can wear
so flourishing an appearance, in spite of the enormous discouragements
which the various tyranny of the governments inflicts on it. I ought to
say that one of the farms belongs to a Jew banker at Venice, another
Shylock.--We arrived late at the inn where I now write; it was once the
palace of a Venetian nobleman, and is now an excellent inn. To-morrow
we are going to see the sights of Ferrara.
* * * * *
_Nov. 9._
We have had heavy rain and thunder all night; and the former still
continuing, we went in the carriage about the town. We went first
to look at the cathedral, but the beggars very soon made us sound a
retreat; so, whether, as it is said, there is a copy of a picture of
Michael Angelo there or no, I cannot tell. At the public library we
were more successful. This is, indeed, a magnificent establishment,
containing, as they say, 160,000 volumes. We saw some illuminated
manuscripts of church music, with the verses of the psalms interlined
between the square notes, each of which consisted of the most
delicate tracery, in colours inconceivably vivid. They belonged to
the neighbouring convent of Certolda, and are three or four hundred
years old; but their hues are as fresh as if they had been executed
yesterday. The tomb of Ariosto occupies one end of the largest saloon
of which the library is composed; it is formed of various marbles,
surmounted by an expressive bust of the poet, and subscribed with a
few Latin verses, in a less miserable taste than those usually employed
for similar purposes. But the most interesting exhibitions here, are
the writings, &c., of Ariosto and Tasso, which are preserved, and
were concealed from the undistinguishing depredations of the French
with pious care. There is the arm-chair of Ariosto, an old plain
wooden piece of furniture, the hard seat of which was once occupied
by, but has now survived its cushion, as it has its master. I could
fancy Ariosto sitting in it; and the satires in his own handwriting
which they unfold beside it, and the old bronze inkstand, loaded with
figures, which belonged also to him, assists the willing delusion.
This inkstand has an antique, rather than an ancient appearance. Three
nymphs lean forth from the circumference, and on the top of the lid
stands a cupid, winged and looking up, with a torch in one hand, his
bow in the other, and his quiver beside him. A medal was bound round
the skeleton of Ariosto, with his likeness impressed upon it. I cannot
say I think it had much native expression, but, perhaps, the artist was
in fault. On the reverse is a hand, cutting with a pair of scissors the
tongue from a serpent, upraised from the grass, with this legend--_Pro
bono malum_. What this reverse of the boasted Christian maxim means, or
how it applies to Ariosto, either as a satirist or a serious writer, I
cannot exactly tell. The cicerone attempted to explain, and it is to
his commentary that my bewildering is probably due--if, indeed, the
meaning be very plain, as is possibly the case.
There is here a manuscript of the entire Gerusalemme Liberata, written
by Tasso’s own hand; a manuscript of some poems, written in prison,
to the Duke Alfonso; and the satires of Ariosto, written also by his
own hand; and the Pastor Fido of Guarini. The Gerusalemme, though it
had evidently been copied and recopied, is interlined, particularly
towards the end, with numerous corrections. The handwriting of Ariosto
is a small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say,
a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy of mind; that of Tasso is
large, free, and flowing, except that there is a checked expression
in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters into a smaller
compass than one expected from the beginning of the word. It is the
symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its own
depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of
oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I always seek
in what I see the manifestation of something beyond the present and
tangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not
agree now. But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to
attempt to inspire others with them. Some of the MSS. of Tasso were
sonnets to his persecutor, which contain a great deal of what is called
flattery. If Alfonso’s ghost were asked how he felt those praises now,
I wonder what he would say. But to me there is much more to pity than
to condemn in these entreaties and praises of Tasso. It is as a bigot
prays to and praises his god, whom he knows to be the most remorseless,
capricious, and inflexible of tyrants, but whom he knows also to be
omnipotent. Tasso’s situation was widely different from that of any
persecuted being of the present day; for, from the depth of dungeons,
public opinion might now at length be awakened to an echo that would
startle the oppressor. But then there was no hope. There is something
irresistibly pathetic to me in the sight of Tasso’s own handwriting,
moulding expressions of adulation and entreaty to a deaf and stupid
tyrant, in an age when the most heroic virtue would have exposed its
possessor to hopeless persecution, and--such is the alliance between
virtue and genius--which unoffending genius could not escape.
We went afterwards to see his prison in the hospital of Sant’ Anna, and
I enclose you a piece of the wood of the very door, which for seven
years and three months divided this glorious being from the air and
the light which had nourished in him those influences which he has
communicated, through his poetry, to thousands. The dungeon is low and
dark, and, when I say that it is really a very decent dungeon, I speak
as one who has seen the prisons in the Doge’s palace of Venice. But
it is a horrible abode for the coarsest and meanest thing that ever
wore the shape of man, much more for one of delicate susceptibilities
and elevated fancies. It is low, and has a grated window, and being
sunk some feet below the level of the earth, is full of unwholesome
damps. In the darkest corner is a mark in the wall where the chains
were rivetted, which bound him hand and foot. After some time, at the
instance of some Cardinal, his friend, the Duke allowed his victim a
fireplace; the mark where it was walled up yet remains.
At the entrance of the Liceo, where the library is, we were met by a
penitent; his form was completely enveloped in a ghost-like drapery
of white flannel; his bare feet were sandalled; and there was a kind
of net-work visor drawn over his eyes, so as entirely to conceal his
face. I imagine that this man had been adjudged to suffer this penance
for some crime known only to himself and his confessor, and this kind
of exhibition is a striking instance of the power of the Catholic
superstition over the human mind. He passed, rattling his wooden box
for charity.
Adieu.--You will hear from me again before I arrive at Naples.
Yours, ever sincerely,
P. B. S.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Bologna, Monday, Nov. 9th, 1818._
My dear Peacock,
I have seen a quantity of things here--churches, palaces, statues,
fountains, and pictures; and my brain is at this moment like a
portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or a common-place book. I
will try to recollect something of what I have seen; for, indeed, it
requires, if it will obey, an act of volition. First, we went to the
cathedral, which contains nothing remarkable, except a kind of shrine,
or rather a marble canopy, loaded with sculptures, and supported on
four marble columns. We went then to a palace--I am sure I forget the
name of it--where we saw a large gallery of pictures. Of course, in
a picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you forget, for one
you remember. I remember, however, an interesting picture by Guido,
of the Rape of Proserpine, in which Proserpine casts back her languid
and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had left
ungathered in the fields of Enna. There was an exquisitely executed
piece of Correggio, about four saints, one of whom seemed to have a
pet dragon in a leash. I was told that it was the devil who was bound
in that style--but who can make anything of four saints? For what can
they be supposed to be about? There was one painting, indeed, by this
master, Christ beatified, inexpressibly fine. It is a half figure,
seated on a mass of clouds, tinged with an ethereal, rose-like lustre;
the arms are expanded; the whole frame seems dilated with expression;
the countenance is heavy, as it were, with the weight of the rapture
of the spirit; the lips parted, but scarcely parted, with the breath
of intense but regulated passion; the eyes are calm and benignant;
the whole features harmonised in majesty and sweetness. The hair is
parted on the forehead, and falls in heavy locks on each side. It
is motionless, but seems as if the faintest breath would move it.
The colouring, I suppose, must be very good, if I could remark and
understand it. The sky is of a pale aerial orange, like the tints of
latest sunset; it does not seem painted around and beyond the figure,
but everything seems to have absorbed, and to have been penetrated
by its hues. I do not think we saw any other of Correggio, but this
specimen gives me a very exalted idea of his powers.
We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces--Ranuzzi,
Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any purpose,
here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing a novel. I
saw many more of Guido. One, a Samson drinking water out of an ass’s
jaw-bone, in the midst of the slaughtered Philistines. Why he is
supposed to do this, God, who gave him this jaw-bone, alone knows--but
certain it is, that the painting is a very fine one. The figure of
Samson stands in strong relief in the foreground, coloured, as it were,
in the hues of human life, and full of strength and elegance. Round him
lie the Philistines in all the attitudes of death. One prone, with the
slight convulsion of pain just passing from his forehead, whilst on
his lips and chin death lies as heavy as sleep. Another leaning on his
arm, with his hand, white and motionless, hanging out beyond. In the
distance, more dead bodies; and, still further beyond, the blue sea and
the blue mountains, and one white and tranquil sail.
There is a Murder of the Innocents, also, by Guido, finely coloured,
with much fine expression--but the subject is very horrible, and it
seemed deficient in strength--at least, you require the highest ideal
energy, the most poetical and exalted conception of the subject,
to reconcile you to such a contemplation. There was a Jesus Christ
crucified, by the same, very fine. One gets tired, indeed, whatever
may be the conception and execution of it, of seeing that monotonous
and agonised form for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude of
torture. But the Magdalen, clinging to the cross, with the look of
passive and gentle despair beaming from beneath her bright flaxen hair,
and the figure of St. John, with his looks uplifted in passionate
compassion; his hands clasped, and his fingers twisting themselves
together, as it were, with involuntary anguish; his feet almost
writhing up from the ground with the same sympathy; and the whole of
this arrayed in colours of a diviner nature, yet most like nature’s
self. Of the contemplation of this one would never weary.
There was a “Fortune” too, of Guido; a piece of mere beauty. There was
the figure of Fortune on a globe, eagerly proceeding onwards, and Love
was trying to catch her back by the hair, and her face was half turned
towards him; her long chesnut hair was floating in the stream of the
wind, and threw its shadow over her fair forehead. Her hazel eyes were
fixed on her pursuer, with a meaning look of playfulness, and a light
smile was hovering on her lips. The colours which arrayed her delicate
limbs were ethereal and warm.
But, perhaps, the most interesting of all the pictures of Guido which
I saw, was a Madonna Lattante. She is leaning over her child, and the
maternal feelings with which she is pervaded are shadowed forth on
her soft and gentle countenance, and in her simple and affectionate
gestures--there is what an unfeeling observer would call a dulness
in the expression of her face; her eyes are almost closed; her lip
depressed; there is a serious, and even a heavy relaxation, as it were,
of all the muscles which are called into action by ordinary emotions;
but it is only as if the spirit of love, almost insupportable from its
intensity, were brooding over and weighing down the soul, or whatever
it is, without which the material frame is inanimate and inexpressive.
There is another painter here, called Franceschini, a Bolognese, who,
though certainly very inferior to Guido, is yet a person of excellent
powers. One entire church, that of Santa Catarina, is covered by his
works. I do not know whether any of his pictures have ever been seen in
England. His colouring is less warm than that of Guido, but nothing can
be more clear and delicate, it is as if he could have dipped his pencil
in the hues of some serenest and star-shining twilight. His forms have
the same delicacy and aerial loveliness; their eyes are all bright
with innocence and love; their lips scarce divided by some gentle and
sweet emotion. His winged children are the loveliest ideal beings ever
created by the human mind. These are generally, whether in the capacity
of Cherubim or Cupid, accessories to the rest of the picture; and
the underplot of their lovely and infantine play is something almost
pathetic, from the excess of its unpretending beauty. One of the best
of his pieces is an Annunciation of the Virgin; the Angel is beaming in
beauty; the Virgin, soft, retiring, and simple.
We saw besides one picture of Raphael--St. Cecilia: this is in another
and higher style; you forget that it is a picture as you look at it;
and yet it is most unlike any of those things which we call reality.
It is of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived
and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among
the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are
the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a
perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St.
Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the
painter’s mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chesnut
hair flung back from her forehead--she holds an organ in her hands--her
countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and
rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of
life. She is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has
just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently
point, by their attitudes, towards her; particularly St. John, who,
with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards
her, languid with the depth of his emotion. At her feet lie various
instruments of music, broken and unstrung. Of the colouring I do not
speak; it eclipses nature, yet it has all her truth and softness.
We saw some pictures of Domenichino, Carracci, Albano, Guercino,
Elisabetta Sirani. The two former, remember, I do not pretend to
taste--I cannot admire. Of the latter there are some beautiful
Madonnas. There are several of Guercino, which they said were very
fine. I dare say they were, for the strength and complication of his
figures made my head turn round. One, indeed, was certainly powerful.
It was the representation of the founder of the Carthusians exercising
his austerities in the desert, with a youth as his attendant, kneeling
beside him at an altar: on another altar stood a skull and a crucifix;
and around were the rocks and the trees of the wilderness. I never
saw such a figure as this fellow. His face was wrinkled like a dried
snake’s skin, and drawn in long hard lines: his very hands were
wrinkled. He looked like an animated mummy. He was clothed in a loose
dress of death-coloured flannel, such as you might fancy a shroud
might be, after it had wrapt a corpse a month or two. It had a yellow,
putrefied, ghastly hue, which it cast on all the objects around, so
that the hands and face of the Carthusian and his companion were
jaundiced by this sepulchral glimmer. Why write books against religion,
when we may hang up such pictures? But the world either will not or
cannot see. The gloomy effect of this was softened, and, at the same
time, its sublimity diminished, by the figure of the Virgin and Child
in the sky, looking down with admiration on the monk, and a beautiful
flying figure of an angel.
Enough of pictures. I saw the place where Guido and his mistress,
Elisabetta Sirani, were buried. This lady was poisoned at the age of
twenty-six, by another lover, a rejected one, of course. Our guide said
she was very ugly, and that we might see her portrait to-morrow.
Well, good-night, for the present. “To-morrow to fresh fields and
pastures new.”
* * * * *
_Nov. 10._
To-day we first went to see those divine pictures of Raffael and
Guido again, and then rode up the mountains, behind this city, to
visit a chapel dedicated to the Madonna. It made me melancholy to see
that they had been varnishing and restoring some of these pictures,
and that even some had been pierced by the French bayonets. These
are symptoms of the mortality of man; and, perhaps, few of his works
are more evanescent than paintings. Sculpture retains its freshness
for twenty centuries--the Apollo and the Venus are as they were. But
books are perhaps the only productions of man coeval with the human
race. Sophocles and Shakespeare can be produced and reproduced for
ever. But how evanescent are paintings, and must necessarily be. Those
of Zeuxis and Apelles are no more, and perhaps they bore the same
relation to Homer and Æschylus, that those of Guido and Raffael bear
to Dante and Petrarch. There is one refuge from the despondency of
this contemplation. The material part, indeed, of their works must
perish, but they survive in the mind of man, and the remembrances
connected with them are transmitted from generation to generation.
The poet embodies them in his creations; the systems of philosophers
are modelled to gentleness by their contemplation; opinion, that
legislator, is infected with their influence; men become better and
wiser; and the unseen seeds are perhaps thus sown, which shall produce
a plant more excellent even than that from which they fell. But all
this might as well be said or thought at Marlow as Bologna.
The chapel of the Madonna is a very pretty Corinthian building--very
beautiful, indeed. It commands a fine view of these fertile plains,
the many-folded Apennines, and the city. I have just returned from a
moonlight walk through Bologna. It is a city of colonnades, and the
effect of moonlight is strikingly picturesque. There are two towers
here--one 400 feet high--ugly things, built of brick, which lean both
different ways; and with the delusion of moonlight shadows, you might
almost fancy that the city is rocked by an earthquake. They say they
were built so on purpose; but I observe in all the plain of Lombardy
the church towers lean.
Adieu.--God grant you patience to read this long letter, and courage to
support the expectation of the next. Pray part them from the _Cobbetts_
on your breakfast table--they may fight it out in your mind.
Yours ever, most sincerely,
P. B. S.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Rome, November 20th, 1818._
My dear Peacock,
Behold me in the capital of the vanished world. But I have seen nothing
except St. Peter’s and the Vatican, overlooking the city in the mist
of distance, and the Dogana, where they took us to have our luggage
examined, which is built between the ruins of a temple to Antoninus
Pius. The Corinthian columns rise over the dwindled palaces of the
modern town, and the wrought cornice is changed on one side, as it
were, to masses of wave-worn precipice, which overhang you, far, far
on high.
I take advantage of this rainy evening, and before Rome has effaced
all other recollections, to endeavour to recall the vanished scenes
through which we have passed. We left Bologna, I forget on what day,
and passing by Rimini, Fano, and Foligno, along the Via Flaminia and
Terni, have arrived at Rome after ten days’ somewhat tedious, but most
interesting, journey. The most remarkable things we saw were the Roman
excavations in the rock, and the great waterfall of Terni. Of course
you have heard that there are a Roman bridge and a triumphal arch at
Rimini, and in what excellent taste they are built. The bridge is not
unlike the Strand bridge, but more bold in proportion, and of course
infinitely smaller. From Fano we left the coast of the Adriatic, and
entered the Apennines, following the course of the Metaurus, the banks
of which were the scene of the defeat of Asdrubal: and it is said (you
can refer to the book) that Livy has given a very exact and animated
description of it. I forget all about it, but shall look as soon as
our boxes are opened. Following the river, the vale contracts, the
banks of the river become steep and rocky, the forests of oak and ilex
which overhang its emerald-coloured stream, cling to their abrupt
precipices. About four miles from Fossombrone, the river forces for
itself a passage between the walls and toppling precipices of the
loftiest Apennines, which are here rifted to their base, and undermined
by the narrow and tumultuous torrent. It was a cloudy morning, and we
had no conception of the scene that awaited us. Suddenly the low clouds
were struck by the clear north wind, and like curtains of the finest
gauze, removed one by one, were drawn from before the mountain, whose
heaven-cleaving pinnacles and black crags overhanging one another,
stood at length defined in the light of day. The road runs parallel
to the river, at a considerable height, and is carried through
the mountain by a vaulted cavern. The marks of the chisel of the
legionaries of the Roman Consul are yet evident.
We passed on day after day, until we came to Spoleto, I think the most
romantic city I ever saw. There is here an aqueduct of astonishing
elevation, which unites two rocky mountains,--there is the path of
a torrent below, whitening the green dell with its broad and barren
track of stones, and above there is a castle, apparently of great
strength and of tremendous magnitude, which overhangs the city, and
whose marble bastions are perpendicular with the precipice. I never saw
a more impressive picture; in which the shapes of nature are of the
grandest order, but over which the creations of man, sublime from their
antiquity and greatness, seem to predominate. The castle was built by
Belisarius or Narses, I forget which, but was of that epoch.
From Spoleto we went to Terni, and saw the cataract of the Velino. The
glaciers of Montanvert and the source of the Arveiron is the grandest
spectacle I ever saw. This is the second. Imagine a river sixty feet
in breadth, with a vast volume of waters, the outlet of a great lake
among the higher mountains, falling 300 feet into a sightless gulf
of snow-white vapour, which bursts up for ever and for ever from a
circle of black crags, and thence leaping downwards, makes five or six
other cataracts, each fifty or a hundred feet high, which exhibit,
on a smaller scale, and with beautiful and sublime variety, the same
appearances. But words (and far less could painting) will not express
it. Stand upon the brink of the platform of cliff, which is directly
opposite. You see the ever-moving water stream down. It comes in thick
and tawny folds, flaking off like solid snow gliding down a mountain.
It does not seem hollow within, but without it is unequal, like the
folding of linen thrown carelessly down; your eye follows it, and it
is lost below; not in the black rocks which gird it around, but in its
own foam and spray, in the cloud-like vapours boiling up from below,
which is not like rain, nor mist, nor spray, nor foam, but water, in
a shape wholly unlike anything I ever saw before. It is as white as
snow, but thick and impenetrable to the eye. The very imagination is
bewildered in it. A thunder comes up from the abyss wonderful to hear;
for, though it ever sounds, it is never the same, but, modulated by
the changing motion, rises and falls intermittingly; we passed half
an hour in one spot looking at it, and thought but a few minutes had
gone by. The surrounding scenery is, in its kind, the loveliest and
most sublime that can be conceived. In our first walk we passed through
some olive groves, of large and ancient trees, whose hoary and twisted
trunks leaned in all directions. We then crossed a path of orange trees
by the river side, laden with their golden fruit, and came to a forest
of ilex of a large size, whose evergreen and acorn-bearing boughs were
intertwined over our winding path. Around, hemming in the narrow vale,
were pinnacles of lofty mountains of pyramidical rock clothed with
all evergreen plants and trees; the vast pine whose feathery foliage
trembled in the blue air, the ilex, that ancestral inhabitant of these
mountains, the arbutus with its crimson-coloured fruit and glittering
leaves. After an hour’s walk, we came beneath the cataract of Terni,
within the distance of half a mile; nearer you cannot approach, for
the Nar, which has here its confluence with the Velino, bars the
passage. We then crossed the river formed by this confluence, over a
narrow natural bridge of rock, and saw the cataract from the platform
I first mentioned. We think of spending some time next year near this
waterfall. The inn is very bad, or we should have stayed there longer.
We came from Terni last night to a place called Nepi, and to-day
arrived at Rome across the much-belied Campagna di Roma, a place I
confess infinitely to my taste. It is a flattering picture of Bagshot
Heath. But then there are the Apennines on one side, and Rome and St.
Peter’s on the other, and it is intersected by perpetual dells clothed
with arbutus and ilex.
Adieu--very faithfully yours,
P. B. S.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Naples, December 22, 1818._
My dear Peacock
I have received a letter from you here, dated November 1st; you see the
reciprocation of letters from the term of our travels is more slow.
I entirely agree with what you say about _Childe Harold_. The spirit
in which it is written is, if insane, the most wicked and mischievous
insanity that ever was given forth. It is a kind of obstinate and
self-willed folly, in which he hardens himself. I remonstrated with
him in vain on the tone of mind from which such a view of things alone
arises. For its real root is very different from its apparent one.
Nothing can be less sublime than the true source of these expressions
of contempt and desperation. The fact is, that first, the Italian women
with whom he associates, are perhaps the most contemptible of all who
exist under the moon--the most ignorant, the most disgusting, the most
bigoted; * * * * an ordinary Englishman cannot approach them. Well,
Lord Byron is familiar with the lowest sort of these women, the people
his gondolieri pick up in the streets. He associates with wretches who
seem almost to have lost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do
not scruple to avow practices, which are not only not named, but I
believe seldom even conceived in England. He says he disapproves, but
he endures. He is heartily and deeply discontented with himself; and
contemplating in the distorted mirror of his own thoughts the nature
and the destiny of man, what can he behold but objects of contempt and
despair? But that he is a great poet, I think the address to Ocean
proves. And he has a certain degree of candour while you talk to him,
but unfortunately it does not outlast your departure. No, I do not
doubt, and, for his sake, I ought to hope, that his present career must
end soon in some violent circumstance.
Since I last wrote to you, I have seen the ruins of Rome, the Vatican,
St. Peter’s, and all the miracles of ancient and modern art contained
in that majestic city. The impression of it exceeds anything I have
ever experienced in my travels. We stayed there only a week, intending
to return at the end of February, and devote two or three months to
its mines of inexhaustible contemplation, to which period I refer you
for a minute account of it. We visited the Forum and the ruins of the
Coliseum every day. The Coliseum is unlike any work of human hands I
ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and the arches
built of massy stones are piled on one another, and jut into the blue
air, shattered into the forms of overhanging rocks. It has been changed
by time into the image of an amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by
the wild olive, the myrtle, and the fig-tree, and threaded by little
paths, which wind among its ruined stairs and immeasurable galleries:
the copse-wood overshadows you as you wander through its labyrinths,
and the wild weeds of this climate of flowers bloom under your feet.
The arena is covered with grass, and pierces, like the skirts of a
natural plain, the chasms of the broken arches around. But a small
part of the exterior circumference remains--it is exquisitely light
and beautiful; and the effect of the perfection of its architecture,
adorned with ranges of Corinthian pilasters, supporting a bold cornice,
is such, as to diminish the effect of its greatness. The interior
is all ruin. I can scarcely believe that when encrusted with Dorian
marble and ornamented by columns of Egyptian granite its effect could
have been so sublime and so impressive as in its present state. It is
open to the sky, and it was the clear and sunny weather of the end of
November in this climate when we visited it, day after day.
Near it is the arch of Constantine, or rather the arch of Trajan; for
the servile and avaricious senate of degraded Rome ordered that the
monument of his predecessor should be demolished in order to dedicate
one to the Christian reptile, who had crept among the blood of his
murdered family to the supreme power. It is exquisitely beautiful and
perfect. The Forum is a plain in the midst of Rome, a kind of desert
full of heaps of stones and pits, and though so near the habitations
of men, is the most desolate place you can conceive. The ruins of
temples stand in and around it, shattered columns and ranges of others
complete, supporting cornices of exquisite workmanship, and vast
vaults of shattered domes distinct with regular compartments, once
filled with sculptures of ivory or brass. The temples of Jupiter, and
Concord, and Peace, and the Sun, and the Moon, and Vesta, are all
within a short distance of this spot. Behold the wrecks of what a
great nation once dedicated to the abstractions of the mind! Rome is a
city, as it were, of the dead, or rather of those who cannot die, and
who survive the puny generations which inhabit and pass over the spot
which they have made sacred to eternity. In Rome, at least in the first
enthusiasm of your recognition of ancient time, you see nothing of the
Italians. The nature of the city assists the delusion, for its vast
and antique walls describe a circumference of sixteen miles, and thus
the population is thinly scattered over this space, nearly as great as
London. Wide wild fields are enclosed within it, and there are grassy
lanes and copses winding among the ruins, and a great green hill,
lonely and bare, which overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the modern
palaces are like wild woods of cedar, and cypress, and pine, and the
neglected walks are overgrown with weeds. The English burying-place is
a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and
is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld. To
see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited
it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among
the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and
the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the
tombs, mostly of women and young people who were buried there, one
might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is
the human mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion.
I have told you little about Rome; but I reserve the Pantheon, and St.
Peter’s, and the Vatican, and Raphael, for my return. About a fortnight
ago I left Rome, and Mary and C---- followed in three days, for it was
necessary to procure lodgings here without alighting at an inn. From my
peculiar mode of travelling I saw little of the country, but could just
observe that the wild beauty of the scenery and the barbarous ferocity
of the inhabitants progressively increased. On entering Naples, the
first circumstance that engaged my attention was an assassination. A
youth ran out of a shop, pursued by a woman with a bludgeon, and a man
armed with a knife. The man overtook him, and with one blow in the neck
laid him dead in the road. On my expressing the emotions of horror and
indignation which I felt, a Calabrian priest, who travelled with me,
laughed heartily, and attempted to quiz me, as what the English call a
flat. I never felt such an inclination to beat any one. Heaven knows I
have little power, but he saw that I looked extremely displeased, and
was silent. This same man, a fellow of gigantic strength and stature,
had expressed the most frantic terror of robbers on the road; he cried
at the sight of my pistol, and it had been with great difficulty
that the joint exertions of myself and the vetturino had quieted his
hysterics.
But external nature in these delightful regions contrasts with and
compensates for the deformity and degradation of humanity. We have a
lodging divided from the sea by the royal gardens, and from our windows
we see perpetually the blue waters of the bay, forever changing, yet
forever the same, and encompassed by the mountainous island of Capreæ,
the lofty peaks which overhang Salerno, and the woody hill of Posilipo,
whose promontories hide from us Misenum and the lofty isle Inarime,[19]
which, with its divided summit, forms the opposite horn of the bay.
From the pleasant walks of the garden we see Vesuvius; a smoke by day
and a fire by night is seen upon its summit, and the glassy sea often
reflects its light or shadow. The climate is delicious. We sit without
a fire, with the windows open, and have almost all the productions of
an English summer. The weather is usually like what Wordsworth calls
“the first fine day of March;” sometimes very much warmer, though
perhaps it wants that “each minute sweeter than before,” which gives an
intoxicating sweetness to the awakening of the earth from its winter’s
sleep in England. We have made two excursions, one to Baiæ and one to
Vesuvius, and we propose to visit, successively, the islands, Pæstum,
Pompeii, and Beneventum.
We set off an hour after sunrise one radiant morning in a little boat;
there was not a cloud in the sky, nor a wave upon the sea, which was
so translucent that you could see the hollow caverns clothed with the
glaucous sea-moss, and the leaves and branches of those delicate weeds
that pave the unequal bottom of the water. As noon approached, the
heat, and especially the light, became intense. We passed Posilipo, and
came first to the eastern point of the bay of Puzzoli, which is within
the great bay of Naples, and which again encloses that of Baiæ. Here
are lofty rocks and craggy islets, with arches and portals of precipice
standing in the sea, and enormous caverns, which echoed faintly with
the murmur of the languid tide. This is called La Scuola di Virgilio.
We then went directly across to the promontory of Misenum, leaving the
precipitous island of Nisida on the right. Here we were conducted to
see the Mare Morto, and the Elysian fields; the spot on which Virgil
places the scenery of the Sixth Æneid, Though extremely beautiful, as
a lake, and woody hills, and this divine sky must make it, I confess
my disappointment. The guide showed us an antique cemetery, where the
niches used for placing the cinerary urns of the dead yet remain.
We then coasted the bay of Baiæ to the left, in which we saw many
picturesque and interesting ruins; but I have to remark that we never
disembarked but we were disappointed--while from the boat the effect
of the scenery was inexpressibly delightful. The colours of the water
and the air breathe over all things here the radiance of their own
beauty. After passing the bay of Baiæ, and observing the ruins of its
antique grandeur standing like rocks in the transparent sea under our
boat, we landed to visit lake Avernus. We passed through the cavern of
the Sibyl (not Virgil’s Sibyl), which pierces one of the hills which
circumscribe the lake, and came to a calm and lovely basin of water,
surrounded by dark woody hills, and profoundly solitary. Some vast
ruins of the temple of Pluto stand on a lawny hill on one side of it,
and are reflected in its windless mirror. It is far more beautiful
than the Elysian fields--but there are all the materials for beauty in
the latter, and the Avernus was once a chasm of deadly and pestilential
vapours. About half a mile from Avernus, a high hill, called Monte
Novo, was thrown up by volcanic fire.
Passing onward we came to Pozzoli, the ancient Dicæarchea, where there
are the columns remaining of a temple to Serapis, and the wreck of
an enormous amphitheatre, changed, like the Coliseum, into a natural
hill of the overteeming vegetation. Here also is the Solfatara, of
which there is a poetical description in the Civil War of Petronius,
beginning--“Est locus,”[20] and in which the verses of the poet are
infinitely finer than what he describes, for it is not a very curious
place. After seeing these things we returned by moonlight to Naples
in our boat. What colours there were in the sky, what radiance in the
evening star, and how the moon was encompassed by a light unknown to
our regions!
Our next excursion was to Vesuvius. We went to Resina in a carriage,
where Mary and I mounted mules, and C---- was carried in a chair on
the shoulders of four men, much like a member of parliament after
he has gained his election, and looking, with less reason, quite as
frightened. So we arrived at the hermitage of San Salvador, where an
old hermit, belted with rope, set forth the plates for our refreshment.
Vesuvius is, after the glaciers, the most impressive exhibition
of the energies of nature I ever saw. It has not the immeasurable
greatness, the overpowering magnificence, nor, above all, the radiant
beauty of the glaciers; but it has all their character of tremendous
and irresistible strength. From Resina to the hermitage you wind up
the mountain, and cross a vast stream of hardened lava, which is an
actual image of the waves of the sea, changed into hard black stone by
enchantment. The lines of the boiling flood seem to hang in the air;
and it is difficult to believe that the billows which seem hurrying
down upon you are not actually in motion. This plain was once a sea of
liquid fire. From the hermitage we crossed another vast stream of lava,
and then went on foot up the cone--this is the only part of the ascent
in which there is any difficulty, and that difficulty has been much
exaggerated. It is composed of rocks of lava, and declivities of ashes;
by ascending the former and descending the latter, there is very little
fatigue. On the summit is a kind of irregular plain, the most horrible
chaos that can be imagined; riven into ghastly chasms, and heaped up
with tumuli of great stones and cinders, and enormous rocks blackened
and calcined, which had been thrown from the volcano upon one another
in terrible confusion. In the midst stands the conical hill from which
volumes of smoke, and the fountains of liquid fire, are rolled forth
forever. The mountain is at present in a slight state of eruption; and
a thick heavy white smoke is perpetually rolled out, interrupted by
enormous columns of an impenetrable black bituminous vapour, which is
hurled up, fold after fold, into the sky with a deep hollow sound, and
fiery stones are rained down from its darkness, and a black shower of
ashes fell even where we sat. The lava, like the glacier, creeps on
perpetually, with a crackling sound as of suppressed fire. There are
several springs of lava; and in one place it gushes precipitously over
a high crag, rolling down the half-molten rocks and its own overhanging
waves; a cataract of quivering fire. We approached the extremity of one
of the rivers of lava; it is about twenty feet in breadth and ten in
height; and as the inclined plane was not rapid, its motion was very
slow. We saw the masses of its dark exterior surface detach themselves
as it moved, and betray the depth of the liquid flame. In the day the
fire is but slightly seen; you only observe a tremulous motion in the
air, and streams and fountains of white sulphurous smoke.
At length we saw the sun sink between Capreæ and Inarime, and, as the
darkness increased, the effect of the fire became more beautiful. We
were, as it were, surrounded by streams and cataracts of the red and
radiant fire; and in the midst, from the column of bituminous smoke
shot up into the air, fell the vast masses of rock, white with the
light of their intense heat, leaving behind them through the dark
vapour trains of splendour. We descended by torch-light, and I should
have enjoyed the scenery on my return, but they conducted me, I know
not how, to the hermitage in a state of intense bodily suffering, the
worst effect of which was spoiling the pleasure of Mary and C----.
Our guides on the occasion were complete savages. You have no idea of
the horrible cries which they suddenly utter, no one knows why, the
clamour, the vociferation, the tumult. C---- in her palanquin suffered
most from it; and when I had gone on before, they threatened to leave
her in the middle of the road, which they would have done had not
my Italian servant promised them a beating, after which they became
quiet. Nothing, however, can be more picturesque than the gestures and
the physiognomies of these savage people. And when, in the darkness
of night, they unexpectedly begin to sing in chorus some fragments of
their wild but sweet national music, the effect is exceedingly fine.
Since I wrote this I have seen the museum of this city. Such statues!
There is a Venus; an ideal shape of the most winning loveliness. A
Bacchus, more sublime than any living being. A Satyr, making love
to a youth, in which the expressed life of the sculpture, and
the inconceivable beauty of the form of the youth, overcome one’s
repugnance to the subject. There are multitudes of wonderfully fine
statues found in Herculaneum and Pompeii. We are going to see Pompeii
the first day that the sea is waveless. Herculaneum is almost filled
up; no more excavations are made; the king bought the ground and built
a palace upon it.
You don’t see much of Hunt. I wish you could contrive to see him when
you go to town, and ask him what he means to answer to Lord Byron’s
invitation. He has now an opportunity, if he likes, of seeing Italy.
What do you think of joining his party, and paying us a visit next
year; I mean as soon as the reign of winter is dissolved? Write to me
your thoughts upon this. I cannot express to you the pleasure it would
give me to welcome such a party.
I have depression enough of spirits and not good health, though I
believe the warm air of Naples does me good. We see absolutely no one
here.
Adieu, my dear Peacock,
affectionately your friend,
P. B. S.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The ancient name of Ischia.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]
[20]
Est locus exciso penitus demersus hiatu, Parthenopem inter, magnæque
Dicarchidos arva, Cocytia perfusus aqua, nam spiritus, extra Qui furit,
effusus funesto spargitur æstu, &c. Petronii Arbitri _Satyricon_.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Naples, Jan. 26th, 1819._
My dear Peacock,
Your two letters arrived within a few days of each other, one being
directed to Naples, and the other to Livorno. They are more welcome
visitors to me than mine can be to you. I writing as from sepulchres,
you from the habitations of men yet unburied; though the sexton,
Castlereagh, after having dug their grave, stands with his spade in
his hand, evidently doubting whether he will not be forced to occupy
it himself. Your news about the bank-note trials is excellent good.
Do I not recognise in it the influence of Cobbett? You don’t tell me
what occupies Parliament. I know you will laugh at my demand, and
assure me that it is indifferent. Your pamphlet I want exceedingly to
see. Your calculations in the letter are clear, but require much oral
explanation. You know I am an infernal arithmetician. If none but me
had contemplated “lucentemque globum lunæ, Titaniaque astra,” the world
would yet have doubted whether they were many hundred feet higher than
the mountain tops.
In my accounts of pictures and things, I am more pleased to interest
you than the many; and this is fortunate, because, in the first place,
I have no idea of attempting the latter, and if I did attempt it, I
should assuredly fail. A perception of the beautiful characterizes
those who differ from ordinary men, and those who can perceive it would
not buy enough to pay the printer. Besides, I keep no journal, and the
only records of my voyage will be the letters I send you. The bodily
fatigue of standing for hours in galleries exhausts me; I believe
that I don’t see half that I ought, on that account. And, then, we
know nobody, and the common Italians are so sullen and stupid, it’s
impossible to get information from them. At Rome, where the people seem
superior to any in Italy, I cannot fail to stumble on something more.
O, if I had health, and strength, and equal spirits, what boundless
intellectual improvement might I not gather in this wonderful country!
At present I write little else but poetry, and little of that. My
first act of Prometheus is complete, and I think you would like it. I
consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science, and if
I were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter, for I can conceive
a great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing
the contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. Far from me
is such an attempt, and I shall be content, by exercising my fancy, to
amuse myself, and perhaps some others, and cast what weight I can into
the scale of that balance, which the Giant of Arthegall holds.
Since you last heard from me, we have been to see Pompeii, and are
waiting now for the return of spring weather, to visit, first,
Pæstum, and then the islands; after which we shall return to Rome.
I was astonished at the remains of this city; I had no conception
of anything so perfect yet remaining. My idea of the mode of its
destruction was this:--First, an earthquake shattered it, and unroofed
almost all its temples, and split its columns; then a rain of light,
small pumice-stones fell; then torrents of boiling water, mixed with
ashes, filled up all its crevices. A wide, flat hill, from which the
city was excavated, is now covered by thick woods, and you see the
tombs and the theatres, the temples and the houses, surrounded by the
uninhabited wilderness. We entered the town from the side towards the
sea, and first saw two theatres; one more magnificent than the other,
strewn with the ruins of the white marble which formed their seats and
cornices, wrought with deep, bold sculpture. In the front, between
the stage and the seats, is the circular space, occasionally occupied
by the chorus. The stage is very narrow, but long, and divided from
this space by a narrow enclosure parallel to it, I suppose for the
orchestra. On each side are the consuls’ boxes, and below, in the
theatre at Herculaneum, were found two equestrian statues of admirable
workmanship, occupying the same place as the great bronze lamps did at
Drury Lane. The smallest of the theatres is said to have been comic,
though I should doubt. From both you see, as you sit on the seats, a
prospect of the most wonderful beauty.
You then pass through the ancient streets; they are very narrow, and
the houses rather small, but all constructed on an admirable plan,
especially for this climate. The rooms are built round a court, or
sometimes two, according to the extent of the house. In the midst is
a fountain, sometimes surrounded with a portico, supported on fluted
columns of white stucco; the floor is paved with mosaic, sometimes
wrought in imitation of vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures,
and more or less beautiful, according to the rank of the inhabitant.
There were paintings on all, but most of them have been removed to
decorate the royal museums. Little winged figures, and small ornaments
of exquisite elegance, yet remain. There is an ideal life in the
forms of these paintings of an incomparable loveliness, though most
are evidently the work of very inferior artists. It seems as if, from
the atmosphere of mental beauty which surrounded them, every human
being caught a splendour not his own. In one house you see how the
bed-rooms were managed;--a small sofa was built up, where the cushions
were placed; two pictures, one representing Diana and Endymion, the
other Venus and Mars, decorate the chamber; and a little niche, which
contains the statue of a domestic god. The floor is composed of a rich
mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and porphyry; it looks
to the marble fountain and the snow-white columns, whose entablatures
strew the floor of the portico they supported. The houses have only one
story, and the apartments, though not large, are very lofty. A great
advantage results from this, wholly unknown in our cities. The public
buildings, whose ruins are now forests as it were of white fluted
columns, and which then supported entablatures, loaded with sculptures,
were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. This was the
excellence of the ancients. Their private expenses were comparatively
moderate; the dwelling of one of the chief senators of Pompeii is
elegant indeed, and adorned with most beautiful specimens of art, but
small. But their public buildings are everywhere marked by the bold
and grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. In the little town
of Pompeii, (it contained about twenty thousand inhabitants,) it is
wonderful to see the number and the grandeur of their public buildings.
Another advantage, too, is that, in the present case, the glorious
scenery around is not shut out, and that, unlike the inhabitants of
the Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeians could
contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven; could see the moon rise
high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous with an
atmosphere of golden vapour, between Inarime and Misenum.
We next saw the temples. Of the temple of Æsculapius little remains but
an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the scales
of a serpent. His statue, in terra-cotta, was found in the cell. The
temple of Isis is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of fluted
columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many ceppi for
statues; and a little chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the
most exquisite proportion; its panels are adorned with figures in bas
relief, slightly indicated, but of a workmanship the most delicate and
perfect that can be conceived. They are Egyptian subjects, executed
by a Greek artist, who has harmonized all the unnatural extravagances
of the original conception into the supernatural loveliness of his
country’s genius. They scarcely touch the ground with their feet, and
their wind-uplifted robes seem in the place of wings. The temple in
the midst, raised on a high platform, and approached by steps, was
decorated with exquisite paintings, some of which we saw in the museum
at Portici. It is small, of the same materials as the chapel, with a
pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic columns of white stucco, so white
that it dazzles you to look at it.
Thence through other porticos and labyrinths of walls and columns, (for
I cannot hope to detail everything to you,) we came to the Forum. This
is a large square, surrounded by lofty porticos of fluted columns,
some broken, some entire, their entablatures strewed under them. The
temple of Jupiter, of Venus, and another temple, the Tribunal, and the
Hall of Public Justice, with their forests of lofty columns, surround
the Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size, (for, whether
they supported equestrian statues, or were the altars of the temple
of Venus, before which they stand, the guide could not tell,) occupy
the lower end of the Forum. At the upper end, supported on an elevated
platform, stands the temple of Jupiter. Under the colonnade of its
portico we sat, and pulled out our oranges, and figs, and bread, and
medlars, (sorry fare, you will say,) and rested to eat. Here was a
magnificent spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous shafts of
the sunshining columns was seen the sea, reflecting the purple heaven
of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its line the dark
lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly deep, and tinged
towards their summits with streaks of new-fallen snow. Between was
one small green island. To the right was Capreæ, Inarime, Prochyta,
and Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius, rolling forth
volumes of thick white smoke, whose foam-like column was sometimes
darted into the clear dark sky, and fell in little streaks along the
wind. Between Vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as through a chasm,
was seen the main line of the loftiest Apennines, to the east. The day
was radiant and warm. Every now and then we heard the subterranean
thunder of Vesuvius; its distant deep peals seemed to shake the very
air and light of day, which interpenetrated our frames, with the sullen
and tremendous sound. This scene was what the Greeks beheld (Pompeii,
you know, was a Greek city). They lived in harmony with nature; and the
interstices of their incomparable columns were portals, as it were, to
admit the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious universe to
visit those whom it inspired. If such is Pompeii, what was Athens? What
scene was exhibited from the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the temples
of Hercules, and Theseus, and the Winds? The islands and the Ægean sea,
the mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of Pindus and Olympus, and the
darkness of the Bœotian forests interspersed?
From the Forum we went to another public place; a triangular portico,
half inclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. It is built on the edge
of the hill overlooking the sea. Δ That black point is the temple. In
the apex of the triangle stands an altar and a fountain, and before the
altar once stood the statue of the builder of the portico. Returning
hence, and following the consular road, we came to the eastern gate of
the city. The walls are of enormous strength, and inclose a space of
three miles. On each side of the road beyond the gate are built the
tombs. How unlike ours! They seem not so much hiding-places for that
which must decay, as voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits. They
are of marble, radiantly white; and two, especially beautiful, are
loaded with exquisite bas reliefs. On the stucco-wall that incloses
them are little emblematic figures of a relief exceedingly low, of dead
and dying animals, and little winged genii, and female forms bending
in groups in some funeral office. The higher reliefs represent, one a
nautical subject, and the other a Bacchanalian one. Within the cell
stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one, sometimes more. It is said that
paintings were found within; which are now, as has been everything
moveable in Pompeii, removed, and scattered about in royal museums.
These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The wild woods
surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the paved
road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver
and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were, like the
step of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these dwellings
of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely finished marble,
the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them,
contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were
living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them.
I have forgotten the amphitheatre, which is of great magnitude, though
much inferior to the Coliseum. I now understand why the Greeks were
such great poets; and, above all, I can account, it seems to me, for
the harmony, the unity, the perfection, the uniform excellence, of all
their works of art. They lived in a perpetual commerce with external
nature, and nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their
theatres were all open to the mountains and the sky. Their columns, the
ideal types of a sacred forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery,
admitted the light and wind; the odour and the freshness of the country
penetrated the cities. Their temples were mostly upaithric; and the
flying clouds, the stars, or the deep sky, were seen above. O, but for
that series of wretched wars which terminated in the Roman conquest
of the world; but for the Christian religion, which put the finishing
stroke on the ancient system; but for those changes that conducted
Athens to its ruin,--to what an eminence might not humanity have
arrived!
In a short time I hope to tell you something of the museum of this city.
You see how ill I follow the maxim of Horace, at least in its literal
sense: “nil admirari”--which I should say, “prope res est una”--to
prevent there ever being anything admirable in the world. Fortunately
Plato is of my opinion; and I had rather err with Plato than be right
with Horace.
At this moment I have received your letter indicating that you are
removing to London. I am very much interested in the subject of this
change, and beg you would write me all the particulars of it. You
will be able now to give me perhaps a closer insight into the politics
of the times than was permitted you at Marlow. Of H---- I have a very
slight opinion. There are rumours here of a revolution in Spain. A ship
came in twelve days from Catalonia, and brought a report that the king
was massacred; that eighteen thousand insurgents surrounded Madrid;
but that before the popular party gained head enough seven thousand
were murdered by the inquisition. Perhaps you know all by this time.
The old king of Spain is dead here. Cobbett is a fine ὑμενοποιος--does
his influence increase or diminish? What a pity that so powerful a
genius should be combined with the most odious moral qualities.
We have reports here of a change in the English ministry--to what does
it amount? for, besides my national interest in it, I am on the watch
to vindicate my most sacred rights, invaded by the chancery court.
I suppose now we shall not see you in Italy this spring, whether Hunt
comes or not. It’s probable I shall hear nothing from him for some
months, particularly if he does not come. Give me _ses nouvelles_.
I am under an English surgeon here, who says I have a disease of the
liver, which he will cure. We keep horses, as this kind of exercise
is absolutely essential to my health. Elise[21] has just married our
Italian servant, and has quitted us; the man was a great rascal, and
cheated enormously: this event was very much against our advice.
I have scarcely been out since I wrote last.
Adieu! yours most faithfully,
P. B. S.
[21] A Swiss girl whom we had engaged as nursery-maid two years before,
at Geneva.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Rome, March 23d, 1819._
My dear Peacock,
I wrote to you the day before our departure from Naples. We came by
slow journeys, with our own horses, to Rome, resting one day at Mola
di Gaeta, at the inn called Villa di Cicerone, from being built on
the ruins of his Villa, whose immense substructions overhang the sea,
and are scattered among the orange-groves. Nothing can be lovelier
than the scene from the terraces of the inn. On one side precipitous
mountains, whose bases slope into an inclined plane of olive and
orange-copses--the latter forming, as it were, an emerald sky of
leaves, starred with innumerable globes of their ripening fruit, whose
rich splendour contrasted with the deep green foliage; on the other
the sea--bounded on one side by the antique town of Gaeta, and the
other by what appears to be an island, the promontory of Circe. From
Gaeta to Terracina the whole scenery is of the most sublime character.
At Terracina precipitous conical crags of immense height shoot into
the sky and overhang the sea. At Albano we arrived again in sight of
Rome. Arches after arches in unending lines stretching across the
uninhabited wilderness, the blue defined line of the mountains seen
between them; masses of nameless ruin standing like rocks out of the
plain; and the plain itself, with its billowy and unequal surface,
announced the neighbourhood of Rome. And what shall I say to you of
Rome? If I speak of the inanimate ruins, the rude stones piled upon
stones, which are the sepulchres of the fame of those who once arrayed
them with the beauty which has faded, will you believe me insensible to
the vital, the almost breathing creations of genius yet subsisting in
their perfection? What has become, you will ask, of the Apollo, the
Gladiator, the Venus of the Capitol? What of the Apollo di Belvedere,
the Laocoon? What of Raffaelle and Guido? These things are best
spoken of when the mind has drunk in the spirit of their forms; and
little indeed can I, who must devote no more than a few months to the
contemplation of them, hope to know or feel of their profound beauty.
I think I told you of the Coliseum, and its impressions on me on
my first visit to this city. The next most considerable relic of
antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermæ of Caracalla. These
consist of six enormous chambers, above 200 feet in height, and each
inclosing a vast space like that of a field. There are, in addition, a
number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden and woven over by
the wild growth of weeds and ivy. Never was any desolation more sublime
and lovely. The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines
filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick twisted roots are knotted
in the rifts of the stones. At every step the aerial pinnacles of
shattered stone group into new combinations of effect, and tower above
the lofty yet level walls, as the distant mountains change their aspect
to one travelling rapidly along the plain. The perpendicular walls
resemble nothing more than that cliff of Bisham wood, that is overgrown
with wood, and yet is stony and precipitous--you know the one I mean;
not the chalk-pit, but the spot that has the pretty copse of fir-trees
and privet-bushes at its base, and where H * * and I scrambled up, and
you, to my infinite discontent, would go home. These walls surround
green and level spaces of lawn, on which some elms have grown, and
which are interspersed towards their skirts by masses of the fallen
ruin, overtwined with the broad leaves of the creeping weeds. The blue
sky canopies it, and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous halls.
But the most interesting effect remains. In one of the buttresses,
that supports an immense and lofty arch, which “bridges the very winds
of heaven,” are the crumbling remains of an antique winding staircase,
whose sides are open in many places to the precipice. This you ascend,
and arrive on the summit of these piles. There grow on every side thick
entangled wildernesses of myrtle, and the myrletus, and bay, and the
flowering laurustinus, whose white blossoms are just developed, the
wild fig, and a thousand nameless plants sown by the wandering winds.
These woods are intersected on every side by paths, like sheep tracks
through the copse-wood of steep mountains, which wind to every part of
the immense labyrinth. From the midst rise those pinnacles and masses,
themselves like mountains, which have been seen from below. In one
place you wind along a narrow strip of weed-grown ruin, on one side
is the immensity of earth and sky, on the other a narrow chasm, which
is bounded by an arch of enormous size, fringed by the many-coloured
foliage and blossoms, and supporting a lofty and irregular pyramid,
overgrown like itself with the all-prevailing vegetation. Around
rise other crags and other peaks, all arrayed, and the deformity of
their vast desolation softened down, by the undecaying investiture of
nature. Come to Rome. It is a scene by which expression is overpowered;
which words cannot convey. Still further, winding up one-half of the
shattered pyramids, by the path through the blooming copse-wood, you
come to a little mossy lawn, surrounded by the wild shrubs; it is
overgrown with anemones, wall-flowers, and violets, whose stalks pierce
the starry moss, and with radiant blue flowers, whose names I know not,
and which scatter through the air the divinest odour, which, as you
recline under the shade of the ruin, produces sensations of voluptuous
faintness, like the combinations of sweet music. The paths still wind
on, threading the perplexed windings, other labyrinths, other lawns,
and deep dells of wood, and lofty rocks, and terrific chasms. When I
tell you that these ruins cover several acres, and that the paths above
penetrate at least half their extent, your imagination will fill up all
that I am unable to express of this astonishing scene.
I speak of these things not in the order in which I visited them, but
in that of the impression which they made on me, or perhaps chance
directs. The ruins of the ancient Forum are so far fortunate that
they have not been walled up in the modern city. They stand in an
open, lonesome place, bounded on one side by the modern city, and the
other by the Palatine Mount, covered with shapeless masses of ruin.
The tourists tell you all about these things, and I am afraid of
stumbling on their language when I enumerate what is so well known.
There remain eight granite columns of the Ionic order, with their
entablature, of the temple of Concord, founded by Camillus. I fear that
the immense expense demanded by these columns forbids us to hope that
they are the remains of any edifice dedicated by that most perfect
and virtuous of men. It is supposed to have been repaired under the
Eastern Emperors; alas, what a contrast of recollections! Near them
stand those Corinthian fluted columns, which supported the angle of
a temple; the architrave and entablature are worked with delicate
sculpture. Beyond, to the south, is another solitary column; and still
more distant, three more, supporting the wreck of an entablature.
Descending from the Capitol to the Forum, is the triumphal arch of
Septimius Severus, less perfect than that of Constantine, though from
its proportions and magnitude, a most impressive monument. That of
Constantine, or rather of Titus, (for the relief and sculpture, and
even the colossal images of Dacian captives, were torn by a decree of
the senate from an arch dedicated to the latter, to adorn that of this
stupid and wicked monster, Constantine, one of whose chief merits
consists in establishing a religion, the destroyer of those arts which
would have rendered so base a spoliation unnecessary) is the most
perfect. It is an admirable work of art. It is built of the finest
marble, and the outline of the reliefs is in many parts as perfect as
if just finished. Four Corinthian fluted columns support, on each side,
a bold entablature, whose bases are loaded with reliefs of captives
in every attitude of humiliation and slavery. The compartments above
express in bolder relief the enjoyment of success; the conqueror on
his throne, or in his chariot, or nodding over the crushed multitudes,
who writhe under his horses’ hoofs, as those below express the torture
and abjectness of defeat. There are three arches, whose roofs are
panelled with fretwork, and their sides adorned with similar reliefs.
The keystone of these arches is supported each by two winged figures of
Victory, whose hair floats on the wind of their own speed, and whose
arms are outstretched, bearing trophies, as if impatient to meet. They
look, as it were, borne from the subject extremities of the earth, on
the breath which is the exhalation of that battle and desolation, which
it is their mission to commemorate. Never were monuments so completely
fitted to the purpose for which they were designed, of expressing that
mixture of energy and error which is called a triumph.
I walk forth in the purple and golden light of an Italian evening, and
return by star or moonlight, through this scene. The elms are just
budding, and the warm spring winds bring unknown odours, all sweet,
from the country. I see the radiant Orion through the mighty columns
of the temple of Concord, and the mellow fading light softens down the
modern buildings of the Capitol, the only ones that interfere with the
sublime desolation of the scene. On the steps of the Capitol itself,
stand two colossal statues of Castor and Pollux, each with his horse,
finely executed, though far inferior to those of Monte Cavallo, the
cast of one of which you know we saw together in London. This walk is
close to our lodging, and this is my evening walk.
What shall I say of the modern city? Rome is yet the capital of the
world. It is a city of palaces and temples, more glorious than those
which any other city contains, and of ruins more glorious than they.
Seen from any of the eminences that surround it, it exhibits domes
beyond domes, and palaces, and colonnades interminably, even to the
horizon; interspersed with patches of desert, and mighty ruins which
stand girt by their own desolation, in the midst of the fanes of living
religions and the habitations of living men, in sublime loneliness.
St. Peter’s is, as you have heard, the loftiest building in Europe.
Externally it is inferior in architectural beauty to St. Paul’s, though
not wholly devoid of it; internally it exhibits littleness on a large
scale, and is in every respect opposed to antique taste. You know
my propensity to admire; and I tried to persuade myself out of this
opinion--in vain; the more I see of the interior of St. Peter’s, the
less impression as a whole does it produce on me. I cannot even think
it lofty, though its dome is considerably higher than any hill within
fifty miles of London; and when one reflects, it is an astonishing
monument of the daring energy of man. Its colonnade is wonderfully
fine, and there are two fountains, which rise in spire-like columns
of water to an immense height in the sky, and falling on the porphyry
vases from which they spring, fill the whole air with a radiant mist,
which at noon is thronged with innumerable rainbows. In the midst
stands an obelisk. In front is the palace-like façade of St Peter’s,
certainly magnificent; and there is produced, on the whole, an
architectural combination unequalled in the world. But the dome of the
temple is concealed, except at a very great distance, by the façade
and the inferior part of the building, and that diabolical contrivance
they call an attic.
The effect of the Pantheon is totally the reverse of that of St.
Peter’s. Though not a fourth part of the size, it is, as it were, the
visible image of the universe; in the perfection of its proportions, as
when you regard the unmeasured dome of heaven, the idea of magnitude
is swallowed up and lost. It is open to the sky, and its wide dome
is lighted by the ever-changing illumination of the air. The clouds
of noon fly over it, and at night the keen stars are seen through
the azure darkness, hanging immoveably, or driving after the driving
moon among the clouds. We visited it by moonlight; it is supported by
sixteen columns, fluted and Corinthian, of a certain rare and beautiful
yellow marble, exquisitely polished, called here _giallo antico_.
Above these are the niches for the statues of the twelve gods. This
is the only defect of this sublime temple; there ought to have been
no interval between the commencement of the dome and the cornice,
supported by the columns. Thus there would have been no diversion from
the magnificent simplicity of its form. This improvement is alone
wanting to have completed the unity of the idea.
The fountains of Rome are, in themselves, magnificent combinations of
art, such as alone it were worth coming to see. That in the Piazza
Navona, a large square, is composed of enormous fragments of rock,
piled on each other, and penetrated, as by caverns. This mass supports
an Egyptian obelisk of immense height. On the four corners of the rock
recline, in different attitudes, colossal figures representing the four
divisions of the globe. The water bursts from the crevices beneath
them. They are sculptured with great spirit; one impatiently tearing
a veil from his eyes; another with his hands stretched upwards. The
Fontana di Trevi is the most celebrated, and is rather a waterfall
than a fountain; gushing out from masses of rock, with a gigantic
figure of Neptune; and below are two river gods, checking two winged
horses, struggling up from among the rocks and waters. The whole is
not ill-conceived nor executed; but you know not how delicate the
imagination becomes by dieting with antiquity day after day. The only
things that sustain the comparison are Raphael, Guido, and Salvator
Rosa.
The fountain on the Quirinal, or rather the group formed by the
statues, obelisk and the fountain, is, however, the most admirable
of all. From the Piazza Quirinale, or rather Monte Cavallo, you see
the boundless ocean of domes, spires, and columns, which is the City,
Rome. On a pedestal of white marble rises an obelisk of red granite,
piercing the blue sky. Before it is a vast basin of porphyry, in the
midst of which rises a column of the purest water, which collects into
itself all the overhanging colours of the sky, and breaks them into a
thousand prismatic hues and graduated shadows--they fall together with
its dashing water-drops into the outer basin. The elevated situation of
this fountain produces, I imagine, this effect of colour. On each side,
on an elevated pedestal, stand the statues of Castor and Pollux, each
in the act of taming his horse, which are said, but I believe wholly
without authority, to be the work of Phidias and Praxiteles. These
figures combine the irresistible energy with the sublime and perfect
loveliness supposed to have belonged to their divine nature. The reins
no longer exist, but the position of their hands and the sustained and
calm command of their regard, seem to require no mechanical aid to
enforce obedience. The countenances at so great a height are scarcely
visible, and I have a better idea of that of which we saw a cast
together in London, than of the other. But the sublime and living
majesty of their limbs and mien, the nervous and fiery animation of the
horses they restrain, seen in the blue sky of Italy, and overlooking
the city of Rome, surrounded by the light and the music of that
crystalline fountain, no cast can communicate.
These figures were found at the Baths of Constantine, but, of course,
are of remote antiquity. I do not acquiesce, however, in the practice
of attributing to Phidias, or Praxiteles, or Scopas, or some great
master, any admirable work that may be found. We find little of what
remained, and perhaps the works of these were such as greatly surpassed
all that we conceive of most perfect and admirable in what little has
escaped the _deluge_. If I am too jealous of the honour of the Greeks,
our masters, and creators, the gods whom we should worship,--pardon me.
I have said what I feel without entering into any critical discussions
of the _ruins_ of Rome, and the mere outside of this inexhaustible
mine of thought and feeling. Hobhouse, Eustace, and Forsyth, will tell
all the shew-knowledge about it--“the common stuff of the earth.”
By-the-bye, Forsyth is worth reading, as I judge from a chapter or two
I have seen. I cannot get the book here.
I ought to have observed that the central arch of the triumphal arch
of Titus yet subsists, more perfect in its proportions, they say, than
any of a later date. This I did not remark. The figures of Victory,
with unfolded wings, and each spurning back a globe with outstretched
feet, are, perhaps, more beautiful than those on either of the others.
Their lips are parted: a delicate mode of indicating the fervour of
their desire to arrive at the destined resting-place, and to express
the eager respiration of their speed. Indeed, so essential to beauty
were the forms expressive of the exercise of the imagination and the
affections considered by _Greek_ artists, that no ideal figure of
antiquity, not destined to some representation directly exclusive of
such a character, is to be found with closed lips. Within this arch are
two panelled alto relievos, one representing a train of people bearing
in procession the instruments of Jewish worship, among which is the
holy candlestick with seven branches; on the other, Titus standing in
a quadriga, with a winged Victory. The grouping of the horses, and the
beauty, correctness and energy of their delineation, is remarkable,
though they are much destroyed.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Rome, April 6th, 1819._
My dear Peacock,
I sent you yesterday a long letter, all about antique Rome, which
you had better keep for some leisure day. I received yours, and one
of Hunt’s, yesterday.--So, you know the B----s? I could not help
considering Mrs. B., when I knew her, as the most admirable specimen
of a human being I had ever seen. Nothing earthly ever appeared to me
more perfect than her character and manners. It is improbable that I
shall ever meet again the person whom I so much esteemed, and still
admire. I wish, however, that when you see her, you would tell her that
I have not forgotten her, nor any of the amiable circle once assembled
round her; and that I desire such remembrances to her, as an exile and
a _Pariah_ may be permitted to address to an acknowledged member of
the community of mankind. I hear they dined at your lodgings. But no
mention of A * * * and his wife--where were they? C * * *, though so
young when I saw her, gave indications of her mother’s excellences;
and, certainly less fascinating, is, I doubt not, equally amiable,
and more sincere. It was hardly possible for a person of the extreme
subtlety and delicacy of Mrs. B----’s understanding and affections, to
be quite sincere and constant.
I am all anxiety about your I. H. affair. There are few who will
feel more hearty satisfaction at your success, in this or any other
enterprise, than I shall. Pray let me have the earliest intelligence.
When shall I return to England? The Pythia has ascended the tripod, but
she replies not. Our present plans--and I know not what can induce us
to alter them--lead us back to Naples in a month or six weeks, where it
is almost decided that we should remain until the commencement of 1820.
You may imagine when we receive such letters as yours and Hunt’s, what
this resolution costs us--but these are not our only communications
from England. My health is materially better. My spirits not the
most brilliant in the world; but that we attribute to our solitary
situation, and, though happy, how should I be lively? We see something
of Italian society indeed. The Romans please me much, especially the
women; who, though totally devoid of every kind of information, or
culture of the imagination, or affections, or understanding--and, in
this respect, a kind of gentle savages--yet contrive to be interesting.
Their extreme innocence and _naïveté_, the freedom and gentleness of
their manners; the total absence of affectation, makes an intercourse
with them very like an intercourse with uncorrupted children, whom they
resemble in loveliness as well as simplicity. I have seen two women
in society here of the highest beauty; their brows and lips, and the
moulding of the face modelled with sculptural exactness, and the dark
luxuriance of their hair floating over their fine complexions--and the
lips--you must hear the common-places which escape from them before
they cease to be dangerous. The only inferior part are the eyes, which,
though good and gentle, want the mazy depth of colour behind colour,
with which the intellectual women of England and Germany entangle the
heart in soul-inwoven labyrinths.
This is holy week, and Rome is quite full. The Emperor of Austria is
here, and Maria Louisa is coming. On their journey through the other
cities of Italy, she was greeted with loud acclamations, and vivas of
Napoleon. Idiots and slaves! Like the frogs in the fable, because they
are discontented with the log, they call upon the stork, who devours
them. Great festas, and magnificent funzioni here--we cannot get
tickets to all. There are five thousand strangers in Rome, and only
room for five hundred, at the celebration of the famous Miserere, in
the Sistine chapel, the only thing I regret we shall not be present
at. After all, Rome is eternal, and were all that _is_ extinguished,
that which _has been_, the ruins and the sculptures, would remain, and
Raffaelle and Guido be alone regretted.
In the square of St. Peter’s there are about three hundred fettered
criminals at work, hoeing out the weeds that grow between the stones
of the pavement. Their legs are heavily ironed, and some are chained
two by two. They sit in long rows, hoeing out the weeds, dressed in
parti-coloured clothes. Near them sit or saunter, groups of soldiers,
armed with loaded muskets. The iron discord of those innumerable
chains clanks up into the sonorous air, and produces, contrasted with
the musical dashing of the fountains, and the deep azure beauty of
the sky, and the magnificence of the architecture around, a conflict
of sensations allied to madness. It is the emblem of Italy--moral
degradation contrasted with the glory of nature and the arts.
We see no English society here; it is not probable that we could if we
desired it, and I am certain that we should find it insupportable. The
manners of the rich English are wholly insupportable, and they assume
pretences which they would not venture upon in their own country.--I
am yet ignorant of the event of Hobhouse’s election. I saw the last
numbers were--Lamb, 4200; and Hobhouse, 3900--14th day. There is little
hope. That mischievous Cobbett has divided and weakened the interest
of the popular party, so that the factions that prey upon our country
have been able to coalesce to its exclusion. The N----s you have not
seen. I am curious to know what kind of a girl Octavia becomes; she
promised well. Tell H---- his Melpomene is in the Vatican, and that
her attitude and drapery surpass, if possible, the graces of her
countenance.
My “Prometheus Unbound” is just finished, and in a month or two I
shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind
yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my
former attempts. By-the-bye, have you seen Ollier? I never hear from
him, and am ignorant whether some verses I sent him from Naples,
entitled, I think, “Lines on the Euganean hills,” have reached him
in safety or not. As to the Reviews, I suppose there is nothing but
abuse; and this is not hearty or sincere enough to amuse me. As to the
poem now printing,[22] I lay no stress on it one way or the other. The
concluding lines are natural.
I believe, my dear Peacock, that you wish us to come back to England.
How is it possible? Health, competence, tranquillity--all these Italy
permits, and England takes away. I am regarded by all who know or hear
of me, except, I think, on the whole, five individuals, as a rare
prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look even might infect. This is a
large computation, and I don’t think I could mention more than three.
Such is the spirit of the English abroad as well as at home.
Few compensate, indeed, for all the rest, and if I were _alone_ I
should laugh; or if I were rich enough to do all things, which I shall
never be. Pity me for my absence from those social enjoyments which
England might afford me, and which I know so well how to appreciate.
Still, I shall return some fine morning, out of pure weakness of heart.
My dear Peacock, most faithfully yours,
P. B. Shelley.
[22] Rosalind and Helen.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE
(LEGHORN).
_Rome, April 6th, 1819._
My dear Friends,
A combination of circumstances, which Mary will explain to you, leads
us back to Naples in June, or rather the end of May, where we shall
remain until the ensuing winter. We shall take a house at Portici, or
Castel a Mare, until late in the autumn.
The object of this letter is to ask you to spend this period with us.
There is no society which we have regretted or desired so much as
yours, and in our solitude the benefit of your concession would be
greater than I can express. What is a sail to Naples? It is the season
of tranquil weather and prosperous winds. If I knew the magic that lay
in any given form of words, I would employ them to persuade; but I fear
that all I can say is, as you know with truth, we desire that you would
come--we wish to see you. You came to see Mary at Lucca, directly I had
departed to Venice. It is not our custom, when we can help it, any more
than it is yours, to divide our pleasures.
What shall I say to entice you? We shall have a piano, and some books,
and--little else, beside ourselves. But what will be most inviting to
you, you will give much, though you may receive but little pleasure.
But whilst I write this with more desire than hope, yet some of that,
perhaps the project may fall into your designs. It is intolerable
to think of your being buried at Livorno. The success assured by Mr.
Reveley’s talents requires another scene. You may have decided to take
this summer to consider--and why not with us at Naples, rather than at
Livorno?
I could address, with respect to Naples, the words of Polypheme in
Theocritus, to all the friends I wish to see, and you especially:
Ἐξένθοις, Γαλάτεια, καὶ ἐξενθοῖσα λάθοιο,
Ὥσπερ ἐγὼ νῦν ᾧδε καθήμενος, οἴκαδ’ ἀπενθεῖν.
Most sincerely yours,
P. B. Shelley.
TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
_Livorno, July, 1819._
My dear Peacock,
We still remain, and shall remain nearly two months longer, at Livorno.
Our house is a melancholy one,[23] and only cheered by letters from
England. I got your note, in which you speak of three letters having
been sent to Naples, which I have written for. I have heard also from
H----, who confirms the news of your success, an intelligence most
grateful to me.
The object of the present letter is to ask a favour of you. I have
written a tragedy, on the subject of a story well known in Italy, and,
in my conception, eminently dramatic.[24] I have taken some pains to
make my play fit for representation, and those who have already seen
it judge favourably. It is written without any of the peculiar feelings
and opinions which characterise my other compositions; I having
attended simply to the impartial development of such characters, as
it is probable the persons represented really were, together with the
greatest degree of popular effect to be produced by such a development.
I send you a translation of the Italian manuscript on which my play is
founded, the chief subject of which I have touched very delicately; for
my principal doubt, as to whether it would succeed as an acting play,
hangs entirely on the question, as to whether such a thing as incest in
this shape, however treated, would be admitted on the stage. I think,
however, it will form no objection; considering, first, that the facts
are matter of history; and, secondly, the peculiar delicacy with which
I have treated it.
I am exceedingly interested in the question of whether this attempt
of mine will succeed or no. I am strongly inclined to the affirmative
at present, founding my hopes on this, that, as a composition, it is
certainly not inferior to any of the modern plays that have been acted,
with the exception of “Remorse;”[25] that the interest of its plot is
incredibly greater and more real; and that there is nothing beyond
what the multitude are contented to believe that they can understand,
either in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish to preserve a complete
incognito, and can trust to you, that whatever else you do, you will,
at least, favour me on this point. Indeed, this is essential, deeply
essential, to its success. After it had been acted, and successfully,
(could I hope such a thing,) I would own it if I pleased, and use the
celebrity it might acquire to my own purposes.
What I want you to do is, to procure for me its presentation at Covent
Garden. The principal character, Beatrice, is precisely fitted for
Miss O’Neil, and it might even seem written for her, (God forbid that
I should ever see her play it--it would tear my nerves to pieces,)
and, in all respects, it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The chief
male character, I confess, I should be very unwilling that any one but
Kean should play--that is impossible, and I must be contented with an
inferior actor. I think you know some of the people of that theatre,
or, at least, some one who knows them, and when you have read the play,
you may say enough perhaps to induce them not to reject it without
consideration--but of this, perhaps, if I may judge from the tragedies
which they have accepted, there is no danger at any rate.
Write to me as soon as you can on this subject, because it is necessary
that I should present it, or, if rejected by the theatre, print it this
coming season; lest somebody else should get hold of it, as the story,
which now exists only in manuscript, begins to be generally known
among the English. The translation which I send you, is to be prefixed
to the play, together with a print of Beatrice. I have a copy of her
picture by Guido, now in the Colonna palace at Rome--the most beautiful
creature you can conceive.
Of course, you will not show the manuscript to any one--and write to me
by return of post, at which time the play will be ready to be sent.
* * * * *
I expect soon to write again, and it shall be a less selfish letter. As
to Ollier, I don’t know what has been published, or what has arrived at
his hands.--My “Prometheus,” though ready, I do not send till I know
more.
Ever yours, most faithfully,
P. B. S.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] We had lost our eldest, and, at that time, only child, the
preceding month at Rome.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]
[24] This refers of course (as the sequel shows still more fully) to
_The Cenci_.--Ed.
[25] Coleridge’s tragedy of _Remorse_, performed at Drury Lane in
1813.--Ed.
TO LEIGH HUNT.[26]
_Livorno, Sept. 27th, 1819._
My dear Friend,
We are now on the point of leaving this place for Florence, where we
have taken pleasant apartments for six months, which brings us to the
first of April, the season at which new flowers and new thoughts spring
forth upon the earth and in the mind. What is then our destination
is yet undecided. I have not yet seen Florence, except as one sees
the outside of the streets; but its _physiognomy_ indicates it to be
a city, which, though the ghost of a republic, yet possesses most
amiable qualities. I wish you could meet us there in the spring, and
we would try to muster up a “lièta brigata,” which, leaving behind
them the pestilence of remembered misfortunes, might act over again
the pleasures of the Interlocutors in Boccaccio. I have been lately
reading this most divine writer. He is, in a high sense of the word,
a poet, and his language has the rhythm and harmony of verse. I think
him not equal certainly to Dante or Petrarch, but far superior to Tasso
and Ariosto, the children of a later and of a colder day. I consider
the three first as the productions of the vigour of the infancy of a
new nation--as rivulets from the same spring as that which fed the
greatness of the republics of Florence and Pisa, and which checked the
influence of the German emperors; and from which, through obscurer
channels, Raffaelle and Michael Angelo drew the light and the harmony
of their inspiration. When the second-rate poets of Italy wrote, the
corrupting blight of tyranny was already hanging on every bud of
genius. Energy, and simplicity, and unity of idea, were no more. In
vain do we seek, in the finest passages of Ariosto and Tasso, any
expression which at all approaches in this respect to those of Dante
and Petrarch. How much do I admire Boccaccio! What descriptions of
nature are those in his little introductions to every new day! It is
the morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes
it obscure to us. Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense
of the fair ideal of human life, considered in its social relations.
His more serious theories of love agree especially with mine. He often
expresses things lightly too, which have serious meanings of a very
beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian,
stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do you remember one
little remark, or rather maxim of his, which might do some good to the
common narrow-minded conceptions of love,--“Bocca bacciata non perde
ventura; anzi rinnuova, come fa la luna”?
We expect Mary to be confined towards the end of October. The birth
of a child will probably retrieve her from some part of her present
melancholy depression.
It would give me much pleasure to know Mr. Lloyd. Do you know, when I
was in Cumberland, I got Southey to borrow a copy of Berkeley from him,
and I remember observing some pencil notes in it, probably written by
Lloyd, which I thought particularly acute. One, especially, struck me
as being the assertion of a doctrine, of which even then I had long
been persuaded, and on which I had founded much of my persuasions, as
regarded the imagined cause of the universe--“Mind cannot create, it
can only perceive.” Ask him if he remembers having written it. Of Lamb
you know my opinion, and you can bear witness to the regret which I
felt, when I learned that the calumny of an enemy had deprived me of
his society whilst in England.--Ollier told me that the Quarterly are
going to review me. I suppose it will be a pretty ----,[27]
and as I am acquiring a taste for humour and drollery, I confess I am
curious to see it. I have sent my “Prometheus Unbound” to P.; if you
ask him for it he will show it you. I think it will please you.
Whilst I went to Florence, Mary wrote, but I did not see her
letter.--Well, good b’ye. Next Monday I shall write to you from
Florence. Love to all.
Most affectionately your friend, P. B. S.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Only a mutilated fragment of this letter was published by Leigh
Hunt: it is accordingly given here as printed for the first time in its
entirety by Mrs. Shelley.--Ed.
[27] The word here left blank was either illegible in the manuscript;
or, what is more probable, Mrs. Shelley, for whatever reason,
designedly withheld it.--Ed.
TO MRS. GISBORNE.
_Florence_, [_October 13th or 14th, 1819_.]
My dear Friend,
The regret we feel at our absence from you persuades me that it is a
state which cannot last, and which, so long as it must last, will be
interrupted by some intervals, one of which is destined to be, your
all coming to visit us here. Poor Oscar! I feel a kind of remorse to
think of the unequal love with which two animated beings regard each
other, when I experience no such sensations for him, as those which he
manifested for us. His importunate regret is, however, a type of ours,
as regards you. Our memory--if you will accept so humble a metaphor--is
for ever scratching at the door of your absence.
About Henry and the steam-engine[28] I am in torture until this
money comes from London, though I am sure that it will and must come;
unless, indeed, my banker has broke, and then it will be my loss,
not Henry’s--a little delay will mend the matter. I would then write
instantly to London an effectual letter, and by return of post all
would be set right--it would then be a thing easily set straight--but
if it were not, you know me too well not to know that there is no
personal suffering or degradation, or toil, or anything that can be
named, with which I do not feel myself bound to support this enterprise
of Henry. But all this rhodomontade only shows how correct Mr. Bielby’s
advice was about the discipline necessary for my imagination. No doubt
that all will go on with mercantile and common-place exactness, and
that you will be spared the suffering, and I the virtue, incident to
some untoward event.
I am anxious to hear of Mr. Gisborne’s return, and I anticipate the
surprise and pleasure with which he will learn that a resolution has
been taken which leaves you nothing to regret in that event. It is
with unspeakable satisfaction that I reflect that my entreaties and
persuasions overcame your scruples on this point, and that whatever
advantage shall accrue from it will belong to you, whilst any reproach
due to the imprudence of such an enterprise, must rest on me. I shall
thus share the pleasure of success, and bear the blame and loss, (if
such a thing were possible,) of a reverse; and what more can a man, who
is a friend to another, desire for himself? Let us believe in a kind of
optimism, in which we are our own gods. It is best that Mr. Gisborne
should have returned; it is best that I should have over-persuaded
you and Henry; it is best that you should all live together, without
any more solitary attempts; it is best that this one attempt should
have been made, otherwise, perhaps, one thing which is best might
not have occurred; and it is best that we should think all this for
the best, even though it is not; because Hope, as Coleridge says, is
a solemn duty, which we owe alike to ourselves and to the world--a
worship to the spirit of good within, which requires, before it sends
that inspiration forth, which impresses its likeness upon all that it
creates, devoted and disinterested homage.
A different scene is this from that in which you made the chief
character of our changing drama. We see no one, as usual. Madame M----
is quiet, and we only meet her now and then, by chance. Her daughter,
not so fair, but I fear as cold, as the snowy Florimel in Spenser, is
in and out of love with C---- as the winds happen to blow; and C----,
who, at the moment I happen to write, is in a high state of transitory
contentment, is setting off to Vienna in a day or two.
My £100, from what mistake remains to be explained, has not yet
arrived, and the banker here is going to advance me £50, on my bill at
three months--all additional facilitation, should any such be needed,
for the steam-boat. I have yet seen little of Florence. The gallery I
have a design of studying piece-meal; one of my chief objects in Italy
being the observing in statuary and painting, the degree in which, and
the rules according to which, that ideal beauty, of which we have so
intense yet so obscure an apprehension, is realised in external forms.
Adieu--I am anxious for Henry’s first letter. Give to him, and take to
yourself those sentiments, whatever they may be, with which you know
that I cannot cease to regard you.
Most faithfully and affectionately yours, P. B. S.
I had forgotten to say that I should be very much obliged to you, if
you would contrive to send the Cencis, which are at the printer’s, to
England, by the next ship. I forgot it in the hurry of departure.--I
have just heard from Peacock, saying, that he don’t think that my
tragedy will do, and that he don’t much like it. But I ought to say, to
blunt the edge of his criticism, that he is a nursling of the exact and
superficial school in poetry.
If Mr. G. is returned, send the “Prometheus” with them.
[28] Shelley set on foot the building of a steam-boat, to ply between
Marseilles, Genoa, and Leghorn. Such an enterprise promised fortune
to his friend who undertook to build it, and the anticipation filled
him with delight. An unforeseen complication of circumstances caused
the design to be abandoned, when already far advanced towards
completion.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]
An extract from a letter of Mrs. Gisborne to Mrs. Shelley is perhaps
necessary to explain further some portion of Shelley’s letter:--
“Now, I will tell you the news of the steam-boat. The contract was
drawn and signed the day after your departure; the vessel to be
complete, and launched, fit in every respect for the sea, excepting
the finishing of the cabin, for 260 sequins. We have every reason
to believe that the work will be well executed, and that it is an
excellent bargain. Henry and Frankfort go on not only with vigour, but
with fury; the lower part of the house is filled with models prepared
for casting, forging, &c. We have procured the wood for the frame from
the shipbuilder on credit, so that Frankfort can go on with his work;
but I am sorry to say, that from this time the general progress of
the work will be retarded for want of cash. The boilers might now be
going on contemporaneously with the casting, but I know that at present
there is no remedy for this evil. Every person concerned is making
exertions, and is in a state of anxiety to see the quick result of this
undertaking. I have advanced about 140 crowns, but prudence prohibits
me from going any farther.
“Henry will write to Mr. Shelley when the works are in a greater state
of forwardness: in the mean time, he sends his best love to his good
friends, patron and patroness.”
TO HENRY REVELEY.
_Florence, Oct. 28, 1819._
My dear Henry,
So it seems _I_ am to begin the correspondence, though I have more to
ask than to tell.
You know our bargain; you are to write me _uncorrected_ letters,
just as the words come, so let me have them--I like coin from the
mint--though it may be a little rough at the edges;--clipping is penal
according to our statute.
In the first place listen to a reproach; you ought to have sent me an
acknowledgment of my last billet. I am very happy to hear from Mr.
Gisborne, and he knows well enough how to interest me himself, not to
need to rob me of an occasion of hearing from you. Let you and I try if
we cannot be as punctual and business-like as the best of them. But no
clipping and coining, if you please.
Now take this that I say in a light just so serious as not to give
you pain. In fact, my dear fellow, my motive in soliciting your
correspondence, and that flowing from your own mind, and clothed in
your own words, is, that you may begin to accustom to discipline
yourself in the only practice of life in which you appear deficient.
You know that you are writing to a person persuaded of all the
confidence and respect due to your powers in those branches of science
to which you have addicted yourself; and you will not permit a false
shame with regard to the mere mechanical arrangement of words to
over-balance the advantage arising from the free communication of
ideas. Thus you will become day by day more skilful in the management
of that instrument of their communication, on which the attainment of a
person’s just rank in society depends. Do not think me arrogant. There
are subjects of the highest importance in which you are far better
qualified to instruct me, than I am qualified to instruct you on this
subject.
Well, how goes on all? The boilers, the keel of the boat, and the
cylinder, and all the other elements of that soul which is to guide
our “monstruo de fuego y agua” over the sea? Let me hear news of their
birth, and how they thrive after they are born. And is the money
arrived at Mr. Webb’s? Send me an account of the number of crowns you
realise; as I think we had better, since it is a transaction in this
country, keep our accounts in money of this country.
We have rains enough to set the mills going, which are essential to
your great iron bar. I suppose it is at present either made or making.
My health is better so long as the scirocco blows, and, but for my
daily expectation of Mary’s confinement, I should have been half
tempted to have come to see you. As it is, I shall wait till the boat
is finished. On the subject of your actual and your expected progress,
you will certainly allow me to hear from you.
Give my kindest regards to your mother and Mr. Gisborne--tell the
latter, whose billet I have neglected to answer, that I did so, under
the idea of addressing him in a post or two on a subject which gives
me considerable anxiety about you all. I mean the continuance of your
property in the British funds at this crisis of approaching revolution.
It is the business of a friend to say what he thinks without fear of
giving offence; and, if I were not a friend, argument is worth its
market-price anywhere.
Believe me, my dear Henry,
Your very faithful friend,
P. B. S.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.
_Florence, Oct. 28, 1819._
My dear Friends,
I receive this morning the strange and unexpected news, that my bill of
£200 has been returned to Mr. Webb protested. Ultimately this can be
nothing but delay, as I have only drawn from my banker’s hands so much
as to leave them still in possession of £80, and this I positively
know, and can prove by documents. By return of post, for I have not
only written to my banker, but to private friends, no doubt Henry will
be enabled to proceed. Let him meanwhile do all that can be done.
Meanwhile, to save time, could not money be obtained temporarily, at
Livorno, from Mr. W----, or Mr. G----, or any of your acquaintance, on
my bills at three or six months, indorsed by Mr. Gisborne and Henry, so
that he may go on with his work? If a month is of consequence, think of
this.
Be of good cheer, Madonna mia, all will go well. The inclosed is for
Henry, and was written before this news, as he will see; but it does
not, strange as it is, abate one atom of my cheer.
Accept, dear Mr. G., my best regards.
Yours faithfully,
P. B. S.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.
_Florence, Nov. 6, 1819._
My dear Friends,
I have just finished a letter of five sheets on Carlile’s affair,[29]
and am in hourly expectation of Mary’s confinement, you will imagine an
excuse for my silence.
I forbear to address you, as I had designed, on the subject of your
income as a public creditor of the English government, as it seems
you have not the exclusive management of your funds; and the peculiar
circumstances of the delusion are such that none but a very few persons
will ever be brought to see its instability but by the experience of
loss. If I were to convince you, Henry would probably be unable to
convince his uncle. In vindication, however, of what I have already
said, allow me to turn your attention to England at this _hour_.
In order to meet the national expenses, or rather that some approach
towards meeting them might seem to be made, a tax of £3,000,000 was
imposed. The first consequence of this has been a _defalcation_ in
the revenue at the rate of £3,600,000 a-year. Were the country in the
most tranquil and prosperous state, the minister, in such a condition
of affairs, must reduce the interest of the national debt, or add to
it; a process which would only insure the greater ultimate reduction
of the interest. But the people are nearly in a state of insurrection,
and the least unpopular noblemen perceive the necessity of conducting
a spirit, which it is no longer possible to oppose. For submitting to
this necessity--which, be assured, the haughty aristocrats unwillingly
did--Lord Fitzwilliam has been degraded from his situation of Lord
Lieutenant. An additional army of 11,500 men has received orders to be
organised. Everything is preparing for a bloody struggle, in which, if
the ministers succeed, they will assuredly diminish the interest of the
national debt, for no combination of the heaviest tyranny can raise the
taxes for its payment. If the people conquer, the public creditor will
equally suffer; for it is monstrous to imagine that they will submit to
the perpetual inheritance of a double aristocracy. They will perhaps
find some crown and church lands, and appropriate the tithes to make a
kind of compensation to the public creditor. They will confiscate the
estates of their political enemies. But all this will not pay a tenth
part of their debt. The existing government, atrocious as it is, is
the surest party to which a public creditor may attach himself. He may
reason that _it may last my time_, though in the event the ruin is more
complete than in the case of a popular revolution. I know you too well
to believe you capable of arguing in this manner; I only reason on how
things stand.
Your income may be reduced from £210 to £150, and then £100, and then
by the issue of immense quantities of paper to save the immediate cause
of one of the conflicting parties, to any value however small; or the
source of it may be cut off at once. The ministers had, I doubt not,
long since determined to establish an arbitrary government; and if
they had not determined so, they have now entangled themselves in that
consequence of their instinct as rulers, and if they recede they must
perish. They are, however, not receding, and we are on the eve of great
actions.
Kindest regards to Henry. I hope he is not stopped for want of money,
as I shall assuredly send him what he wants in a month from the date of
my last letter. I received his letter from Pistoia, and have no other
criticism to make on it, except the severest--that it is too short. How
goes on Portuguese--and Theocritus? I have deserted the odorous gardens
of literature, to journey across the great sandy desert of politics;
not, as you may imagine, without the hope of finding some enchanted
paradise. In all probability, I shall be overwhelmed by one of the
tempestuous columns which are forever traversing, with the speed of
a storm, and the confusion of a chaos, that pathless wilderness. You
meanwhile will be lamenting in some happy oasis that I do not return.
This is out-Calderonizing Muley. We have had lightning and rain here
in plenty. I like the Cascini very much, where I often walk alone,
watching the leaves, and the rising and falling of the Arno. I am full
of all kinds of literary plans.
Meanwhile, all yours most faithfully,
P. B. S.
[29] A letter (to Leigh Hunt) on the Trial of Richard Carlile for
publishing Paine’s _Age of Reason_, intended for insertion in the
_Examiner_.--Ed.
TO MRS. GISBORNE.
_Florence, Nov. 16, 1819._
Madonna,
I have been lately voyaging in a sea without my pilot, and although
my sail has often been torn, my boat become leaky, and the log lost,
I have yet sailed in a kind of way from island to island; some of
craggy and mountainous magnificence, some clothed with moss and
flowers, and radiant with fountains, some barren deserts. _I have been
reading Calderon without you._ I have read the “Cisma de Ingalaterra,”
the “Cabellos de Absolom,” and three or four others. These pieces,
inferior to those we read, at least to the “Principe Constante,”
in the splendour of particular passages, are perhaps superior in
their satisfying completeness. The “Cabellos de Absolom” is full of
the deepest and tenderest touches of nature. Nothing can be more
pathetically conceived than the character of old David, and the tender
and impartial love, overcoming all insults and all crimes, with which
he regards his conflicting and disobedient sons. The incest scene of
Amon and Tamar is perfectly tremendous. Well may Calderon say in the
person of the former--
Si sangre sin fuego hiere,
que fara sangre con fuego?
Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical
circumstance. It may be the excess of love or hate. It may be the
defiance of everything for the sake of another, which clothes itself in
the glory of the highest heroism, or it may be that cynical rage which,
confounding the good and the bad in existing opinions, breaks through
them for the purpose of rioting in selfishness and antipathy. Calderon,
following the Jewish historians, has represented Amon’s action in
the basest point of view--he is a prejudiced savage, acting what he
abhors, and abhorring that which is the unwilling party to his crime.
Adieu, Madonna, yours truly, P. B. S.
I transcribe you a passage from the Cisma de Ingalaterra--spoken by
“Carlos, Embaxador de Francia, enamorado de Ana Bolena.” Is there
anything in Petrarch finer than the second stanza?
Porque apenas el Sol se coronaba
de nueva luz en la estacion primeva,
quando yo en sus umbrales adoraba
segundo Sol en abreviada esfera;
la noche apenas tremula baxaba,
à solos mis deseos lisonjera,
quando un jardin, republica de flores,
era tercero fiel de mis amores.
Alli, el silencio de la noche fria,
el jazmin, que en las redes se enlazava.
el cristal de la fuente que corria,
el arroyo que à solas murmurava,
El viento que en las hojas se movia,
el Aura que en las flores respirava;
todo era amor’; què mucho, si en tal calma
aves, fuentes, y flores tienen alma!
No has visto providente y oficiosa,
mover el ayre iluminada aveja,
que hasta beber la purpura a la rosa
ya se acerca cobarde, y ya se alexa?
No has visto enamorada mariposa,
dar cercos a la luz, hasta que dexa,
en monumento facil abrasadas
las alas de color tornasoladas?
Assi mi amor, cobarde muchos dias,
tornos hizo a la rosa y a la llama;
temor che ha sido entre cenizas frias,
tantas vezes llorado de quien ama;
pero el amor, que vence con porfias,
y la ocasion, que con disculpas llama,
me animaron, y aveja y mariposa
quemè las alas, y lleguè a la rosa.
TO MR. JOHN GISBORNE.
_Florence, Nov. 16, 1819._
My dear Sir,
I envy you the first reading of Theocritus. Were not the Greeks a
glorious people? What is there, as Job says of the Leviathan, like
unto them? If the army of Nicias had not been defeated under the walls
of Syracuse; if the Athenians had, acquiring Sicily, held the balance
between Rome and Carthage, sent garrisons to the Greek colonies in
the south of Italy, Rome might have been all that its intellectual
condition entitled it to be, a tributary, not the conqueror of Greece;
the Macedonian power would never have attained to the dictatorship of
the civilized states of the world. Who knows whether, under the steady
progress which philosophy and social institutions would have made,
(for, in the age to which I refer, their progress was both rapid and
secure,) among a people of the most perfect physical organization,
whether the Christian religion would have arisen, or the barbarians
have overwhelmed the wrecks of civilization which had survived the
conquest and tyranny of the Romans? What, then, should we have been?
As it is, all of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in
unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth. We are
stuffed full of prejudices; and our natural passions are so managed,
that if we restrain them we grow intolerant and precise, because we
restrain them not according to reason, but according to error; and if
we do not restrain them, we do all sorts of mischief to ourselves and
others. Our imagination and understanding are alike subjected to rules
the most absurd;--so much for Theocritus and the Greeks.[30]
In spite of all your arguments, I wish your money were out of the
funds. This middle course which you speak of, and which may probably
have place, will amount to your losing not all your income, nor
retaining all, but have the half taken away. I feel intimately
persuaded, whatever political forms may have place in England, that
no party can continue many years, perhaps not many months, in the
administration, without diminishing the interest of the national
debt.--And once having commenced--and having done so safely--where will
it end?
Give Henry my kindest thanks for his most interesting letter, and bid
him expect one from me by the next post.
Mary and the babe continue well.--Last night we had a magnificent
thunder-storm, with claps that shook the house like an earthquake. Both
Mary and C---- unite with me in kindest remembrances to all.
Most faithfully yours obliged,
P. B. S.
[30] “I subjoin here,” says Mrs. Shelley, “a fragment of a letter, I
know not to whom addressed:--
“It is probable that you will be earnest to employ the sacred
talisman of language. To acquire these you are now necessitated to
sacrifice many hours of the time, when, instead of being conversant
with particles and verbs, your nature incites you to contemplation
and inquiry concerning the objects which they conceal. You desire
to enjoy the beauties of eloquence and poetry--to sympathise in the
original language with the institutors and martyrs of ancient freedom.
The generous and inspiriting examples of philosophy and virtue you
desire intimately to know and feel; not as mere facts detailing names,
and dates, and motions of the human body, but clothed in the very
language of the actors,--that language dictated by and expressive of
the passions and principles that governed their conduct. Facts are not
what we want to know in poetry, in history, in the lives of individual
men, in satire, or in panegyric. They are the mere divisions, the
arbitrary points on which we hang, and to which we refer those delicate
and evanescent hues of mind, which language delights and instructs us
in precise proportion as it expresses. What is a translation of Homer
into English? A person who is ignorant of Greek need only look at
Paradise Lost or the tragedy of Lear translated into French, to obtain
an analogical conception of its worthless and miserable inadequacy.
Tacitus, or Livius, or Herodotus, are equally undelightful and
uninstructive in translation. You require to know and to be intimate
with those persons who have acted a distinguished part to benefit,
to enlighten, or even to pervert and injure humankind. Before you
can do this, four years are yet to be consumed in the discipline of
the ancient languages, and those of modern Europe, which you only
imperfectly know, and which conceal from your intimacy such names
as Ariosto, Tasso, Petrarch, and Macchiavelli; or Goethe, Schiller,
Wieland, &c. The French language you, like every other respectable
woman, already know; and if the great name of Rousseau did not redeem
it, it would have been perhaps as well that you had remained entirely
ignorant of it.”
TO HENRY REVELEY.
_Florence, Nov. 17th, 1819._
My dear Henry,
I was exceedingly interested by your letter, and I cannot but thank
you for overcoming the inaptitude of a long disuse at my request, for
my pleasure. It is a great thing done, the successful casting of the
cylinder--may it be a happy auspice for what is to follow! I hope, in a
few posts, to remit the necessary money for the completion. Meanwhile,
are not those portions of the work which can be done without expense,
saving time in their progress? Do you think you lose much money or time
by this delay?
All that you say of the alteration in the form of the boat strikes me,
though one of the multitude in this respect, as improvement. I long
to get aboard her, and be an unworthy partaker in the glory of the
astonishment of the Livornese, when she returns from her cruise round
Melloria. When do you think she will be fit for sea?
Your volcanic description of the birth of the cylinder is very
characteristic of you, and of it.[31] One might imagine God, when he
made the earth, and saw the granite mountains and flinty promontories
flow into their craggy forms, and the splendour of their fusion filling
millions of miles of the void space, like the tail of a comet, so
looking, so delighting in his work. God sees his machine spinning round
the sun, and delights in its success, and has taken out patents to
supply all the suns in space with the same manufacture. Your boat will
be to the ocean of water, what this earth is to the ocean of ether--a
prosperous and swift voyager.
When shall we see you all? _You_ not, I suppose, till your boat is
ready to sail--and then, if not before, I must, of course, come to
Livorno. Our plans for the winter are yet scarcely defined; they
tend towards our spending February and March at Pisa, where our
communications will not be so distant, nor so epistolary. C---- left
us a week ago, not without many lamentations, as all true lovers
pay on such occasions. He is to write me an account of the Trieste
steam-boat, which I will transmit to you.
Mrs. Shelley and Miss C---- return you their kindest salutations, with
interest.
Most affectionately yours,
P. B. S.
[31] The passage in Mr. Reveley’s letter referred to by Shelley was as
follows:--
“_Friday, 12th Nov._
“The event is now past--both the steam cylinder and air-pump were cast
at three o’clock this afternoon. At two o’clock this morning I repaired
to the mill to see that the preliminary operations, upon which the
ultimate success of a _fount_ greatly depends, were conducted with
proper attention. The moulds are buried in a pit, made close, before
the mouth of the furnace, so that the melted metal, when the plug is
driven in, may run easily into them, and fill up the vacant space left
between the core and the shell, in order to form the desired cylinders.
The fire was lighted in the furnace at nine, and in three hours the
metal was fused. At three o’clock it was ready to cast, the fusion
being remarkably rapid, owing to the perfection of the furnace. The
metal was also heated to an extreme degree, boiling with fury, and
seeming to dance with the pleasure of running into its proper form.
The plug was struck, and a massy stream of a bluish dazzling whiteness
filled the moulds in the twinkling of a shooting star. The castings
will not be cool enough to be drawn up till to-morrow afternoon; but,
to judge from all appearances, I expect them to be perfect.
“_Saturday, 13th Nov._
“They have been excavated and drawn up. I have examined them and found
them really perfect; they are massive and strong to bear any usage and
sea-water, in _sæcula sæculorum_ I am now going on gently with the
brass-work, which does not require any immediate expenses, and which I
attend to entirely myself. I have no workmen about me at present.”
TO HENRY REVELEY.
_Florence, 18th Dec., 1819._
My dear Henry,
You see, as I said, it only amounts to delay, all this abominable
entanglement. I send you 484 dollars, or ordinary francesconi, I
suppose, but you will tell me what you receive in Tuscan money, if they
are not--the produce of £100. So my heart is a little lightened, which,
I assure you, was heavy enough until this moment, on your account. I
write to Messrs. Ward to pay you.
I have received no satisfactory letter from my bankers, but I must
expect it every week--or, at least, in a month from this date, when I
will not fail to transmit you the remainder of what may be necessary.
Every body here is talking of a steam-ship which is building at
Leghorn; one person said, as if he knew the whole affair, that he was
waiting in Tuscany to take his departure to Naples in it. Your name
has not, to my knowledge, been mentioned. I think you would do well to
encourage this publicity.
I have better health than I have known for a long time--ready for
any stormy cruise. When will the ship be ready to sail? We have been
feeding ourselves with the hope that Mr. Gisborne and your mother would
have paid us their promised visit. I did not even hope, perhaps not
even wish, that you should, until the engine is finished. My regret
at this failure has several times impelled me to go to Leghorn--but
I have always resisted the temptation. Ask them, entreat them, from
me, to appoint some early day. We have a bed and room, and every thing
prepared.
I write in great haste, as you may see. Ever believe me, my dear Henry,
your attached friend,
P. B. S.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.
_Florence, Dec. 23d, 1819._
My dear Friends,
I suffered more pain than it would be manly to confess, or than you
can easily conceive, from that wretched uncertainty about the money.
At last, however, it is certain that you will encounter no further
check in the receiving supplies, and a weight is taken from my spirits,
which, in spite of many other causes of discomfort, makes itself known
to have been a heavy load, by the lightness which I now feel in writing
to you.
So the steam-boat will take three months to finish? The vernal equinox
will be over by that time, and the early wakening of the year have
paved the Mediterranean with calm. Among other circumstances to regret
in this delay, it is so far well that our first cruise will be made in
serene weather.
I send you enclosed a mandate for 396 francesconi, which is what M.
Torlonia incorrectly designates a hundred pounds--but as we count in
the money of the country, that need make no difference to us.
I have just finished an additional act to “Prometheus,” which Mary
is now transcribing, and which will be enclosed for your inspection
before it is transmitted to the bookseller. I am engaged in a political
work--I am busy enough, and if the faculties of my mind were not
imprisoned within a mind, whose bars are daily cares and vulgar
difficulties, I might yet do something--but as it is--
Mary is well--but for this affair in London I think her spirits would
be good. What shall I--what can I--what ought I to do? You cannot
picture to yourself my perplexity.
Adieu, my dear friends.
Ever yours, faithfully attached,
P. B. S.
TO MR. JOHN GISBORNE.
_Florence, Jan. 25th, 1820._
My dear Sir,
We have suddenly taken the determination to avail ourselves of this
lovely weather to approach you as far as Pisa. I need not assure
you--unless my malady should violently return--you will see me at
Leghorn.
We _embark_; and I promise myself the delight of the sky, the water,
and the mountains. I must suffer at any rate, but I expect to suffer
less in a boat than in a carriage. I have many things to say, which let
me reserve till we meet.
I sympathise in all your good news, as I have done in your ill. Let
Henry take care of himself, and not, desiring to combine too many
advantages, check the progress of his recovery, the greatest of all.
Remember me affectionately to him and to Mrs. Gisborne, and accept for
yourself my unalterable sentiments of regard. Meanwhile, _consider well
your plans_, which I only half understand.
Ever most faithfully yours,
P. B. Shelley.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.
_Pisa, Feb. 9th, 1820._
Pray let us see you soon, or our threat may cost both us and you
something--a visit to Livorno. The stage direction on the present
occasion is, “exit Moonshine and enter Wall;” or rather four walls, who
surround and take prisoners the Galan and Dama.
Seriously, pray do not disappoint us. We shall watch the sky, and the
death of the Scirocco must be the birth of your arrival.
Mary and I are going to study mathematics. We design to take the most
compendious, yet certain methods of arriving at the great results. We
believe that your right-angled Triangle will contain the solution of
the problem of how to proceed.
Do not write but _come_. Mary is too idle to write, but all that she
has to say is _come_. She joins with me in condemning the moonlight
plan. Indeed we ought not to be so selfish as to allow you to come at
all, if it is to cost you all the fatigue and annoyance of returning
the same night. But it will not be--so adieu.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.
_Pisa, April 23, 1820._
My dear Friends,
We were much pained to hear of the illness you all seem to have been
suffering, and still more at the apparent dejection of your last
letter. We are in daily expectation this lovely weather of seeing
you, and I think the change of air and scene might be good for your
health and spirits, even if _we_ cannot enliven you. I shall have some
business at Livorno soon; and I thought of coming to fetch you, but
I have changed my plan, and mean to return with you, that I may save
myself two journeys.
I have been thinking, and talking, and reading Agriculture this last
week. But I am very anxious to see you, especially now as instead of
six hours, you give us thirty-six, or perhaps more. I shall hear of the
steam-engine, and you will hear of _our_ plans, when we meet, which
will be in so short a time that I neither inquire nor communicate.
Ever affectionately yours,
P. B. Shelley.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.
(LONDON).
_Pisa, May 26th, 1820._
My dear Friends,
I write to you thus early, because I have determined to accept of your
kind offer about the correction of “Prometheus.” The bookseller makes
difficulties about sending the proofs to me, and to whom else can I
so well entrust what I am so much interested in having done well;
and to whom would I prefer to owe the recollection of an additional
kindness done to me? I enclose you two little papers of corrections
and additions;--I do not think you will find any difficulty in
interpolating them into their proper places.
Well, how do you like London, and your journey; the Alps in their
beauty and their eternity; Paris in its slight and transitory colours;
and the wearisome plains of France--and the _moral_ people with
whom you drank tea last night? Above all, _how_ are you? And of the
last question, believe me, we are now most anxiously waiting for a
reply--until which I will say nothing, nor ask anything. I rely on the
journal with as much security as if it were already written.
I am just returned from a visit to Leghorn, Casciano, and your old
fortress at Sant’ Elmo. I bought the vases you saw for about twenty
sequins less than Micale asked, and had them packed up, and, by the
polite assistance of your friend, Mr. Guebhard, sent them on board. I
found your Giuseppe very useful in all this business. He got me tea
and breakfast, and I slept in your house, and departed early the next
morning for Casciano. Everything seems in excellent order at Casa
Ricci--garden, pigeons, tables, chairs, and beds. As I did not find
my bed sealed up, I left it as I found it. What a glorious prospect
you had from the windows of Sant’ Elmo! The enormous chain of the
Apennines, with its many-folded ridges, islanded in the misty distance
of the air; the sea, so immensely distant, appearing as at your feet;
and the prodigious expanse of the plain of Pisa, and the dark green
marshes lessened almost to a strip by the height of the blue mountains
overhanging them. Then the wild and unreclaimed fertility of the
foreground, and the chesnut trees, whose vivid foliage made a sort
of resting-place to the sense before it darted itself to the jagged
horizon of this prospect. I was altogether delighted. I had a respite
from my nervous symptoms, which was compensated to me by a violent cold
in the head. There was a tradition about you at Sant’ Elmo--_An English
family that had lived here in the time of the French_. The doctor, too,
at the Bagni, knew you. The house is in a most dilapidated condition,
but I suppose all that is curable.
We go to the Bagni next month--but still direct to Pisa as safest. I
shall write to you the _ultimates_ of my commission in my next letter.
I am undergoing a course of the Pisan baths, on which I lay no singular
stress--but they soothe. I ought to have peace of mind, leisure,
tranquillity; this I expect soon. Our anxiety about Godwin is very
great, and any information that you could give a day or two earlier
than he might, respecting any decisive event in his law-suit, would be
a great relief. Your impressions about Godwin (I speak especially to
Madonna mia, who had known him before,) will especially interest me.
You know that added years only add to my admiration of his intellectual
powers, and even the moral resources of his character. Of my other
friends I say nothing. To see Hunt is to like him; and there is one
other recommendation which he has to you, he is my friend. To know
H----, if any one can know him, is to know something very unlike, and
inexpressibly superior, to the great mass of men.
Will Henry write me an adamantine letter, flowing, not like the words
of Sophocles, with honey, but molten brass and iron, and bristling with
wheels and teeth? I saw his steam-boat asleep under the walls. I was
afraid to waken it, and ask it whether it was dreaming of him, for the
same reason that I would have refrained from awakening Ariadne, after
Theseus had left her--unless I had been Bacchus.
Affectionately and anxiously yours,
P. B. S.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE
(LONDON).
My dear Friends,
I am to a certain degree indifferent as to the reply to our last
proposal, and, therefore, will not allude to it. Permit me only on
subjects of this nature to express one sentiment, which you would have
given me credit for, even if not expressed. Let no considerations of
_my_ interest, or any retrospect to the source from which the funds
were supplied, modify your decision as to returning and pursuing or
abandoning the adventure of the steam-engine. My object was solely
your true advantage, and it is when I am baffled of this, by any
attention to a mere form, that I shall be ill requited. Nay, more,
I think it for your interest, should you obtain almost whatever
situation for Henry, to accept Clementi’s proposal, and remain in
England;--not without accepting it, for it does no more than balance
the difference of expense between Italy and London; and if you have
any trust in the justice of my moral sense, and believe that in what
concerns true honour and virtuous conduct in life, I am an experienced
counsellor, you will not hesitate--these things being equal--to accept
this proposal. The opposition I made, while you were in Italy, to the
abandonment of the steam-boat project, was founded, you well know, on
the motives which have influenced everything that ever has guided,
or ever will guide, anything that I can do or say respecting you.
I thought it against Henry’s interest. I think it now against his
interest that he and you should abandon your prospects in England. As
to us--we are uncertain people, who are chased by the spirits of our
destiny from purpose to purpose, like clouds by the wind.
There is one thing more to be said. If you decide to remain in England,
assuredly it would be foolish to return. Your journey would cost you
between £100 and £200, a sum far greater than you could expect to save
by the increased price by which you would sell your things. Remit the
matter to me, and I will cast off my habitual character, and attend to
the minutest points. With Mr. G----’s, devil take his name, I can’t
write it--you know who’s, assistance, all this might be accomplished in
such a manner as to save a very considerable sum. Though I shall suffer
from your decision in the proportion as your society is delightful
to me, I cannot forbear expressing my persuasion, that the time, the
expense, and the trouble of returning to Italy, if your ultimate
decision be to settle in London, ought all to be spared. A year, a
month, a week, at Henry’s age, and with his purposes, ought not to
be unemployed. It was the depth with which I felt this truth, which
impelled me to incite him to this adventure of the steam-boat.
TO MRS. SHELLEY
(LEGHORN).
_Casa Silva, Sunday morning, July, 1820._
My dear Love,
I believe I shall have taken a very pleasant and spacious apartment at
the Bagni for three months. It is as all the others are--dear. I shall
give forty or forty-five sequins for the three months, but as yet I do
not know which. I could get others something cheaper, and a great deal
worse; but if we would write, it is requisite to have space.
To-morrow evening, or the following morning, you will probably see
me. T---- is planning a journey to England to secure his property in
the event of a revolution, which, he is persuaded, is on the eve of
exploding. I neither believe that, nor do I fear that the consequences
will be so immediately destructive to the existing forms of social
order. Money will be delayed, and the exchange reduced very low,
and my annuity and ****, on account of these being _money_, will be
in some danger; but land is quite safe. Besides, it will not be so
rapid. Let us hope we shall have a reform. T---- will be lulled into
security, while the slow progress of things is still flowing on, after
this affair of the Queen may appear to be blown over. There are bad
news from Palermo: the soldiers resisted the people, and a terrible
slaughter, amounting, it is said, to four thousand men, ensued. The
event, however, was as it should be. Sicily, like Naples, is free. By
the brief and partial accounts of the Florence paper, it appears that
the enthusiasm of the people was prodigious, and that the women fought
from the houses, raining down boiling oil on the assailants.
I am promised a bill on Vienna on the 5th, the day on which my note
will be paid, and the day on which I purpose to leave Leghorn. *** is
very unhappy at the idea of T.’s going to England, though she seems to
feel the necessity of it. Some time or other he must go to settle his
affairs, and they seem to agree that this is the best opportunity. _I_
have no thought of leaving Italy. The best thing we can do is to save
money, and, if things take a decided turn, (which I am convinced they
will at last, but not perhaps for two or three years,) it will be time
for me to assert my rights, and preserve my annuity. Meanwhile, another
event may decide us.
Kiss sweet babe, and kiss yourself for me--I love you affectionately.
P. B. S.
_Sunday evening._
I have taken the house for forty sequins for three months--a good
bargain, and a very good house as things go--this is about thirteen
sequins a month. To-morrow I go to look over the inventory; expect me
therefore on Tuesday morning.
TO MRS. SHELLEY
(BAGNI DI SAN GIULIANO).
_Casa Ricci_ [_Leghorn_],
_Sept. 1st, 1820_.
I am afraid, my dearest, that I shall not be able to be with you so
soon as to-morrow evening, though I shall use every exertion. Del Rosso
I have not seen, nor shall until this evening. Jackson I have, and he
is to drink tea with us this evening, and bring the _Constitutionnel_.
You will have seen the papers, but I doubt that they will not contain
the latest and most important news. It is certain, by private letters
from merchants, that a serious insurrection has broken out at Paris,
and the _reports_ last night are, that an attack made by the populace
on the Tuileries still continued when the last accounts came away. At
Naples the constitutional party have declared to the Austrian minister,
that if the Emperor should make war on them, their first action would
be to put to death _all_ the members of the royal family--a necessary
and most just measure, when the forces of the combatants, as well as
the merits of their respective causes, are so unequal. That kings
should be everywhere the hostages for liberty were admirable.
What will become of the Gisbornes, or of the English, at Paris? How
soon will England itself, and perhaps Italy, be caught by the sacred
fire? And what, to come from the solar system to a grain of sand,
_shall we do_?
Kiss babe for me, and your own self. I am somewhat better, but my side
still vexes me--a little.
Your affectionate S.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “QUARTERLY REVIEW.”[32]
Sir,
Should you cast your eye on the signature of this letter before
you read the contents, you might imagine that they related to a
slanderous paper which appeared in your Review some time since. I
never notice anonymous attacks. The wretch who wrote it has doubtless
the additional reward of a consciousness of his motives, besides the
thirty guineas a sheet, or whatever it is that you pay him. Of course
you cannot be answerable for all the writings which you edit, and _I_
certainly bear you no ill-will for having edited the abuse to which I
allude--indeed, I was too much amused by being compared to Pharaoh, not
readily to forgive editor, printer, publisher, stitcher, or any one,
except the despicable writer, connected with something so exquisitely
entertaining. Seriously speaking, I am not in the habit of permitting
myself to be disturbed by what is said or written of me, though, I dare
say, I may be condemned sometimes justly enough. But I feel, in respect
to the writer in question, that “I am there sitting, where he durst not
soar.”
The case is different with the unfortunate subject of this letter,
the author of Endymion, to whose feelings and situation I entreat you
to allow me to call your attention. I write considerably in the dark;
but if it is Mr. Gifford that I am addressing, I am persuaded that in
an appeal to his humanity and justice, he will acknowledge the _fas
ab hoste doceri_. I am aware that the first duty of a Reviewer is
towards the public, and I am willing to confess that Endymion is a poem
considerably defective, and that, perhaps, it deserved as much censure
as the pages of your Review record against it; but, not to mention
that there is a certain contemptuousness of phraseology from which it
is difficult for a critic to abstain, in the review of Endymion, I
do not think that the writer has given it its due praise. Surely the
poem, with all its faults, is a very remarkable production for a man
of Keats’s age, and the promise of ultimate excellence is such as has
rarely been afforded even by such as have afterwards attained high
literary eminence. Look at book ii. line 833, &c., and book iii. line
113 to 120--read down that page, and then again from line 193. I could
cite many other passages, to convince you that it deserved milder
usage. Why it should have been reviewed at all, excepting for the
purpose of bringing its excellences into notice, I cannot conceive, for
it was very little read, and there was no danger that it should become
a model to the age of that false taste, with which I confess that it is
replenished.
Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by this review,
which, I am persuaded, was not written with any intention of producing
the effect, to which it has, at least, greatly contributed, of
embittering his existence, and inducing a disease from which there are
now but faint hopes of his recovery. The first effects are described to
me to have resembled insanity, and it was by assiduous watching that
he was restrained from effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his
sufferings at length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the
lungs, and the usual process of consumption appears to have begun. He
is coming to pay me a visit in Italy; but I fear that unless his mind
can be kept tranquil, little is to be hoped from the mere influence of
climate.
But let me not extort anything from your pity. I have just seen a
second volume, published by him evidently in careless despair. I have
desired my bookseller to send you a copy, and allow me to solicit your
especial attention to the fragment of a poem entitled “Hyperion,”
the composition of which was checked by the Review in question. The
great proportion of this piece is surely in the very highest style of
poetry. I speak impartially, for the canons of taste to which Keats has
conformed in his other compositions are the very reverse of my own.
I leave you to judge for yourself: it would be an insult to you to
suppose that from motives, however honourable, you would lend yourself
to a deception of the public.
* * * * *
[32] This letter was never sent.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]
TO MR. JOHN GISBORNE
(AT LEGHORN).
_Pisa, oggi [November, 1820]._
My dear Sir,
I send you the Phædon and Tacitus. I congratulate you on your conquest
of the Iliad. You must have been astonished at the perpetually
increasing magnificence of the last seven books. Homer there truly
begins to be himself. The battle of the Scamander, the funeral of
Patroclus, and the high and solemn close of the whole bloody tale in
tenderness and inexpiable sorrow, are wrought in a manner incomparable
with any thing of the same kind. The Odyssey is sweet, but there is
nothing like this.
_I_ am bathing myself in the light and odour of the flowery and
starry Autos. I have read them all more than once. Henry will tell
you how much I am in love with Pacchiani. I suffer from my disease
considerably. Henry will also tell you how much, and how whimsically,
he alarmed me last night.
My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Gisborne, and best wishes for your
health and happiness.
Faithfully yours,
P. B. S.
I have a new Calderon coming from Paris.
TO HENRY REVELEY.
_Pisa, Tuesday, 1 o’clock,
April 17th, 1821._
My dear Henry,
Our ducking last night has added fire, instead of quenching the
nautical ardour which produced it; and I consider it a good omen in
any enterprise, that it begins in evil: as being more probable that it
will end in good. I hope _you_ have not suffered from it. I am rather
feverish, but very well as to the side, whence I expected the worst
consequences. I send you directions for the complete equipment of our
boat, since you have so kindly promised to undertake it. In putting
into execution, a little more or less expense in so trifling an affair,
is to be disregarded. I need not say that the approaching season
invites expedition. You can put her in hand immediately, and write the
day on which we may come for her.
We expect with impatience the arrival of our false friends, who have so
long cheated us with delay; and Mary unites with me in desiring, that,
as _you_ participated equally in the crime, you should not be omitted
in the expiation.
All good be with you.--Adieu.
Yours faithfully,
S.
Williams desires to be kindly remembered to you, and begs to present
his compliments to Mr. and Mrs. G., and--heaven knows what.
TO HENRY REVELEY.
_Pisa, April 19th [1821]._
My dear Henry,
The rullock, or place for the oar, ought not to be placed where the
oar-pins are now, but ought to be nearer to the mast; as near as
possible, indeed, so that the rower has room to sit. In addition let
a false keel be made in this shape, so as to be four inches deep at
the stern, and to decrease towards the prow. It may be as thin as you
please.
Tell Mr. and Mrs. G---- that I have read the Numancia, and after wading
through the singular stupidity of the first act, began to be greatly
delighted, and, at length, interested in a very high degree, by the
power of the writer in awakening pity and admiration, in which I hardly
know by whom he is excelled. There is little, I allow, in a strict
sense, to be called _poetry_ in this play; but the command of language,
and the harmony of versification, is so great as to deceive one into an
idea that it is poetry.
Adieu.--We shall see you soon.
Yours ever truly,
S.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.
_Bagni, Tuesday Evening,
(June 5th, 1821.)_
My dear Friends,
We anxiously expect your arrival at the Baths; but as I am persuaded
that you will spend as much time with us as you can save from your
necessary occupations before your departure, I will forbear to vex you
with importunity. My health does not permit me to spend many hours
from home. I have been engaged these last days in composing a poem on
the death of Keats, which will shortly be finished; and I anticipate
the pleasure of reading it to you, as some of the very few persons who
will be interested in it and understand it. It is a highly-wrought
_piece of art_, and perhaps better, in point of composition, than
anything I have written.
I have obtained a purchaser for some of the articles of your three
lists, a catalogue of which I subjoin. I shall do my utmost to get
more; could you not send me a complete list of your _furniture_, as I
have had inquiries made about chests of drawers, &c.
* * * * *
My unfortunate box! it contained a chaos of the elements of Charles I.
If the idea of the _creator_ had been packed up with them, it would
have shared the same fate; and that, I am afraid, has undergone another
sort of shipwreck.
* * * * *
Very faithfully and affectionately yours,
S.
TO MR. JOHN GISBORNE.
_Pisa, Saturday,
(June 16, 1821.)_
My dear Friend,
I have received the heart-rending account of the closing scene of the
great genius whom envy and ingratitude scourged out of the world.[33]
I do not think that if I had seen it before, I could have composed my
poem. The enthusiasm of the imagination would have overpowered the
sentiment.
As it is, I have finished my Elegy;[34] and this day I send it to the
press at Pisa. You shall have a copy the moment it is completed. I
think it will please you. I have dipped my pen in consuming fire for
his destroyers; otherwise the style is calm and solemn.
Pray, when shall we see you? Or are the streams of Helicon less
salutary than sea-bathing for the nerves? Give us as much as you can
before you go to England, and rather divide the term than not come soon.
Mrs. * * * wishes that none of the books, desk, &c., should be packed
up with the piano; but that they should be sent, one by one, by
Pepi. Address them to _me_ at her house. She desired me to have them
addressed to _me_, why I know not.
A droll circumstance has occurred. Queen Mab, a poem written by me
when very young, in the most furious style, with long notes against
Jesus Christ, and God the Father, and the king, and bishops, and
marriage, and the devil knows what, is just published by one of the low
booksellers in the Strand, against my wish and consent, and all the
people are at loggerheads about it. H. S.[35] gives me this account.
You may imagine how much I am amused. For the sake of a dignified
appearance, however, and really because I wish to protest against all
the bad poetry in it, I have given orders to say that it is all done
against my desire, and have directed my attorney to apply to Chancery
for an injunction, which he will not get.
I am pretty ill, I thank you, just now; but I hope you are better.
Most affectionately yours,
P. B. S.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] John Keats.
[34] Adonais.
[35] Horace Smith.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.
_Bagni, Friday Night_,
(_July 13th, 1821._)
My dear Friends,
I have been expecting every day a writ to attend at your court at
Guebhard’s, whence you know it is settled that I should conduct you
hither to spend your last days in Italy. A thousand thanks for your
maps; in return for which I send you the only copy of Adonais the
printer has yet delivered. I wish I could say, as Glaucus could, in the
exchange for the arms of Diomed,--ἑκατόμβιοι ἐννεαβοίων.
* * * * *
I will only remind you of Faust; my desire for the conclusion of which
is only exceeded by my desire to welcome you. Do you observe any traces
of him in the poem I send you? Poets--the best of them, are a very
cameleonic race; they take the colour not only of what they feed on,
but of the very leaves under which they pass.
Mary is just on the verge of finishing her novel; but it cannot be in
time for you to take to England.--Farewell.
Most faithfully yours,
P. B. S.
TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.
_Bagni, July 19th_ [_1821_].
My dearest Friends,
I am fully repaid for the painful emotions from which some verses of
my poem sprung, by your sympathy and approbation--which is all the
reward I expect--and as much as I desire. It is not for me to judge
whether, in the high praise your feelings assign me, you are right
or wrong. The poet and the man are two different natures; though they
exist together, they may be unconscious of each other, and incapable
of deciding on each other’s powers and efforts by any reflex act. The
decision of the cause, whether or no _I_ am a poet, is removed from
the present time to the hour when our posterity shall assemble; but
the court is a very severe one, and I fear that the verdict will be,
“Guilty--death!”
I shall be with you on the first summons. I hope that the time you have
reserved for us, “this bank and shoal of time,” is not so short as you
once talked of.
In haste, most affectionately yours,
P. B. S.
TO MRS. SHELLEY
(BAGNI DI PISA).
_Lione Bianco, Florence_,
(_Tuesday, August 1st, 1821_.)
My dearest Love,
I shall not return this evening; nor, unless I have better success,
to-morrow. I have seen many houses, but very few within the compass
of our powers; and, even in those which seem to suit, nothing is more
difficult than to bring the proprietors to terms. I congratulate myself
on having taken the season in time, as there is great expectation
of Florence being full next winter. I shall do my utmost to return
to-morrow evening. You may expect me about ten or eleven o’clock, as I
shall purposely be late, to spare myself the excessive heat.
The Gisbornes (four o’clock, Tuesday,) are just set out in a
diligence-and-four, for Bologna. They have promised to write
from Paris. I spent three hours this morning principally in the
contemplation of the Niobe, and of a favourite Apollo; all worldly
thoughts and cares seem to vanish from before the sublime emotions such
spectacles create; and I am deeply impressed with the great difference
of happiness enjoyed by those who live at a distance from these
incarnations of all that the finest minds have conceived of beauty, and
those who can resort to their company at pleasure. What should we think
if we were forbidden to read the great writers who have left us their
works? And yet to be forbidden to live at Florence or Rome, is an evil
of the same kind, of scarcely less magnitude.
I am delighted to hear that the W.’s are with you. I am convinced
that Williams must persevere in the use of the doccia. Give my most
affectionate remembrances to them. I shall know all the houses in
Florence, and can give W. a good account of them all. You have not
sent my passport, and I must get home as I can. I suppose you did not
receive my note.
I grudge my sequins for a carriage; but I have suffered from the sun
and the fatigue, and dare not expose myself to that which is necessary
for house-hunting.
Kiss little babe, and how is he? but I hope to see him fast asleep
to-morrow night. And pray, dearest Mary, have some of your novel
prepared for my return.
Your ever affectionate,
S.
TO MRS. SHELLEY
(BAGNI DI PISA).
_Bologna, Agosto 6_ [_1821_].
Dearest mine,
I am at Bologna, and the caravella is ordered for Ravenna. I have been
detained, by having made an embarrassing and inexplicable arrangement,
more than twelve hours; or I should have arrived at Bologna last night
instead of this morning.
Though I have travelled all night at the rate of two miles and a half
an hour, in a little open calesso, I am perfectly well in health. One
would think that I were the spaniel of Destiny, for the more she knocks
me about, the more I fawn on her. I had an overturn about daybreak; the
old horse stumbled, and threw me and the fat vetturino into a slope of
meadow, over the hedge. My angular figure stuck where it was pitched;
but my vetturino’s spherical form rolled fairly to the bottom of the
hill, and that with so few symptoms of reluctance in the life that
animated it, that my ridicule (for it was the drollest sight in the
world) was suppressed by my fear that the poor devil had been hurt. But
he was very well, and we continued our journey with great success.
* * * * *
My love to the Williams’s. Kiss my pretty one, and accept an
affectionate one for yourself from me. The chaise waits. I will write
the first night from Ravenna at length.
Yours ever,
S.
TO MRS. SHELLEY.
_Ravenna, August 7, 1821._
My dearest Mary,
I arrived last night at ten o’clock, and sat up talking with Lord Byron
until five this morning. I then went to sleep, and now awake at eleven,
and having despatched my breakfast as quick as possible, mean to devote
the interval until twelve, when the post departs, to you.
Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted to see me. He has in fact
completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the reverse
of that which he led at Venice. He has a permanent sort of liaison with
Contessa Giuccioli, who is now at Florence, and seems from her letters
to be a very amiable woman. She is waiting there until something
shall be decided as to their emigration to Switzerland or stay in
Italy; which is yet undetermined on either side. She was compelled
to escape from the Papal territory in great haste, as measures had
already been taken to place her in a convent, where she would have
been unrelentingly confined for life. The oppression of the marriage
contract, as existing in the laws and opinions of Italy, though less
frequently exercised, is far severer than that of England. I tremble to
think of what poor Emilia is destined to.
Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself in Venice: his state of
debility was such that he was unable to digest any food, he was
consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have perished, but for
this attachment, which has reclaimed him from the excesses into which
he threw himself from carelessness and pride, rather than taste. Poor
fellow! he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and literature.
He has given me a number of the most interesting details on the former
subject, but we will not speak of them in a letter. Fletcher is here,
and as if like a shadow, he waxed and waned with the substance of his
master: Fletcher also has recovered his good looks, and from amidst the
unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest of flaxen locks put forth.
We talked a great deal of poetry, and such matters last night; and as
usual differed, and I think more than ever. He affects to patronize a
system of criticism fit for the production of mediocrity, and although
all his fine poems and passages have been produced in defiance of this
system, yet I recognise the pernicious effects of it in the Doge of
Venice; and it will cramp and limit his future efforts however great
they may be, unless he gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it,
or rather he himself read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole.
* * * * *
Lord Byron has also told me of a circumstance that shocks me
exceedingly; because it exhibits a degree of desperate and wicked
malice for which I am at a loss to account. When I hear such things my
patience and my philosophy are put to a severe proof, whilst I refrain
from seeking out some obscure hiding-place, where the countenance of
man may never meet me more.
* * * * *
Imagine my despair of good, imagine how it is possible that one of
so weak and sensitive a nature as mine can run further the gauntlet
through this hellish society of men. _You_ should write to the Hoppners
a letter refuting the charge, in case you believe, and know, and can
prove that it is false; stating the grounds and proofs of your belief.
I need not dictate what you should say; nor, I hope, inspire you with
warmth to rebut a charge, which you only can effectually rebut. If you
will send the letter to me here, I will forward it to the Hoppners.
Lord Byron is not up, I do not know the Hoppners’ address, and I am
anxious not to lose a post.
TO MRS. SHELLEY.
_8th August_ [_1821_].
My dearest Mary,
I wrote to you yesterday, and I begin another letter to-day, without
knowing exactly when I can send it, as I am told the post only goes
once a week. I dare say the subject of the latter half my letter gave
you pain, but it was necessary to look the affair in the face, and the
only satisfactory answer to the calumny must be given by you, and could
be given by you alone. This is evidently the source of the violent
denunciations of the _Literary Gazette_, in themselves contemptible
enough, and only to be regarded as effects, which show us their cause,
which until we put off our mortal nature, we never despise--that is the
belief of persons who have known and seen you, that you are guilty of
crimes.
* * * * *
After having sent my letter to the post yesterday, I went to see some
of the antiquities of this place, which appear to be remarkable. This
city was once of vast extent, and the traces of its remains are to
be found more than four miles from the gate of the modern town. The
sea, which once came close to it, has now retired to the distance of
four miles, leaving a melancholy extent of marshes, interspersed with
patches of cultivation, and towards the sea shore with pine forests,
which have followed the retrocession of the Adriatic, and the roots of
which are actually washed by its waves. The level of the sea and of
this tract of country correspond so nearly, that a ditch dug to a few
feet in depth is immediately filled up with sea water. All the ancient
buildings have been choked up to the height of from five to twenty feet
by the deposit of the sea, and of the inundations, which are frequent
in the winter. I went in Lord Byron’s carriage, first to the Chiesa
San Vitale, which is certainly one of the most ancient churches in
Italy. It is a rotunda supported upon buttresses and pilasters of white
marble; the ill effect of which is somewhat relieved by an interior
row of columns. The dome is very high and narrow. The whole church, in
spite of the elevation of the soil, is very high for its breadth, and
is of a very peculiar and striking construction. In the section of one
of the large tables of marble with which the church is lined, they
showed me the _perfect figure_, as perfect as if it had been painted,
of a capuchin friar, which resulted merely from the shadings and the
position of the stains in the marble. This is what may be called a pure
anticipated cognition of a Capuchin.
I then went to the tomb of Theodosius, which has now been dedicated
to the Virgin, without however any change in its original appearance.
It is about a mile from the present city. This building is more than
half overwhelmed by the elevated soil, although a portion of the lower
story has been excavated, and is filled with brackish and stinking
waters, and a sort of vaporous darkness, and troops of prodigious
frogs. It is a remarkable piece of architecture, and without belonging
to a period when the ancient taste yet survived, bears nevertheless a
certain impression of that taste. It consists of two stories; the lower
supported on Doric arches, and pilasters, and a simple entablature.
The other circular within, and polygonal outside, and roofed with one
single mass of ponderous stone, for it is evidently one, and Heaven
alone knows how they contrived to lift it to that height. It is a sort
of flattish dome, rough-wrought within by the chisel, from which the
Northern conquerors tore the plates of silver that adorned it, and
polished without, with things like handles appended to it, which were
also wrought out of the solid stone, and to which I suppose the ropes
were applied to draw it up. You ascend externally into the second story
by a flight of stone-steps, which are modern.
The next place I went to was a church called _la Chiesa di Sant’
Appollinare_, which is a Basilica, and built by one, I forget whom,
of the Christian Emperors; it is a long church, with a roof like a
barn, and supported by twenty-four columns of the finest marble, with
an altar of jasper, and four columns of jasper and giallo antico,
supporting the roof of the tabernacle, which are said to be of immense
value. It is something like that church (I forget the name of it) we
saw at Rome, _fuore delle mure_. I suppose the emperor stole these
columns, which seem not at all to belong to the place they occupy.
Within the city, near the church of San Vitale, there is to be seen the
tomb of the Empress Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius the Great,
together with those of her husband Constantius, her brother Honorius,
and her son Valentinian--all Emperors. The tombs are massy cases of
marble, adorned with rude and tasteless sculpture of lambs, and other
Christian emblems, with scarcely a trace of the antique. It seems
to have been one of the first effects of the Christian religion, to
destroy the power of producing beauty in art. These tombs are placed in
a sort of vaulted chamber, wrought over with rude mosaic, which is said
to have been built in 1300. I have yet seen no more of Ravenna.
_Friday._
We ride out in the evening, through the pine forests which divide this
city from the sea. Our way of life is this, and I have accommodated
myself to it without much difficulty:--Lord Byron gets up at two,
breakfasts; we talk, read, &c., until six; then we ride, and dine at
eight; and after dinner sit talking till four or five in the morning.
I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the interval between my rising
and his, to you.
Lord Byron is greatly improved in every respect. In genius, in
temper, in moral views, in health, in happiness. The connexion with
la Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives in
considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about
£4000 a year, £100 of which he devotes to purposes of charity. He
has had mischievous passions, but these he seems to have subdued,
and he is becoming, what he should be, a virtuous man. The interest
which he took in the politics of Italy, and the actions he performed
in consequence of it, are subjects not fit to be _written_, but are
such as will delight and surprise you. He is not yet decided to go to
Switzerland--a place, indeed, little fitted for him: the gossip and
the cabals of those anglicised coteries would torment him, as they did
before, and might exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which
he says he plunged into not from taste, but despair. La Guiccioli and
her brother (who is Lord Byron’s friend and confidant, and acquiesces
perfectly in her connexion with him) wish to go to Switzerland; as Lord
Byron says, merely from the novelty of the pleasure of travelling. Lord
Byron prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is trying to persuade them to adopt
his views. He has made _me_ write a long letter to her to engage her to
remain--an odd thing enough for an utter stranger to write on subjects
of the utmost delicacy to his friend’s mistress. But it seems destined
that I am always to have some active part in everybody’s affairs whom
I approach. I have set down in lame Italian the strongest reasons I
can think of against the Swiss emigration--to tell you the truth, I
should be very glad to accept, as my fee, his establishment in Tuscany.
Ravenna is a miserable place; the people are barbarous and wild, and
their language the most infernal patois that you can imagine. He would
be, in every respect, better among the Tuscans. I am afraid he would
not like Florence, on account of the English there.
* * * * *
There is Lucca, Florence, Pisa, Siena, and I think nothing more. What
think you of Prato, or Pistoia, for him?--no Englishman approaches
those towns; but I am afraid no house could be found good enough for
him in that region.
He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which is
astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above, all the
poets of the day--every word is stamped with immortality. I despair of
rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no other with whom
it is worth contending. This canto is in the style, but totally, and
sustained with incredible ease and power, like the end of the second
canto. There is not a word which the most rigid assertor of the dignity
of human nature would desire to be cancelled. It fulfils, in a certain
degree, what I have long preached of producing--something wholly new
and relative to the age, and yet surpassingly beautiful. It may be
vanity, but I think I see the trace of my earnest exhortations to him
to create something wholly new. He has finished his _life_ up to the
present time, and given it to Moore, with liberty for Moore to sell
it for the best price he can get, with condition that the bookseller
should publish it after his death. Moore has sold it to Murray for
_two thousand pounds_. I have spoken to him of Hunt, but not with a
direct view of demanding a contribution; and, though I am sure that
if asked it would not be refused--yet, there is something in me that
makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are excellent friends, and were
I reduced to poverty, or were I a writer who had no claims to a higher
station than I possess--or did I possess a higher than I deserve, we
should appear in all things as such, and I would freely ask him any
favour. Such is not the case. The demon of mistrust and pride lurks
between two persons in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our
intercourse. This is a tax and a heavy one, which we must pay for being
human. I think the fault is not on my side, nor is it likely, I being
the weaker. I hope that in the next world these things will be better
managed. What is passing in the heart of another rarely escapes the
observation of one who is a strict anatomist of his own.
Write to me at Florence, where I shall remain a day at least, and
send me letters, or news of letters. How is my little darling? And
how are you, and how do you get on with your book? Be severe in your
corrections, and expect severity from me, your sincere admirer. I
flatter myself you have composed something unequalled in its kind, and
that, not content with the honours of your birth and your hereditary
aristocracy, you will add still higher renown to your name. Expect me
at the end of my appointed time. I do not think I shall be detained.
Is C. with you, or is she coming? Have you heard anything of my poor
Emilia, from whom I got a letter the day of my departure, saying, that
her marriage was deferred for a _very short_ time, on account of the
illness of her sposo. How are the Williamses, and Williams especially?
Give my very kindest love to them.
Lord Byron has here splendid apartments in the house of his mistress’s
husband, who is one of the richest men in Italy. _She_ is divorced,
with an allowance of 1200 crowns a-year, a miserable pittance from a
man who has 120,000 a-year.--Here are two monkeys, five cats, eight
dogs, and ten horses, all of whom (except the horses) walk about the
house like the masters of it. _Tita_ the Venetian is here, and operates
as my valet; a fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, and who
has stabbed two or three people, and is one of the most good-natured
looking fellows I ever saw.
We have good rumours of the Greeks here, and a Russian war. I
hardly wish the Russians to take any part in it. My maxim is with
Æschylus:--τὸ δυσσεβὲς--μετὰ μὲν πλείονα τίκτει, σφετέρᾳ
δ’ ἐίκοτα γεννᾷ. There is a Greek exercise for you. How should slaves
produce anything but tyranny--even as the seed produces the plant?
Adieu, dear Mary,
Yours affectionately,
S.
TO MRS. SHELLEY.
_Saturday--Ravenna [Aug. 11, 1821]._
My dear Mary,
You will be surprised to hear that Lord Byron has decided upon coming
to _Pisa_, in case he shall be able, with my assistance, to prevail
upon his mistress to remain in Italy, of which I think there is
little doubt. He wishes for a large and magnificent house, but he has
furniture of his own, which he would send from Ravenna. Inquire if any
of the large palaces are to be let. We discussed Prato, Pistoia, Lucca,
&c., but they would not suit him so well as Pisa, to which, indeed, he
shows a decided preference. So let it be! Florence he objects to, on
account of the prodigious influx of English.
I don’t think this circumstance ought to make any difference in our own
plans with respect to this winter in Florence, because we could easily
reassume our station, with the spring, at Pugnano or the baths, in
order to enjoy the society of the noble lord. But do you consider this
point, and write to me your full opinion, at the Florence post-office.
I suffer much to-day from the pain in my side, brought on, I believe,
by this accursed water. In other respects, I am pretty well, and my
spirits are much improved; they had been improving, indeed, before I
left the baths, after the deep dejection of the early part of the year.
I am reading Anastasius.[36] One would think that Lord Byron had taken
his idea of the three last cantos of Don Juan from this book. That, of
course, has nothing to do with the merit of this latter, poetry having
nothing to do with the invention of facts. It is a very powerful and
very entertaining novel, and a faithful picture, they say, of modern
Greek manners. I have read Lord Byron’s letter to Bowles--some good
things--but he ought not to write prose criticism.
You will receive a long letter, sent with some of Lord Byron’s, express
to Florence.
I write this in haste.--Yours most affectionately,
S.
[36] _Memoirs of a Greek_ [by Thomas Hope], 3 vols. Murray, 1819.--Ed.
TO MRS. SHELLEY.
_Ravenna, Tuesday, August 14th, 1821._
My dearest Love,
I accept your kind present of your picture, and wish you would get it
prettily framed for me. I will wear, for your sake, upon my heart this
image which is ever present to my mind.
I have only two minutes to write, the post is just setting off. I shall
leave this place on Thursday or Friday morning. You would forgive me
for my longer stay, if you knew the fighting I have had to make it so
short. I need not say where my own feelings impel me.
It still remains fixed that Lord Byron should come to Tuscany, and, if
possible, Pisa; but more of that to-morrow.
Your faithful and affectionate,
S.
TO MRS. SHELLEY.
_Ravenna, Wednesday [Aug. 15, 1821]._
My dearest Love,
I write, though I doubt whether I shall not arrive before this letter;
as the post only leaves Ravenna once a week, on Saturdays, and as
I hope to set out to-morrow evening by the courier. But as I must
necessarily stay a day at Florence, and as the natural incidents of
travelling may prevent me from taking my intended advantage of the
couriers, it is probable that this letter will arrive first. Besides,
as I will explain, I am not _yet_ quite my own master. But that by and
bye. I do not think it necessary to tell you of my impatience to return
to you and my little darling, or the disappointment with which I have
prolonged my absence from you. I am happy to think that you are not
quite alone.
Lord Byron is still decided upon Tuscany; and such is his impatience,
that he has desired me--as if I should not arrive in time--to write to
you to inquire for the best unfurnished palace in Pisa, and to enter
upon a treaty for it. It is better not to be on the Lung’ Arno; but, in
fact, there is no such hurry, and as I shall see you so soon, it is not
worth while to trouble yourself about it.
I told you I had written by Lord Byron’s desire to la Guiccioli, to
dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her answer is this moment
arrived, and my representation seems to have reconciled them to the
unfitness of that step. At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the
fine things she says she has heard of me, is this request, which I
transcribe;--“_Signore--la vostra bontà mi fa ardita di chiedervi un
favore--me lo accorderete voi? Non partite da Ravenna senza Milord._”
Of course, being now, by all the laws of knighthood, captive to a
lady’s request, I shall only be at liberty on _my parole_, until Lord
Byron is settled at Pisa. I shall reply, of course, that the _boon_ is
granted, and that if her lover is reluctant to quit Ravenna, after I
have made arrangements for receiving him at Pisa, I am bound to place
myself in the same situation as now, to assail him with importunities
to rejoin her. Of this there is, fortunately, no need; and I need not
tell you there is no fear that this chivalric submission of mine to
the great general laws of antique courtesy, against which I never
rebel, and which is my religion, should interfere with my quick
returning, and long remaining with you, dear girl.
I have seen Dante’s tomb, and worshipped the sacred spot. The building
and its accessories are comparatively modern, but, the urn itself,
and the tablet of marble, with his portrait in relief, are evidently
of equal antiquity with his death. The countenance has all the marks
of being taken from his own; the lines are strongly marked, far more
than the portraits, which, however, it resembles; except, indeed,
the eye, which is half closed, and reminded me of Pacchiani. It was
probably taken after death. I saw the library, and some specimens of
the earliest illuminated printing from the press of Fust. They are on
vellum, and of an execution little inferior to that of the present day.
We ride out every evening as usual, and practise pistol-shooting at a
pumpkin; and I am not sorry to observe that I approach towards my noble
friend’s exactness of aim. The water here is villainous, and I have
suffered tortures; but I now drink nothing but alcalescent water, and
am much relieved. I have the greatest trouble to get away; and Lord
Byron, as a reason for my stay, has urged, that without either me or
the Guiccioli, he will certainly fall into his old habits. I then talk,
and he listens to reason; and I earnestly hope that he is too well
aware of the terrible and degrading consequences of his former mode of
life, to be in danger from the short interval of temptation that will
be left him. Lord Byron speaks with great kindness and interest of you,
and seems to wish to see you.
_Ravenna, Thursday._
I have received your letter with that to Mrs. Hoppner. I do not
wonder, my dearest friend, that you should have been moved. I was at
first, but speedily regained the indifference which the opinion of
anything, or anybody, except our own consciousness, amply merits;
and day by day shall more receive from me. I have not recopied your
letter; such a measure would destroy its authenticity, but have given
it to Lord Byron, who has engaged to send it with his own comments to
the Hoppners. People do not hesitate, it seems, to make themselves
panders and accomplices to slander, for the Hoppners had exacted from
Lord Byron that these accusations should be concealed from _me_.
Lord Byron is not a man to keep a secret, good or bad; but in openly
confessing that he has not done so, he must observe a certain delicacy,
and therefore he wished to send the letter himself, and indeed this
adds weight to your representations. Have you seen the article in
the Literary Gazette on me? They evidently allude to some story of
this kind--however cautious the Hoppners have been in preventing the
calumniated person from asserting his justification, you know too much
of the world not to be certain that this was the utmost limit of their
caution. So much for nothing.
Lord Byron is immediately coming to Pisa. He will set off the moment I
can get him a house. Who would have imagined this? Our first thought
ought to be ----, our second our own plans. The hesitation in your
letter about Florence has communicated itself to me; although I hardly
see what we can do about Horace Smith, to whom our attentions are
so due, and would be so useful. If I do not arrive before this long
scrawl, write something to Florence to decide me. I shall certainly
not, without strong reasons, at present _sign_ the agreement for the
old codger’s house; although the extreme beauty and fitness of the
place, should we decide on Florence, might well overbalance the
objection of your deaf visitor. One thing--with Lord Byron and the
people we know at Pisa, we should have a security and protection, which
seems to be more questionable at Florence. But I do not think that this
consideration ought to weigh. What think you of remaining at Pisa? The
Williamses would probably be induced to stay there if we did; Hunt
would certainly stay, at least this winter, near us, should he emigrate
at all; Lord Byron and his Italian friends would remain quietly there;
and Lord Byron has certainly a great regard for us--the regard of such
a man is worth--_some_ of the tribute we must pay to the base passions
of humanity in any intercourse with those within their circle; he is
better worth it than those on whom we bestow it from mere custom. The
---- are there, and as far as solid affairs are concerned, are my
friends. * * * At Pisa I need not distil my water--if I _can_ distil it
anywhere. Last winter I suffered less from my painful disorder than the
winter I spent at Florence. The arguments for Florence you know, and
they are very weighty; judge (_I know you like the job_) which scale is
overbalanced.
My greatest content would be utterly to desert all human society. I
would retire with you and our child to a solitary island in the sea,
would build a boat, and shut upon my retreat the flood-gates of the
world. I would read no reviews, and talk with no authors. If I dared
trust my imagination, it would tell me that there are one or two
chosen companions beside yourself whom I should desire. But to this I
would not listen--where two or three are gathered together, the devil
is among them. And good, far more than evil impulses, love, far more
than hatred, has been to me, except as you have been its object, the
source of all sorts of mischief. So on this plan, I would be _alone_,
and would devote either to oblivion or to future generations, the
overflowings of a mind which, timely withdrawn from the contagion,
should be kept fit for no baser object. But this it does not appear
that we shall do.
The other side of the alternative (for a medium ought not to be
adopted) is to form for ourselves a society of our own class, as much
as possible in intellect, or in feelings; and to connect ourselves
with the interests of that society. Our roots never struck so deeply
as at Pisa, and the transplanted tree flourishes not. People who lead
the lives which we led until last winter, are like a family of Wahabee
Arabs, pitching their tent in the midst of London. We must do one thing
or the other--for yourself, for our child, for our existence. The
calumnies, the sources of which are probably deeper than we perceive,
have ultimately, for object, the depriving us of the means of security
and subsistence. You will easily perceive the gradations by which
calumny proceeds to pretext, pretext to persecution, and persecution
to the ban of fire and water. It is for this, and not because this or
that fool, or the whole court of fools, curse and rail, that calumny is
worth refuting or chastising.
TO HORATIO SMITH.
_Pisa, Sept. 14th, 1821._
My dear Smith,
I cannot express the pain and disappointment with which I learn the
change in your plans, no less than the afflicting cause of it. Florence
will no longer have any attractions for me this winter, and I shall
contentedly sit down in this humdrum Pisa, and refer to hope and to
chance the pleasure I had expected from your society this winter. What
shall I do with your packages, which have now, I believe, all arrived
at Guebhard’s at Leghorn? Is it not possible that a favourable change
in Mrs. Smith’s health might produce a corresponding change in your
determinations, and would it, or would it not, be premature to forward
the packages to your present residence, or to London? I will pay every
possible attention to your instructions in this regard.
I had marked down several houses in Florence, and one especially on the
Arno, a most lovely place, though they asked rather more than perhaps
you would have chosen to pay--yet nothing approaching to an English
price.--I do not yet entirely give you up.--Indeed, I should be sorry
not to hope that Mrs. Smith’s state of health would not soon become
such, as to remove your principal objection to this delightful climate.
I have not, with the exception of three or four days, suffered in the
least from the heat this year. Though, it is but fair to confess, that
my temperament approaches to that of the salamander.
We expect Lord Byron here in about a fortnight. I have just taken the
finest palace in Pisa for him, and his luggage, and his horses, and
all his train, are, I believe, already on their way hither. I dare
say you have heard of the life he led at Venice, rivalling the wise
Solomon almost, in the number of his concubines. Well, he is now quite
reformed, and is leading a most sober and decent life, as _cavaliere
servente_ to a very pretty Italian woman, who has already arrived
at Pisa, with her father and her brother (such are the manners of
Italy), as the jackals of the lion. He is occupied in forming a new
drama, and, with views which I doubt not will expand as he proceeds,
is determined to write a series of plays, in which he will follow the
French tragedians and Alfieri, rather than those of England and Spain,
and produce something new, at least, to England. This seems to me the
wrong road; but genius like his is destined to lead and not to follow.
He will shake off his shackles as he finds they cramp him. I believe
he will produce something very great; and that familiarity with the
dramatic power of human nature will soon enable him to soften down the
severe and unharmonising traits of his “Marino Faliero.” I think you
know Lord Byron personally, or is it your brother? If the latter, I
know that he wished particularly to be introduced to you, and that he
will sympathise, in some degree, in this great disappointment which I
feel in the change, or, as I yet hope, in the prorogation of your plans.
I am glad you like “Adonais,” and, particularly, that you do not think
it metaphysical, which I was afraid it was. I was resolved to pay some
tribute of sympathy to the unhonoured dead, but I wrote, as usual, with
a total ignorance of the effect that I should produce.--I have not
yet seen your pastoral drama; if you have a copy, could you favour me
with it? It will be six months before I shall receive it from England.
I have heard it spoken of with high praise, and I have the greatest
curiosity to see it.
The Gisbornes promised to buy me some books in Paris, and I had asked
you to be kind enough to advance them what they might want to pay for
them. I cannot conceive why they did not execute this little commission
for me, as they knew how very much I wished to receive these books by
the same conveyance as the filtering-stone. Dare I ask you to do me
the favour to buy them? _A complete edition of the works of Calderon_,
and the French translation of Kant, a German Faust, and to add the
Nympholept?[37]--I am indifferent as to a little more or less expense,
so that I may have them immediately. I will send you an order on Paris
for the amount, together with the thirty-two francs you were kind
enough to pay for me.
All public attention is now centred on the wonderful revolution in
Greece. I dare not, after the events of last winter hope that slaves
can become freemen so cheaply; yet I know one Greek of the highest
qualities, both of courage and conduct, the Prince Mavrocordato, and
if the rest be like him, all will go well.--The news of this moment is,
that the Russian army has orders to advance.
Mrs. S. unites with me in the most heartfelt regret,
And I remain, my dear Smith,
Most faithfully yours,
P. B. S.
If you happen to have brought a copy of Clarke’s edition of Queen Mab
for me, I should like very well to see it.--I really hardly know what
this poem is about. I am afraid it is rather rough.
[37] _Amarynthus the Nympholept_, by Horace Smith.--Ed.
TO MR. JOHN GISBORNE.
_Pisa, October 22, 1821._
My dear Gisborne,
At length the post brings a welcome letter from you, and I am pleased
to be assured of your health and safe arrival. I expect with interest
and anxiety the intelligence of your progress in England, and how far
the advantages there compensate the loss of Italy. I hear from Hunt
that he is determined on emigration, and if I thought the letter would
arrive in time, I should beg you to suggest some advice to him. But you
ought to be incapable of forgiving me the fact of depriving England of
what it must lose when Hunt departs.
Did I tell you that Lord Byron comes to settle at Pisa, and that he
has a plan of writing a periodical work in conjunction with Hunt? His
house, Madame Felichi’s, is already taken and fitted up for him, and he
has been expected every day these six weeks. La Guiccioli, who awaits
him impatiently, is a very pretty, sentimental, innocent Italian, who
has sacrificed an immense fortune for the sake of Lord Byron, and
who, if I know any thing of my friend, of her and of human nature,
will hereafter have plenty of leisure and opportunity to repent her
rashness. Lord Byron is, however, quite cured of his gross habits, as
far as habits; the perverse ideas on which they were formed are not yet
eradicated.
We have furnished a house at Pisa, and mean to make it our
head-quarters. I shall get all my books out, and entrench myself like a
spider in a web. If you can assist P. in sending them to Leghorn, you
would do me an especial favour; but do not buy me Calderon, Faust, or
Kant, as H. S.[38] promises to send them me from Paris, where I suppose
you had not time to procure them. Any other books you or Henry think
would accord with my design, Ollier will furnish you with.
I should like very much to hear what is said of my Adonais, and
you would oblige me by cutting out, or making Ollier cut out, any
respectable criticism on it, and sending it me; you know I do not
mind a crown or two in postage. The Epipsychidion is a mystery; as to
real flesh and blood, you know that I do not deal in those articles;
you might as well go to a gin-shop for a leg of mutton, as expect
anything human or earthly from me. I desired Ollier not to circulate
this piece except to the συνετοί, and even they, it seems,
are inclined to approximate me to the circle of a servant girl and her
sweetheart. But I intend to write a Symposium of my own to set all this
right.
I am just finishing a dramatic poem, called Hellas, upon the contest
now raging in Greece--a sort of imitation of the Persæ of Æschylus,
full of lyrical poetry. I try to be what I might have been, but am not
successful. I find that (I dare say I shall quote wrong,)
“Den herrlichsten, den sich der Geist empfängt
Drängt immer fremd und fremder Stoff sich an.”
The Edinburgh Review lies. Godwin’s answer to Malthus is victorious
and decisive; and that it should not be generally acknowledged as such,
is full evidence of the influence of successful evil and tyranny. What
Godwin is, compared to Plato and Bacon, we well know; but compared with
these miserable sciolists, he is a vulture to a worm.
I read the Greek dramatists and Plato for ever. You are right about
Antigone; how sublime a picture of a woman! and what think you of
the choruses, and especially the lyrical complaints of the godlike
victim? and the menaces of Tiresias, and their rapid fulfilment? Some
of us have, in a prior existence, been in love with an Antigone, and
that makes us find no full content in any mortal tie. As to books, I
advise you to live near the British Museum, and read there. I have
read, since I saw you, the “Jungfrau von Orleans” of Schiller,--a fine
play, if the fifth act did not fall off. Some Greeks, escaped from the
defeat in Wallachia, have passed through Pisa, to re-embark at Leghorn
for the Morea; and the Tuscan Government allowed them, during their
stay and passage, three lire each per day and their lodging; that is
good. Remember me and Mary most kindly to Mrs. Gisborne and Henry, and
believe me,
Yours most affectionately,
P. B. S.
[38] Horace Smith (see previous letter, _supra_, p. 349).--Ed.
TO MR. JOHN GISBORNE.
_Pisa, April 10, 1822._
My dear Gisborne,
I have received Hellas, which is prettily printed, and with fewer
mistakes than any poem I ever published. Am I to thank you for the
revision of the press? or who acted as midwife to this last of my
orphans, introducing it to oblivion, and me to my accustomed failure?
May the cause it celebrates be more fortunate than either! Tell me
how you like _Hellas_, and give me your opinion freely. It was written
without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm which
now seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their visits.
I know what to think of _Adonais_, but what to think of those who
confound it with the many bad poems of the day, I know not.
I have been reading over and over again Faust, and always with
sensations which no other composition excites. It deepens the gloom
and augments the rapidity of ideas, and would therefore seem to me an
unfit study for any person who is a prey to the reproaches of memory,
and the delusions of an imagination not to be restrained. And yet the
pleasure of sympathising with emotions known only to few, although they
derive their sole charm from despair, and the scorn of the narrow good
we can attain in our present state, seems more than to ease the pain
which belongs to them. Perhaps all discontent with the _less_ (to use a
Platonic sophism) supposes the sense of a just claim to the _greater_,
and that we admirers of Faust are on the right road to Paradise. Such a
supposition is not more absurd, and is certainly less demoniacal than
that of Wordsworth, where he says--
“This earth,
Which is the world of all of us, and where
_We find our happiness, or not at all_.”
As if, after sixty years’ suffering here, we were to be roasted
alive for sixty million more in hell, or charitably annihilated by a
_coup-de-grâce_ of the bungler who brought us into existence at first!
Have you read Calderon’s _Magico Prodigioso_? I find a striking
similarity between Faust and this drama, and if I were to acknowledge
Coleridge’s distinction, should say Goethe was the _greatest_
philosopher, and Calderon the _greatest_ poet. _Cyprian_ evidently
furnished the _germ_ of Faust, as Faust may furnish the germ of other
poems; although it is as different from it in structure and plan as the
acorn from the oak. I have--imagine my presumption--translated several
scenes from both, as the basis of a paper for our journal. I am well
content with those from Calderon, which in fact gave me very little
trouble; but those from Faust--I feel how imperfect a representation,
even with all the licence I assume to figure to myself how Goethe would
have written in English, my words convey. No one but Coleridge is
capable of this work.
We have seen here a translation of some scenes, and indeed the most
remarkable ones, accompanying those astonishing etchings which have
been published in England from a German master. It is not bad--and
faithful enough--but how weak! how incompetent to represent Faust! I
have only attempted the scenes omitted in this translation, and would
send you that of the _Walpurgisnacht_, if I thought Ollier would place
the postage to my account. What etchings those are! I am never satiated
with looking at them; and, I fear, it is the only sort of translation
of which Faust is susceptible. I never perfectly understood the Hartz
Mountain scene, until I saw the etching; and then, Margaret in the
summer-house with Faust! The artist makes one envy his happiness that
he can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared look upon
once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf on the
opposite side of which I knew that it was figured. Whether it is that
the artist has surpassed Faust, or that the pencil surpasses language
in some subjects, I know not, or that I am more affected by a visible
image, but the etching certainly excited me far more than the poem it
illustrated. Do you remember the fifty-fourth letter of the first part
of the “Nouvelle Héloïse”? Goethe, in a subsequent scene, evidently
had that letter in his mind, and this etching is an idealism of it. So
much for the world of shadows!
What think you of Lord Byron’s last volume? In my opinion it contains
finer poetry than has appeared in England since the publication of
“Paradise Regained.” _Cain_ is apocalyptic--it is a revelation not
before communicated to man. I write nothing but by fits. I have done
some of “Charles the First,” but although the poetry succeeded very
well, I cannot seize on the conception of the subject as a whole, and
seldom now touch the canvas. You know I don’t think much about Reviews,
nor of the fame they give, nor that they take away. It is absurd in
any Review to criticise _Adonais_, and still more to pretend that the
verses are bad. “Prometheus” was never intended for more than five or
six persons.
And how are you getting on? Do your plans still want success? Do you
regret Italy? or anything that Italy contains? And in case of an entire
failure in your expectations, do you think of returning here? You see
the first blow has been made at funded-property:--do you intend to
confide and invite a second? You would already have saved something
per cent., if you had invested your property in Tuscan land. The next
best thing would be to invest it in English, and reside upon it. I
tremble for the consequences, to you personally, from a prolonged
confidence in the funds. Justice, policy, the hopes of the nation and
renewed institutions, demand your ruin, and I, for one, cannot bring
myself to desire what is in itself desirable, till you are free. You
see how liberal I am of advice; but you know the motives that suggest
it. What is Henry about, and how are his prospects? Tell him that some
adventurers are engaged upon a steam-boat at Leghorn, to make the
_trajet_ we projected. I hope he is charitable enough to pray that they
may succeed better than we did.
Remember me most affectionately to Mrs. Gisborne, to whom, as well as
to yourself, I consider that this letter is written. How is she, and
how are you all in health? And pray tell me, what are your plans of
life, and how Henry succeeds, and whether he is married or not? How
can I send you such small sums as you may want for postages, &c., for
I do not mean to tax with my unreasonable letters both your purse and
your patience? We go this summer to Spezzia; but direct as ever to
Pisa,--Mrs. ---- will forward our letters. If you see anything which
you think would particularly interest me, pray make Ollier pay for
sending it out by post. Give my best and affectionate regards to H----,
to whom I do not write at present, imagining that you will give him a
piece of this letter.
Ever most faithfully yours,
P. B. S.
TO ----[39]
_Pisa, April 11th, 1822._
My dear ----,
I have, as yet, received neither the * * *, nor his metaphysical
companions--_Time, my Lord, has a wallet on his back_, and I suppose he
has bagged them by the way. As he has had a good deal of “_alms_ for
oblivion” out of me, I think he might as well have favoured me this
once; I have, indeed, just dropped another mite into his treasury,
called _Hellas_, which I know not how to send to you; but I dare say,
some fury of the Hades of authors will bring one to Paris. It is a poem
written on the Greek cause last summer--a sort of lyrical, dramatic,
nondescript piece of business.
You will have heard of a _row_ we have had here, which, I dare say,
will grow to a serious size before it arrives at Paris. It was, in
fact, a trifling piece of business enough, arising from an insult of a
drunken dragoon, offered to one of our party, and only serious, because
one of Lord Byron’s servants wounded the fellow dangerously with a
pitchfork. He is now, however, recovering, and the echo of the affair
will be heard long after the original report has ceased.
Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of Moore to him, in which
Moore speaks with great kindness of me; and, of course, I cannot but
feel flattered by the approbation of a man, my inferiority to whom I
am proud to acknowledge.--Amongst other things, however, Moore, after
giving Lord Byron much good advice about public opinion, &c., seems
to deprecate _my_ influence on his mind, on the subject of religion,
and to attribute the tone assumed in “Cain” to my suggestions. Moore
cautions him against my influence on this particular, with the most
friendly zeal; and it is plain that his motive springs from a desire
of benefitting Lord Byron, without degrading me. I think you know
Moore. Pray assure him that I have not the smallest influence over Lord
Byron, in this particular, and if I had, I certainly should employ
it to eradicate from his great mind the delusions of Christianity,
which, in spite of his reason, seem perpetually to recur, and to lay in
ambush for the hours of sickness and distress. “Cain” was _conceived_
many years ago, and begun before I saw him last year at Ravenna. How
happy should I not be to attribute to myself, however indirectly, any
participation in that immortal work!--I differ with Moore in thinking
Christianity useful to the world; no man of sense can think it true;
and the alliance of the monstrous superstitions of the popular worship
with the pure doctrines of the Theism of such a man as Moore, turns
to the profit of the former, and makes the latter the fountain of its
own pollution. I agree with him that the doctrines of the French, and
Material Philosophy, are as false as they are pernicious; but, still,
they are better than Christianity, inasmuch as anarchy is better than
despotism; for this reason, that the former is for a season, and that
the latter is eternal. My admiration of the character, no less than of
the genius of Moore, makes me rather wish that he should not have an
ill opinion of me.
Where are you? We settle this summer near Spezzia; Lord Byron at
Leghorn. May not I hope to see you even for a trip in Italy? I hope
your wife and little ones are well. Mine grows a fine boy, and is quite
well.
I have contrived to get my musical coals at Newcastle itself.--My dear
----, believe me,
Faithfully yours,
P. B. S.
[39] For reasons which will appear in the sequel, Mrs. Shelley
concealed the name of Shelley’s correspondent in this letter and the
following one of June 29, 1822, under the initials “To C. T.;” but it
appears from the original autographs, which have been preserved, that
these two letters were addressed to Horatio Smith.--Ed.
TO MRS. SHELLEY
(AT SPEZZIA).
[_Lerici, Sunday, April 28th, 1822._]
Dearest Mary,
I am this moment arrived at Lerici, where I am necessarily detained,
waiting the furniture, which left Pisa last night at midnight; and
as the sea has been calm, and the wind fair, I may expect them every
moment. It would not do to leave affairs here in an _impiccio_, great
as is my anxiety to see you.--How are you, my best love? How have you
sustained the trials of the journey? Answer me this question, and how
my little babe and C * * * are.
Now to business:--Is the Magni House taken? if not, pray occupy
yourself instantly in finishing the affair, even if you are obliged to
go to Sarzana, and send a messenger to me to tell me of your success.
I, of course, cannot leave Lerici, to which place the boats, (for we
were obliged to take two,) are directed. But _you_ can come over in the
same boat that brings this letter, and return in the evening.
I ought to say that I do not think that there is accommodation for you
all at this inn; and that, even if there were, you would be better off
at Spezzia; but if the Magni House is taken, then there is no possible
reason why you should not take a row over in the boat that will bring
this--but don’t keep the men long. I am anxious to hear from you on
every account.
Ever yours,
S.
TO HORATIO SMITH
(VERSAILLES).
_Lerici, May, 1822._
My dear Smith,
It is some time since I have heard from you; are you still at
Versailles? Do you still cling to France, and prefer the arts and
conveniences of that over-civilised country to the beautiful nature and
mighty remains of Italy? As to me, like Anacreon’s swallow, I have left
my Nile, and have taken up my summer quarters here, in a lonely house
close by the sea-side, surrounded by the soft and sublime scenery of
the gulf of Spezzia. I do not write; I have lived too long near Lord
Byron, and the sun has extinguished the glow-worm; for I cannot hope,
with St. John, that “_the light came into the world, and the world knew
it not_.”
The object of my present letter is, however, a request, and as it
concerns that most odious of all subjects, money, I will put it in the
shortest shape. Godwin’s law-suit, he tells us, is decided against him;
and he is adjudged to pay 900_l._ He writes, of course, to his daughter
in the greatest distress: but we have no money except our income,
nor any means of procuring it. My wife has sent him her novel, which
is now finished, the copyright of which will probably bring him 3 or
400_l._--as Ollier offered the former sum for it, but as he required
a considerable delay for the payment, she rejected his offer. Now,
what I wish to know is, whether you could with convenience lend me the
400_l._ which you once dedicated to this service, and allow Godwin
to have it, under the precautions and stipulations which I formerly
annexed to its employment. You could not obviously allow this money to
lie idle waiting for this event, without interest. I forgot this part
of the business till this instant, and now I reflect that I ought to
have assured you of the regular payment of interest, which I omitted to
mention, considering it a matter of course.
I can easily imagine that circumstances may have arisen to make this
loan inconvenient or impossible--in any case, believe me,
My dear Smith,
Yours very gratefully and faithfully,
P. B. Shelley.
TO ----[40]
_Lerici, June 29th, 1822._
My dear ----,
* * * * *
* * * * *
Pray thank Moore for his obliging message. I wish I could as easily
convey my sense of his genius and character. I should have written
to him on the subject of my late letter, but that I doubted how far
I was justified in doing so; although, indeed, Lord Byron made no
secret of his communication to me. It seems to me that things have now
arrived at such a crisis as requires every man plainly to utter his
sentiments on the inefficacy of the existing religion, no less than
political systems, for restraining and guiding mankind. Let us see the
truth, whatever that may be. The destiny of man can scarcely be so
degraded, that he was born only to die; and if such should be the case,
delusions, especially the gross and preposterous ones of the existing
religion, can scarcely be supposed to exalt it. If every man said what
he thought, it could not subsist a day. But all, more or less, subdue
themselves to the element that surrounds them, and contribute to the
evils they lament by the hypocrisy that springs from them.
England appears to be in a desperate condition, Ireland still
worse; and no class of those who subsist on the public labour will
be persuaded that _their_ claims on it must be diminished. But the
government must content itself with less in taxes, the landholder
must submit to receive less rent, and the fundholder a diminished
interest, or they will all get nothing. I once thought to study these
affairs, and write or act in them. I am glad that my good genius said,
_refrain_. I see little public virtue, and I foresee that the contest
will be one of blood and gold, two elements which, however much to my
taste in my pockets and my veins, I have an objection to out of them.
Lord Byron continues at Leghorn, and has just received from Genoa a
most beautiful little yacht, which he caused to be built there. He
has written two new cantos of “Don Juan,” but I have not seen them. I
have just received a letter from Hunt, who has arrived at Genoa. As
soon as I hear that he has sailed, I shall weigh anchor in my little
schooner, and give him chase to Leghorn, when I must occupy myself in
some arrangements for him with Lord Byron. Between ourselves, I greatly
fear that this alliance will not succeed; for I, who could never have
been regarded as more than the link of the two thunderbolts, cannot now
consent to be even that; and how long the alliance may continue, I will
not prophesy. Pray do not hint my doubts on the subject to any one, or
they might do harm to Hunt; and they _may_ be groundless.
I still inhabit this divine bay, reading Spanish dramas, and sailing,
and listening to the most enchanting music. We have some friends on a
visit to us, and my only regret is that the summer must ever pass, or
that Mary has not the same predilection for this place that I have,
which would induce me never to shift my quarters.
Farewell.--Believe me ever your
Affectionate friend,
P. B. Shelley.
[40] To Horatio Smith. The opening paragraph, omitted by Mrs. Shelley,
has been found, on reference to the original autograph, to refer to the
pecuniary embarrassments of her father, William Godwin, alluded to in
the previous letter.--Ed.
TO MRS. WILLIAMS
(CASA MAGNI).
_Pisa, July 4, 1822._
You will probably see Williams before I can disentangle myself from the
affairs with which I am now surrounded. I return to Leghorn to-night,
and shall urge him to sail with the first fair wind, without expecting
me. I have thus the pleasure of contributing to your happiness when
deprived of every other, and of leaving you no other subject of regret,
but the absence of one scarcely worth regretting. I fear you are
solitary and melancholy at Villa Magni, and, in the intervals of the
greater and more serious distress in which I am compelled to sympathise
here, I figure to myself the countenance which had been the source of
such consolation to me, shadowed by a veil of sorrow.
How soon those hours passed, and how slowly they return, to pass so
soon again, perhaps for ever, in which we have lived together so
intimately, so happily! Adieu, my dearest friend! I only write these
lines for the pleasure of tracing what will meet your eyes. Mary will
tell you all the news.
S.
TO MRS. SHELLEY
(CASA MAGNI).
_Pisa, July 4, 1822._
My dearest Mary,
I have received both your letters, and shall attend to the instructions
they convey. I did not think of buying the Bolivar; Lord Byron wishes
to sell her, but I imagine would prefer ready money. I have as yet
made no inquiries about houses near Pugnano--I have no moment of time
to spare from Hunt’s affairs; I am detained unwillingly here, and you
will probably see Williams in the boat before me,--but that will be
decided to-morrow.
Things are in the worst possible situation with respect to poor Hunt.
I find Marianne in a desperate state of health, and on our arrival
at Pisa sent for Vaccà. He decides that her case is hopeless, and
that although it will be lingering, must inevitably end fatally.
This decision he thought proper to communicate to Hunt, indicating
at the same time, with great judgment and precision, the treatment
necessary to be observed for availing himself of the chance of his
being deceived. This intelligence has extinguished the last spark of
poor Hunt’s spirits, low enough before. The children are well and much
improved.
Lord Byron is at this moment on the point of leaving Tuscany. The
Gambas have been exiled, and he declares his intention of following
their fortunes. His first idea was to sail to America, which was
changed to Switzerland, then to Genoa, and last to Lucca. Everybody is
in despair, and everything in confusion. Trelawny was on the point of
sailing to Genoa for the purpose of transporting the Bolivar overland
to the lake of Geneva, and had already whispered in my ear his desire
that I should not influence Lord Byron against this terrestrial
navigation. He next received _orders_ to weigh anchor and set sail for
Lerici. He is now without instructions, moody and disappointed. But it
is the worst for poor Hunt, unless the present storm should blow over.
He places his whole dependence upon the scheme of a journal, for which
every arrangement has been made. Lord Byron must of course furnish
the requisite funds at present, as I cannot; but he seems inclined to
depart without the necessary explanations and arrangements due to such
a situation as Hunt’s. These, in spite of delicacy, I must procure;
he offers him the copyright of the Vision of Judgment for the first
number. This offer, if sincere, is _more_ than enough to set up the
journal, and, if sincere, will set everything right.
How are you, my best Mary? Write especially how is your health, and how
your spirits are, and whether you are not more reconciled to staying at
Lerici, at least during the summer.
You have no idea how I am hurried and occupied; I have not a moment’s
leisure, but will write by next post.
Ever, dearest Mary, Yours affectionately, S.
I have found the translation of the Symposium.
[Decoration]
MISCELLANEOUS
ESSAYS AND LETTERS.
A LETTER TO LORD ELLENBOROUGH,
Occasioned by the Sentence which he passed on
Mr. D. I. EATON,
As Publisher of
The Third part of Paine’s age of reason.
Deorum offensa, Diis curæ.
--It is contrary to the mild spirit of the Christian
Religion, for no sanction can be found under that
dispensation which will warrant a Government to impose
disabilities and penalties upon any man, on account of his
religious opinions. [_Hear, Hear._]
Marquis Wellesley’s Speech. Globe, July 2.
ADVERTISEMENT.
_I have waited impatiently for these last four months, in the hopes
that some pen, fitter for the important task, would have spared me the
perilous pleasure of becoming the champion of an innocent man.--This
may serve as an excuse for delay, to those who think that I have let
pass the aptest opportunity, but it is not to be supposed that in four
short months the public indignation, raised by Mr. Eaton’s unmerited
suffering, can have subsided._
LETTER.
My Lord,
As the station to which you have been called by your country is
important, so much the more awful is your responsibility, so much the
more does it become you to watch lest you inadvertently punish the
virtuous and reward the vicious.
You preside over a court which is instituted for the suppression of
crime, and to whose authority the people submit on no other conditions
than that its decrees should be conformable to justice.
If it should be demonstrated that a judge had condemned an innocent
man, the bare existence of laws in conformity to which the accused
is punished, would but little extenuate his offence. The inquisitor
when he burns an obstinate heretic may set up a similar plea, yet few
are sufficiently blinded by intolerance to acknowledge its validity.
It will less avail such a judge to assert the policy of punishing
one who has committed no crime. Policy and morality ought to be
deemed synonymous in a court of justice, and he whose conduct has
been regulated by the latter principle, is not justly amenable to any
penal law for a supposed violation of the former. It is true, my Lord,
laws exist which suffice to screen you from the animadversions of any
constituted power, in consequence of the unmerited sentence which you
have passed upon Mr. Eaton; but there are no laws which screen you
from the reproof of a nation’s disgust, none which ward off the just
judgment of posterity, if that posterity will deign to recollect you.
By what right do you punish Mr. Eaton? What but antiquated precedents,
gathered from times of priestly and tyrannical domination, can be
adduced in palliation of an outrage so insulting to humanity and
justice? Whom has he injured? What crime has he committed? Wherefore
may he not walk abroad like other men and follow his accustomed
pursuits? What end is proposed in confining this man, charged with the
commission of no dishonourable action? Wherefore did his aggressor
avail himself of popular prejudice, and return no answer but one of
common place contempt to a defence of plain and simple sincerity?
Lastly, when the prejudices of the jury, as Christians, were strongly
and unfairly inflamed[41] against this injured man as a Deist,
wherefore did not you, my Lord, check such unconstitutional pleading,
and desire the jury to pronounce the accused innocent or criminal[42]
without reference to the particular faith which he professed?
In the name of justice, what answer is there to these questions? The
answer which Heathen Athens made to Socrates, is the same with which
Christian England must attempt to silence the advocates of this injured
man--“He has questioned established opinions.”--Alas! the crime of
enquiry is one which religion never has forgiven. Implicit faith
and fearless enquiry have in all ages been irreconcileable enemies.
Unrestrained philosophy has in every age opposed itself to the reveries
of credulity and fanaticism.--The truths of astronomy demonstrated
by Newton have superseded astrology; since the modern discoveries in
chemistry the philosopher’s stone has no longer been deemed attainable.
Miracles of every kind have become rare, in proportion to the hidden
principles which those who study nature have developed. That which
is false will ultimately be controverted by its own falsehood. That
which is true needs but publicity to be acknowledged. It is ever a
proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by those who use
power and coercion, not reasoning and persuasion, to procure its
admission.--Falsehood skulks in holes and corners, “it lets I dare
not wait upon I would, like the poor cat in the adage,”[43] except
when it has power, and then, as it was a coward, it is a tyrant; but
the eagle-eye of truth darts through the undazzling sunbeam of the
immutable and just, gathering thence wherewith to vivify and illuminate
a universe!
Wherefore, I repeat, is Mr. Eaton punished?--Because he is a
Deist?--And what are you, my Lord?--A Christian. Ha then! the mask is
fallen off; you persecute him because his faith differs from yours.
You copy the persecutors of Christianity in your actions, and are
an additional proof that your religion is as bloody, barbarous, and
intolerant as theirs.--If some deistical Bigot in power (supposing such
a character for the sake of illustration) should in dark and barbarous
ages have enacted a statute making the profession of christianity
criminal, if you my Lord were a christian bookseller, and Mr. Eaton a
judge, those arguments which you consider adequate to justify yourself
for the sentence which you have passed must likewise suffice, in this
suppositionary case to justify Mr. Eaton, in sentencing you to Newgate
and the pillory for being a christian. Whence is any right derived but
that which power confers for persecution? Do you think to convert Mr.
Eaton to your religion by embittering his existence? You might force
him by torture to profess your tenets, but he could not believe them,
except you should make them credible, which perhaps exceeds your power.
Do you think to please the God you worship by this exhibition of your
zeal? If so, the Demon to whom some nations offer human hecatombs is
less barbarous than the Deity of civilized society.
You consider man as an accountable being--but he can only be
accountable for those actions which are influenced by his will.
Belief and disbelief are utterly distinct from and unconnected with
volition. They are the apprehension of the agreement or disagreement
of the ideas which compose any proposition. Belief is an involuntary
operation of the mind, and, like other passions, its intensity is
precisely proportionate to the degrees of excitement. Volition is
essential to merit or demerit. How then can merit or demerit be
attached to what is distinct from that faculty of the mind whose
presence is essential to their being? I am aware that religion is
founded on the voluntariness of belief, as it makes it a subject of
reward and punishment; but before we extinguish the steady ray of
reason and common sense, it is fit that we should discover, which we
cannot do without their assistance, whether or no there be any other
which may suffice to guide us through the labyrinth of life.
If the law ‘de heretico comburendo’ has not been formally repealed,
I conceive that, from the promise held out by your Lordship’s zeal,
we need not despair of beholding the flames of persecution rekindled
in Smithfield. Even now the lash that drove Descartes and Voltaire
from their native country, the chains which bound Galileo, the
flames which burned Vanini, again resound:--And where? in a nation
that presumptuously calls itself the sanctuary of freedom. Under a
government which, whilst it infringes the very right of thought and
speech, boasts of permitting the liberty of the press; in a civilized
and enlightened country, a man is pilloried and imprisoned because he
is a Deist, and no one raises his voice in the indignation of outraged
humanity. Does the Christian God, whom his followers eulogize as the
Deity of humility and peace; he, the regenerator of the world, the
meek reformer, authorize one man to rise against another, and because
lictors are at his beck, to chain and torture him as an Infidel?
When the Apostles went abroad to convert the nations, were they
enjoined to stab and poison all who disbelieved the divinity of
Christ’s mission; assuredly, they would have been no more justifiable
in this case than he is at present who puts into execution the law
which inflicts pillory and imprisonment on the Deist.
Has not Mr. Eaton an equal right to call your Lordship an Infidel, as
you have to imprison him for promulgating a different doctrine from
that which you profess?--What do I say!--Has he not even a stronger
plea?--The word _Infidel_ can only mean any thing when applied to a
person who professes that which he disbelieves. The test of truth is
an undivided reliance on its inclusive powers;--the test of conscious
falsehood is the variety of the forms under which it presents itself,
and its tendency towards employing whatever coercive means may be
within its command, in order to procure the admission of what is
unsusceptible of support from reason or persuasion. A dispassionate
observer would feel himself more powerfully interested in favor of
a man, who depending on the truth of his opinions, simply stated
his reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his aggressor,
who daringly avowing his unwillingness to answer them by argument,
proceeded to repress the activity and break the spirit of their
promulgator, by that torture and imprisonment whose infliction he could
command.
I hesitate not to affirm that the opinions which Mr. Eaton
sustained, when undergoing that mockery of a trial at which your
Lordship presided, appear to me more true and good than those of his
accuser;--but were they false as the visions of a Calvinist, it still
would be the duty of those who love liberty and virtue, to raise their
voice indignantly against a reviving system of persecution, against
the coercively repressing any opinion, which, if false, needs but the
opposition of truth; which, if true, in spite of force, must ultimately
prevail.
Mr. Eaton asserted that the scriptures were, from beginning to end, a
fable and imposture,[44] that the Apostles were liars and deceivers. He
denied the miracles, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.--He
did so, and the Attorney General denied the propositions which he
asserted, and asserted those which he denied. What singular conclusion
is deducible from this fact? None, but that the Attorney General and
Mr. Eaton sustained two opposite opinions. The Attorney General puts
some obsolete and tyrannical laws in force against Mr. Eaton, because
he publishes a book tending to prove that certain supernatural events,
which are supposed to have taken place eighteen centuries ago, in a
remote corner of the world, did not actually take place. But how are
the truth or falsehood of the facts in dispute relevant to the merit
or demerit attachable to the advocates of the two opinions? No man is
accountable for his belief, because no man is capable of directing it.
Mr. Eaton is therefore totally blameless. What are we to think of the
justice of a sentence, which punishes an individual against whom it is
not even attempted to attach the slightest stain of criminality?
It is asserted that Mr. Eaton’s opinions are calculated to subvert
morality--How? What moral truth is spoken of with irreverence or
ridicule in the book which he published? Morality, or the duty of a
man and a citizen, is founded on the relations which arise from the
association of human beings, and which vary with the circumstances
produced by the different states of this association.--This duty
in similar situations must be precisely the same in all ages and
nations.--The opinion contrary to this has arisen from a supposition
that the will of God is the source or criterion of morality: it is
plain that the utmost exertion of Omnipotence could not cause that to
be virtuous which actually is vicious. An all-powerful Demon might,
indubitably, annex punishments to virtue and rewards to vice, but
could not by these means effect the slightest change in their abstract
and immutable natures.--Omnipotence could vary, by a providential
interposition, the relations of human society;--in this latter case,
what before was virtuous would become vicious, according to the
necessary and natural result of the alteration; but the abstract
natures of the opposite principles would have sustained not the
slightest change; for instance, the punishment with which society
restrains the robber, the assassin, and the ravisher is just, laudable,
and requisite. We admire and respect the institutions which curb those
who would defeat the ends for which society was established;--but,
should a precisely similar coercion be exercised against one who merely
expressed his disbelief of a system admitted by those entrusted with
the executive power, using at the same time no methods of promulgation
but those afforded by reason, certainly this coercion would be
eminently inhuman and immoral; and the supposition that any revelation
from an unknown power avails to palliate a persecution so senseless,
unprovoked, and indefensible, is at once to destroy the barrier which
reason places between vice and virtue, and leave to unprincipled
fanaticism a plea whereby it may excuse every act of frenzy, which its
own wild passions, not the inspirations of the Deity, have engendered.
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 God into man, and to annex to
this incomprehensible being qualities incompatible with any _possible_
definition of his nature. It may here be objected--Ought not the
Creator to possess the perfections of the creature? No. To attribute
to God the moral qualities of man, is to suppose him susceptible of
passions which, arising out of corporeal organisation, it is plain
that a pure spirit cannot possess. A bear is not perfect except he
is rough, a tyger is not perfect if he be not voracious, an elephant
is not perfect if otherwise than docile. How _deep_ an argument must
that not be which proves that the Deity is as rough as a bear, as
voracious as a tyger, and as docile as an elephant! But even suppose
with the vulgar, that God is a venerable old man, seated on a throne
of clouds, his breast the theatre of various passions, analogous
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 these 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.
Persecution is the only name applicable to punishment inflicted on an
individual in consequence of his opinions.--What end is persecution
designed to answer? Can it convince him whom it injures? Can it prove
to the people the falsehood of his opinions? It may make _him_ a
hypocrite, and them cowards, but bad means can promote no good end. The
unprejudiced mind looks with suspicion on a doctrine that needs the
sustaining hand of power.
Socrates was poisoned because he dared to combat the degrading
superstitions in which his countrymen were educated. Not long after his
death, Athens recognized the injustice of his sentence; his accuser
Melitus was condemned, and Socrates became a demigod.
Jesus Christ was crucified because he attempted to supersede the ritual
of Moses with regulations more moral and humane--his very judge made
public acknowledgment of his innocence, but a bigotted and ignorant mob
demanded the deed of horror.--Barabbas the murderer and traitor was
released. The meek reformer Jesus was immolated to the sanguinary Deity
of the Jews. Time rolled on, time changed the situations, and with
them, the opinions of men.
The vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded that the crucifixion
of Jesus was a supernatural event, and testimonies of miracles, so
frequent in unenlightened ages, were not wanting to prove that he was
something divine. This belief, rolling through the lapse of ages,
acquired force and extent, until the divinity of Jesus became a dogma,
which to dispute was death, which to doubt was infamy.
_Christianity_ is now the established religion; he who attempts to
disprove it, must behold murderers and traitors take precedence of him
in public opinion, though, if his genius be equal to his courage, and
assisted by a peculiar coalition of circumstances, future ages may
exalt him to a divinity, and persecute others in his name, as he was
persecuted in the name of his predecessor, in the homage of the world.
The same means that have supported every other popular belief, have
supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, murder, and falsehood; deeds
of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is. We
derive from our ancestors a belief thus fostered and supported.--We
quarrel, persecute, and hate for its maintenance.--Does not analogy
favour the opinion that, as like other systems it has arisen and
augmented, so like them it will decay and perish; that, as violence and
falsehood, not reasoning and persuasion, have procured its admission
among mankind; so, when enthusiasm has subsided, and time, that
infallible controverter of false opinions, has involved its pretended
evidences in the darkness of antiquity, it will become obsolete, and
that men will then laugh as heartily at grace, faith, redemption,
and original sin, as they now do at the metamorphoses of Jupiter,
the miracles of Romish saints, the efficacy of witchcraft, and the
appearance of departed spirits.
Had the christian religion commenced and continued by the mere force of
reasoning and persuasion, by its self-evident excellence and fitness,
the preceding analogy would be inadmissible. We should never speculate
upon the future obsoleteness of a system perfectly conformable to
nature and reason. It would endure so long as they endured, it would
be a truth as indisputable as the light of the sun, the criminality
of murder, and other facts, physical and moral, which, depending on
our organization, and relative situations, must remain acknowledged so
long as man is man.--It is an incontrovertible fact, the consideration
of which ought to repress the hasty conclusions of credulity, or
moderate its obstinacy in maintaining them, that, had the Jews not
been a barbarous and fanatical race of men, had even the resolution
of Pontius Pilate been equal to his candour, the christian religion
never could have prevailed, it could not even have existed. Man!
the very existence of whose most cherished opinions depends from a
thread so feeble, arises out of a source so equivocal, learn at least
humility; own at least that it is possible for thyself also to have
been seduced by education and circumstance into the admission of tenets
destitute of rational proof, and the truth of which has not yet been
satisfactorily demonstrated. Acknowledge at least that the falsehood
of thy brother’s opinions is no sufficient reason for his meriting
thy hatred.--What! because a fellow being disputes the reasonableness
of thy faith, wilt thou punish him with torture and imprisonment? If
persecution for religious opinions were admitted by the moralist, how
wide a door would not be opened by which convulsionists of every kind
might make inroads on the peace of society! How many deeds of barbarism
and blood would not receive a sanction!--But I will demand, if that
man is not rather entitled to the respect than the discountenance of
society, who, by disputing a received doctrine, either proves its
falsehood and inutility, thereby aiming at the abolition of what
is false and useless, or giving to its adherents an opportunity of
establishing its excellence and truth.--Surely this can be no crime.
Surely the individual who devotes his time to fearless and unrestricted
inquiry into the grand questions arising out of our moral nature,
ought rather to receive the patronage, than encounter the vengeance,
of an enlightened legislature. I would have you to know, my Lord,
that fetters of iron cannot bind or subdue the soul of virtue. From
the damps and solitude of its dungeon it ascends free and undaunted,
whither thine, from the pompous seat of judgment, dare not soar. I do
not warn you to beware lest your profession as a Christian, should make
you forget that you are a man;--but I warn you against festinating
that period, which, under the present coercive system, is too rapidly
maturing, when the seats of justice shall be the seats of venality and
slavishness, and the cells of Newgate become the abode of all that is
honorable and true.
I mean not to compare Mr. Eaton with Socrates or Jesus; he is a man
of blameless and respectable character, he is a citizen unimpeached
with crime; if, therefore, his rights as a citizen and a man have been
infringed, they have been infringed by illegal and immoral violence.
But I will assert that, should a second Jesus arise among men;
should such a one as Socrates again enlighten the earth, lengthened
imprisonment and infamous punishment (according to the regimen of
persecution revived by your Lordship) would effect, what hemlock and
the cross have heretofore effected, and the stain on the national
character, like that on Athens and Judea, would remain indelible,
but by the destruction of the history in which it is recorded. When
the Christian Religion shall have faded from the earth, when its
memory like that of Polytheism now shall remain, but remain only as
the subject of ridicule and wonder, indignant posterity would attach
immortal infamy to such an outrage; like the murder of Socrates, it
would secure the execration of every age.
The horrible and wide-wasting enormities which gleam like comets
through the darkness of gothic and superstitious ages, are regarded by
the moralist as no more than the necessary effects of known causes;
but, when an enlightened age and nation signalizes itself by a deed,
becoming none but barbarians and fanatics, Philosophy itself is even
induced to doubt whether human nature will ever emerge from the
pettishness and imbecility of its childhood. The system of persecution
at whose new birth, you, my Lord, are one of the presiding midwives,
is not more impotent and wicked than inconsistent. The press is loaded
with what are called (ironically, I should conceive) _proofs_ of the
Christian Religion: these books are replete with invective and calumny
against Infidels, they presuppose that he who rejects Christianity
must be utterly divested of reason and feeling. They advance the most
unsupported assertions, and take as first principles the most revolting
dogmas. The inferences drawn from these assumed premises are imposingly
logical and correct; but if a foundation is weak, no architect is
needed to foretell the instability of the superstructure.--If the
truth of Christianity is not disputable, for what purpose are these
books written? If they are sufficient to prove it, what further
need of controversy? _If God has spoken, why is not the universe
convinced?_ If the Christian Religion needs deeper learning, more
painful investigation, to establish its genuineness, wherefore attempt
to accomplish that by force, which the human mind can alone effect with
satisfaction to itself? If, lastly, its truth _cannot_ be demonstrated,
wherefore impotently attempt to snatch from God the government of his
creation, and impiously assert that the Spirit of Benevolence has left
that knowledge most essential to the well being of man, the only one
which, since its promulgation, has been the subject of unceasing cavil,
the cause of irreconcileable hatred?--Either the Christian Religion is
true, or it is not. If true, it comes from God, and its authenticity
can admit of doubt and dispute no further than its Omnipotent Author is
willing to allow;--if true, it admits of rational proof, and is capable
of being placed equally beyond controversy, as the principles which
have been established concerning matter and mind, by Locke and Newton;
and in proportion to the usefulness of the fact in dispute, so must it
be supposed that a benevolent being is anxious to procure the diffusion
of its knowledge on the earth.--If false, surely no enlightened
legislature would punish the reasoner, who opposes a system so much the
more fatal and pernicious as it is extensively admitted; so much the
more productive of absurd and ruinous consequences, as it is entwined
by education, with the prejudices and affections of the human heart, in
the shape of a popular belief.
Let us suppose that some half-witted philosopher should assert that the
earth was the centre of the universe, or that ideas could enter the
human mind independently of sensation or reflection. This man would
assert what is demonstrably incorrect;--he would promulgate a false
opinion. Yet, would he therefore deserve pillory and imprisonment?
By no means; probably few would discharge more correctly the duties
of a citizen and a man. I admit that the case above stated is not
precisely in point. The thinking part of the community has not received
as indisputable the truth of Christianity, as they have that of the
Newtonian system. A very large portion of society, and that powerfully
and extensively connected, derives its sole emolument from the belief
of Christianity, as a popular faith.
To torture and imprison the asserter of a dogma, however ridiculous
and false, is highly barbarous and impolitic:--How, then, does not the
cruelty of persecution become aggravated when it is directed against
the opposer of an opinion _yet under dispute_, and which men of
unrivalled acquirements, penetrating genius, and stainless virtue, have
spent, and at last sacrificed, their lives in combating.
The time is rapidly approaching, I hope, that you, my Lord, may live
to behold its arrival, when the Mahometan, the Jew, the Christian, the
Deist, and the Atheist, will live together in one community, equally
sharing the benefits which arise from its association, and united in
the bonds of charity and brotherly love.--My Lord, you have condemned
an innocent man--no crime was imputed to him--and you sentenced him
to torture and imprisonment. I have not addressed this letter to you
with the hopes of convincing you that you have acted wrong. The most
unprincipled and barbarous of men are not unprepared with sophisms,
to prove that they would have acted in no other manner, and to show
that vice is virtue. But I raise my solitary voice, to express my
disapprobation, so far as it goes, of the cruel and unjust sentence
you passed upon Mr. Eaton; to assert, so far as I am capable of
influencing, those rights of humanity, which you have wantonly and
unlawfully infringed.
My Lord,
Yours, &c.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] See the Attorney General’s speech.
[42] By Mr. Fox’s bill (1791) Juries are, in cases of libel, judges
both of the law and the fact.
[43] Shakespeare.
[44] See the Attorney General’s Speech.
[Decoration]
PRINCE ALEXY HAIMATOFF.[45]
[_Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff._ Translated from the
original Latin MSS. under the immediate inspection of
the Prince. By John Brown, Esq. Pp. 236, 12mo. Hookham,
1814.][46]
Is the suffrage of mankind the legitimate criterion of intellectual
energy? Are complaints of the aspirants to literary fame to be
considered as the honourable disappointment of neglected genius,
or the sickly impatience of a dreamer miserably self deceived? the
most illustrious ornaments of the annals of the human race have been
stigmatised by the contempt and abhorrence of entire communities of
man; but this injustice arose out of some temporary superstition, some
partial interest, some national doctrine: a glorious redemption awaited
their remembrance. There is indeed, nothing so remarkable in the
contempt of the ignorant for the enlightened: the vulgar pride of folly
delights to triumph upon mind. This is an intelligible process: the
infamy or ingloriousness that can be thus explained detracts nothing
from the beauty of virtue or the sublimity of genius. But what does
utter obscurity express? If the public do not advert even in censure to
a performance, has that performance already received its condemnation?
The result of this controversy is important to the ingenuous critic.
His labours are indeed miserably worthless if their objects may
invariably be attained before their application. He should know the
limits of his prerogative. He should not be ignorant, whether it is his
duty to promulgate the decisions of others, or to cultivate his taste
and judgment, that he may be enabled to render a reason for his own.
Circumstances the least connected with intellectual nature have
contributed, for a certain period, to retain in obscurity the most
memorable specimens of human genius. The author refrains perhaps from
introducing his production to the world with all the pomp of empirical
bibliopolism. A sudden tide in the affairs of men may make the neglect
or contradiction of some insignificant doctrine a badge of obscurity
and discredit: those even who are exempt from the action of these
absurd predilections are necessarily in an indirect manner affected by
their influence. It is perhaps the product of an imagination daring
and undisciplined: the majority of readers ignorant and disdaining
toleration refuse to pardon a neglect of common rules; their canons of
criticism are carelessly infringed, it is less religious than a charity
sermon, less methodical and cold than a French tragedy, where all the
unities are preserved: no excellencies, where prudish cant and dull
regularity are absent, can preserve it from the contempt and abhorrence
of the multitude. It is evidently not difficult to imagine an instance
in which the most elevated genius shall be recompensed with neglect.
Mediocrity alone seems unvaryingly to escape rebuke and obloquy, it
accommodates its attempts to the spirit of the age which has produced
it, and adopts with mimic effrontery the cant of the day and hour for
which alone it lives.
We think that “the Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff” deserves to be
regarded as an example of the fact by the frequency of which criticism
is vindicated from the imputation of futility and impertinence. We do
not hesitate to consider this fiction as the product of a bold and
original mind. We hardly remember ever to have seen surpassed the
subtle delicacy of imagination, by which the manifest distinctions of
character and form are seized and pictured in colours that almost make
nature more beautiful than herself. The vulgar observe no resemblances
or discrepancies, but such as are gross and glaring. The science of
mind to which history, poetry, biography serve as the materials,
consists in the discernment of shades and distinctions where the
unenlightened discover nothing but a shapeless and unmeaning mass.
The faculty for this discernment distinguishes genius from dulness.
There are passages in the production before us which afford instances
of just and rapid intuition belonging only to intelligences that
possess this faculty in no ordinary degree. As a composition the book
is far from faultless. Its abruptness and angularities do not appear
to have received the slightest polish or correction. The author has
written with fervour, but has disdained to revise at leisure. These
errors are the errors of youth and genius and the fervid impatience
of sensibilities impetuously disburthening their fulness. The author
is proudly negligent of connecting the incidents of his tale. It
appears more like the recorded day dream of a poet, not unvisited by
the sublimest and most lovely visions, than the tissue of a romance
skilfully interwoven for the purpose of maintaining the interest of
the reader, and conducting his sympathies by dramatic gradations to
the denoûment. It is, what it professes to be, a memoir, not a novel.
Yet its claims to the former appellation are established, only by
the impatience and inexperience of the author, who, possessing in
an eminent degree, the higher qualifications of a novelist, we had
almost said a poet, has neglected the number by which that success
would probably have been secured, which, in this instance, merits of
a far nobler stamp have unfortunately failed to acquire. Prince Alexy
is by no means an unnatural, although no common character. We think
we can discern his counterpart in Alfieri’s delineation of himself.
The same propensities, the same ardent devotion to his purposes, the
same chivalric and unproductive attachment to unbounded liberty,
characterises both. We are inclined to doubt whether the author has
not attributed to his hero the doctrines of universal philanthropy
in a spirit of profound and almost unsearchable irony: at least he
appears biassed by no peculiar principles, and it were perhaps an
insoluble inquiry whether any, and if any, what moral truth he designed
to illustrate by his tale. Bruhle, the tutor of Alexy, is a character
delineated with consummate skill; the power of intelligence and virtue
over external deficiencies is forcibly exemplified. The calmness,
patience and magnanimity of this singular man, are truly rare and
admirable: his disinterestedness, his equanimity, his irresistible
gentleness, form a finished and delightful portrait. But we cannot
regard his commendation to his pupil to indulge in promiscuous
concubinage without horror and detestation. The author appears to deem
the loveless intercourse of brutal appetite a venial offence against
delicacy and virtue! he asserts that a transient connexion with a
cultivated female may contribute to form the heart without essentially
vitiating the sensibilities. It is our duty to protest against so
pernicious and disgusting an opinion. No man can rise pure from the
poisonous embraces of a prostitute, or sinless from the desolated
hopes of a confiding heart. Whatever may be the claims of chastity,
whatever the advantages of simple and pure affections, these ties,
these benefits, are of equal obligation to either sex. Domestic
relations depend for their integrity upon a complete reciprocity of
duties. But the author himself has in the adventure of the Sultana,
Debesh-Sheptuti, afforded a most impressive and tremendous allegory of
the cold-blooded and malignant selfishness of sensuality.
We are incapacitated by the unconnected and vague narrative from
forming an analysis of the incidents: they would consist indeed, simply
of a catalogue of events, and which, divested of the aërial tinge of
genius, might appear trivial and common. We shall content ourselves,
therefore, with selecting some passages calculated to exemplify the
peculiar powers of the author. The following description of the simple
and interesting Rosalie is in the highest style of delineation:--
“Her hair was unusually black, she truly had raven locks,
the same glossiness, the same varying shade, the same
mixture of purple and sable for which the plumage of the
raven is remarkable, were found in the long elastic tresses
depending from her head and covering her shoulders. Her
complexion was dark and clear: the colours which composed
the brown that dyed her smooth skin, were so well mixed,
that not one blot, not one varied tinge, injured its
brightness, and when the blush of animation or of modesty
flushed her cheek, the tint was so rare, that could a
painter have dipped his pencil in it, that single shade
would have rendered him immortal. The bone above her eye
was sharp, and beautifully curved; much as I have admired
the wonderful properties of curves, I am convinced that
their most stupendous properties collected would fall far
short of that magic line. The eyebrow was pencilled with
extreme nicety; in the centre it consisted of the deepest
shade of black, at the edges it was hardly perceptible,
and no man could have been hardy enough to have attempted
to define the precise spot at which it ceased: in short
the velvet drapery of the eyebrow was only to be rivalled
by the purple of the long black eyelashes that terminated
the ample curtain. Rosalie’s eyes were large and full;
they appeared at a distance uniformly dark, but upon close
inspection the innumerable strokes of various hues of
infinite fineness and endless variety, drawn in concentric
circles behind the pellucid crystal, filled the mind with
wonder and admiration, and could only be the work of
infinite power directed by infinite wisdom.”
Alexy’s union with Aür-Ahebeh the Circassian slave is marked by
circumstances of deep pathos, and the sweetest tenderness of sentiment.
The description of his misery and madness at her death deserves to be
remarked as affording evidence of an imagination vast, profound and
full of energy.
“Alexy, who gained the friendship, perhaps the love of the
native Rosalie: the handsome Haimatoff, the philosophic
Haimatoff, the haughty Haimatoff, Haimatoff the gay, the
witty, the accomplished, the bold hunter, the friend of
liberty, the chivalric lover of all that is feminine, the
hero, the enthusiast: see him now, that is he, mark him! he
appears in the shades of evening, he stalks as a spectre,
he has just risen from the damps of the charnel-house; see,
the dews still hang on his forehead. He will vanish at
cock-crowing, he never heard the song of the lark, nor the
busy hum of men; the sun’s rays never warmed him, the pale
moonbeam alone shows his unearthly figure, which is fanned
by the wing of the owl, which scarce obstructs the slow
flight of the droning beetle, or of the drowsy bat. Mark
him! he stops, his lean arms are crossed on his bosom; he
is bowed to the earth, his sunken eye gazes from its deep
cavity on vacuity, as the toad skulking in the corner of a
sepulchre, peeps with malignity through the circumambient
gloom. His cheek is hollow; the glowing tints of his
complexion, which once resembled the autumnal sunbeam on
the autumnal beech, are gone, the cadaverous yellow, the
livid hue, have usurped their place, the sable honours of
his head have perished, they once waved in the wind like
the jetty pinions of the raven, the skull is only covered
by the shrivelled skin, which the rook views wistfully, and
calls to her young ones. His gaunt bones start from his
wrinkled garments, his voice is deep, hollow, sepulchral;
it is the voice which wakes the dead, he has long held
converse with the departed. He attempts to walk he knows
not whither, his legs totter under him, he falls, the boys
hoot him, the dogs bark at him, he hears them not, he sees
them not.--Rest there, Alexy, it beseemeth thee, thy bed is
the grave, thy bride is the worm, yet once thou stoodest
erect, thy cheek was flushed with joyful ardour, thy eye
blazing told what thy head conceived, what thy heart felt,
thy limbs were vigour and activity, thy bosom expanded with
pride, ambition, and desire, every nerve thrilled to feel,
every muscle swelled to execute.
“Haimatoff, the blight has tainted thee, thou ample roomy
web of life, whereon were traced the gaudy characters,
the gay embroidery of pleasure, how has the moth battened
on thee; Haimatoff, how has the devouring flame scorched
the plains, once yellow with the harvest! the simoon, the
parching breath of the desert, has swept over the laughing
plains, the carpet of verdure rolled away at its approach,
and has bared amid desolation. Thou stricken deer, thy
leather coat, thy dappled hide hangs loose upon thee, it
was a deadly arrow, how has it wasted thee, thou scathed
oak, how has the red lightning drank thy sap: Haimatoff,
Haimatoff, eat thy soul with vexation. Let the immeasurable
ocean roll between thee and pride: you must not dwell
together,” p. 129
The episode of Viola is affecting, natural, and beautiful. We do not
ever remember to have seen the unforgiving fastidiousness of family
honour more awfully illustrated. After the death of her lover, Viola
still expects that he will esteem, still cherishes the delusion that he
is not lost to her for ever.
“She used frequently to go to the window to look for him,
or walk in the Park to meet him, but without the least
impatience, at his delay. She learnt a new tune, or a new
song to amuse him, she stood behind the door to startle him
as he entered, or disguised herself to surprise him.”
The character of Mary, deserves, we think, to be considered as the
only complete failure in the book. Every other female whom the author
has attempted to describe is designated by an individuality peculiarly
marked and true. They constitute finished portraits of whatever is
eminently simple, graceful, gentle, or disgustingly atrocious and vile.
Mary alone is the miserable parasite of fashion, the tame slave of
drivelling and drunken folly, the cold-hearted coquette, the lying and
meretricious prude. The means employed to gain this worthless prize
corresponds exactly with its worthlessness. Sir Fulke Hildebrand is
a strenuous Tory, Alexy, on his arrival in England professes himself
inclined to the principles of the Whig party, finding that the Baronet
had sworn that his daughter should never marry a Whig, he sacrifices
his principles and with inconceivable effrontery thus palliates his
apostasy and falsehood.
“The prejudices of the Baronet were strong in proportion
as they were irrational. I resolved rather to humour
than to thwart them. I contrived to be invited to dine
in company with him; I always proposed the health of the
minister, I introduced politics and defended the Tory party
in long speeches, I attended clubs and public dinners
of that interest. I do not know whether this conduct
was justifiable; it may certainly be excused when the
circumstances of my case are duly considered. I would tear
myself in pieces if I suspected that I could be guilty
of the slightest falsehood or prevarication; (see Lord
Chesterfield’s Letters for the courtier-like distinction
between simulation and dissimulation,) but there was
nothing of that sort here. I was of no party, consequently,
I could not be accused of deserting any one. I did not
defend the injustice of any body of men, I did not detract
from the merits of any virtuous character. I praised
what was laudable in the Tory party, and blamed what was
reprehensible in the Whigs: I was silent with regard to
whatever was culpable in the former or praiseworthy in
the latter. The stratagem was innocent which injured no
one, and which promoted the happiness of two individuals,
especially of the most amiable woman the world ever knew.”
An instance of more deplorable perversity of the human understanding
we do not recollect ever to have witnessed. It almost persuades us
to believe that scepticism or indifference concerning certain sacred
truths may occasionally produce a subtlety of sophism, by which the
conscience of the criminal may be bribed to overlook his crime.
Towards the conclusion of this strange and powerful performance it
must be confessed that _aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus_. The
adventure of the Eleutheri,[47] although the sketch of a profounder
project, is introduced and concluded with unintelligible abruptness.
Bruhle dies, purposely as it should seem that his pupil may renounce
the romantic sublimity of his nature, and that his inauspicious union
and prostituted character might be exempt from the censure of violated
friendship. Numerous indications of profound and vigorous thought are
scattered over even the most negligently compacted portions of the
narrative. It is an unweeded garden where nightshade is interwoven with
sweet jessamine, and the most delicate spices of the east peep over
struggling stalks of rank and poisonous hemlock.
In the delineation of the more evanescent feelings and uncommon
instances of strong and delicate passion we conceive the author to
have exhibited new and unparalleled powers. He has noticed some
peculiarities of female character with a delicacy and truth singularly
exquisite. We think that the interesting subject of sexual relations
requires for its successful development the application of a mind thus
organised and endowed. Yet even here how great the deficiencies; this
mind must be pure from the fashionable superstitions of gallantry, must
be exempt from the sordid feelings which with blind idolatry worship
the image and blaspheme the deity, reverence the type, and degrade the
reality of which it is an emblem.
We do not hesitate to assert that the author of this volume is a man of
ability. His great though indisciplinable energies and fervid rapidity
of conception embody scenes and situations, and passions affording
inexhaustible food for wonder and delight. The interest is deep and
irresistible. A moral enchanter seems to have conjured up the shapes
of all that is beautiful and strange to suspend the faculties in
fascination and astonishment.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] From _The Critical Review_, December 1814, vol. vi. pp. 566-574.
[46] This pseudonymous romance, as wild in its conception and execution
as Shelley’s own romances of _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_, was the work
of Shelley’s college-friend and biographer, Thomas Jefferson Hogg.
To Professor Dowden of Dublin, Shelley’s latest biographer, is due
the credit of disinterring and drawing public attention to Shelley’s
curious critical notice of it.--Ed.
[47] From Edinburgh, Nov. 26, 1813. Shelley had written to Hogg:--“Your
novel is now printed. Write more like this. Delight us again with a
character so natural and energetic as Alexy: but do not persevere in
writing after you grow weary of your toil. _Aliquando bonus dormitat
Homerus_; and the swans and the Eleutherarchs are proofs that you were
a little sleepy.” (See Hogg’s Life of Shelley, vol. ii. p. 481.)--Ed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
OF THE PUBLISHED WRITINGS IN VERSE AND PROSE
OF
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SHELLEY.
1810.
Zastrozzi. A Romance. By P. B. S. London: Printed for G. Wilkie and J.
Robinson, 57 Paternoster Row. 1810. 12mo, pp. 252.
----That their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works--This would surpass
Common revenge.--_Paradise Lost._
Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson. Being Poems found amongst
the Papers of that noted Female, who attempted the Life of the King in
1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor. Oxford: Printed and sold by J. Munday.
1810. 4to, pp. 29.
1811.
St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian. A Romance. By a Gentleman of the
University of Oxford. London: Printed for J. J. Stockdale, 41 Pall
Mall. 1811. 12mo, pp. 236.
A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things. By a Gentleman of the
University of Oxford. For assisting to maintain in prison Mr. Peter
Finnerty, imprisoned for a libel. London: Sold by B. Crosby & Co., and
all other Booksellers. 1811.
And Famine at her bidding wasted wide
The Wretched Land, till in the Public way,
Promiscuous where the dead and dying lay,
Dogs fed on human bones in the open light of day.
--_Curse of Kehama._
The Necessity of Atheism. Worthing: Printed by E. & W. Phillips. Sold
in London and Oxford. [1811.] 8vo, pp. 13.
Quod clarâ et perspicuâ demonstratione careat
pro vero habere mens omnino nequis humana.
--_Bacon de Augment. Scient._
Original Poetry. By Victor and Cazire. London: J. J. Stockdale, 41 Pall
Mall. 1811. Royal 8vo, pp. 64.
1812.
A Letter to Lord Ellenborough. Occasioned by the Sentence which he
passed on Mr. D. I. Eaton, as Publisher of the Third Part of Paine’s
Age of Reason. [1812.] Small 8vo, pp. 23.]
Deorum offensa, Diis curæ.
--It is contrary to the mild spirit of the Christian
Religion, for no sanction can be found under that
dispensation which will warrant a Government to impose
disabilities and penalties upon any man, on account of his
religious opinions. [_Hear, Hear._]--_Marquis Wellesley’s
Speech. Globe, July 2._
An Address to the Irish People. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Dublin. 1812.
Price 5d. 8vo, pp. 22.
Advertisement.--The lowest possible price is set on this
publication, because it is the intention of the author
to awaken in the minds of the Irish poor, a knowledge of
their real state, summarily pointing out the evils of that
state, and suggesting rational means of remedy.--Catholic
Emancipation, and a Repeal of the Union Act, (the latter,
the most successful engine that England ever wielded
over the misery of fallen Ireland,) being treated of in
the following address, as grievances which unanimity and
resolution may remove and associations conducted with
peaceable firmness, being earnestly recommended, as means
for embodying that unanimity and firmness, which must
finally be successful.
Proposals for an Association of those Philanthropists, who convinced of
the inadequacy of the moral and political state of Ireland to produce
benefits which are nevertheless attainable are willing to unite to
accomplish its regeneration. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Dublin: Printed
by I. Eton, Winetavern Street. [1812.] 8vo, pp. 18.
1813.
Queen Mab. A Philosophical Poem. With Notes. By Percy Bysshe Shelley.
London: Printed by P. B. Shelley, 23 Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square.
1813. Crown 8vo, pp. 240.
Ecrasez L’Infame!
_Correspondance de Voltaire._
Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante
Trita solo; juvat integros accedere fonteis;
Atque haurire: juratque novos decerpere flores.
* * * * *
Unde prius nulli velarint tempora musæ.
Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus; et arctis
Religionum animos nodio exsolvere pergo.--_Lucret._ lib. iv.
Δος που στῶ, καὶ κοσμος κινησω.--_Archimedes._
A Vindication of Natural Diet. Being one in a Series of Notes to Queen
Mab, a Philosophical Poem. London: Printed for J. Callow, Medical
Bookseller, Crown Court, Princes Street, Soho, by Smith & Davy, Queen
Street, Seven Dials. 1813. Price 1s. 6d. 12mo, pp. 43.
Ιαπετιονιδη, παντων περι μηδεα ειδωσ,
Χαρεισ μεν πυρ κλεψασ, και εμασ φρενασ ηπεροπευσασ;
Σοι τ’ αυτω μεγα πημα και ανδρασιν εσσομενοισι.
Τοισ δ’ εγω αντι πυροσ δωσω κακον, ω κεν απαντεσ
Τερπωνται κατα θυμον, εον κακον αμφαγαπωντεσ.
--ΗΣΙΩΔ. _Op. et Dies._ i. 54.
1814.
A Refutation of Deism. In a Dialogue. London: Printed by Schulze &
Dean, 13 Poland Street. 1814. 8vo, pp. v. 101.
ΣΥΝΕΤΟΙΣΙΝ.
1816.
Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude, and other Poems. By Percy Bysshe
Shelley. London: Printed for Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, Paternoster
Row, and Carpenter & Son, Old Bond Street, by S. Hamilton, Weybridge,
Surrey. 1816. Fcp. 8vo, pp. 101.
1817.
A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom. By
the Hermit of Marlow. London: Printed for C. & J. Ollier, 3 Welbeck
Street, Cavendish Square, by C. H. Reynell, 21 Piccadilly. 1817. 8vo,
pp. 13.
An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte. By the
Hermit of Marlow. [1817.]
“We Pity the Plumage, but forget the Dying Bird.”
No copy of the original edition, apparently limited to
twenty copies, is known to exist. A facsimile reprint,
reprinted for Thomas Rodd, 2 Great Newport Street, 8vo, pp.
16, was issued not later than 1843, and is still procurable.
History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland,
Germany, and Holland. With Letters descriptive of a Sail round the Lake
of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni. London: Published by T.
Hookham, Jun., Old Bond Street, and C. & J. Ollier, Welbeck Street.
1817. Fcp. 8vo, pp. vi. 183.
1818.
Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City. A Vision of
the Nineteenth Century. In the Stanza of Spenser. By Percy B. Shelley.
London: Printed for Sherwood, Neely, & Jones, Paternoster Row, and C. &
J. Ollier, Welbeck Street, by B. M’Millan, Bow Street, Covent Garden.
1818. 8vo, pp. xxxii. 270.
ΔΟΣ ΠΟΥ ΣΤΩ ΚΑΙ ΚΟΣΜΟΝ ΚΙΝΗΣΩ.--Archimedes.
The Revolt of Islam. A Poem, in Twelve Cantos. By Percy Bysshe Shelley.
London: Printed for C. & J. Ollier, Welbeck Street, by B. M’Millan, Bow
Street, Covent Garden. 1818. 8vo, pp. xxxii. 270.
1819.
Rosalind and Helen. A Modern Eclogue; with other Poems. By Percy Bysshe
Shelley. London: Printed for C. & J. Ollier, Vere Street, Bond Street
1819. 8vo, pp. 92.
The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five Acts. By Percy B. Shelley. Italy: Printed
for C. & J. Ollier, Vere Street, Bond Street, London. 1819. 8vo, pp.
xiv. 104.
The Cenci. A Tragedy in Five Acts. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Second
edition. London: C. & J. Ollier, Vere Street, Bond Street. 1821. 8vo,
pp. xviii. 104.
1820.
Prometheus Unbound. A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, with other Poems. By
Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: C. & J. Ollier, Vere Street, Bond Street.
1820. 8vo, pp. 222.
Audisne hæc, amphiaræ, sub terram abdite?
Œdipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the Tyrant. A Tragedy in Two Acts.
Translated from the Original Doric. London: Published for the Author,
by J. Johnston, 98 Cheapside, and sold by all Booksellers. 1820. 8vo,
pp. 39.
----Choose Reform or civil-war,
When thro thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs,
Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR.
1821.
Adonais. An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion,
Hyperion, &c. By Percy B. Shelley. Pisa: With the types of Didot. 1821.
4to, pp. 25.
Αστήρ τρὶν μὲν ἐλαμπες ενι ζῶοισιν εῶος.
Νυν δε θανῶν, λαμπεις ἔσπερος εν φθίμενοις.--_Plato._
Epipsychidion. Verses addressed to the Noble and Unfortunate Lady
Emilia V----, now imprisoned in the Convent of ----. London: C. & J.
Ollier, Vere Street, Bond Street. 1821. 8vo, pp. 31.
L’anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nel
infinite un Mondo tuito per essa, diverso assai da questo
oscuro e pauroso baratro.
Her own words.
1822.
Hellas. A Lyrical Drama. By Percy B. Shelley. London: Charles and James
Ollier, Vere Street, Bond Street. 1822. 8vo, pp. xii. 60.
ΜΑΝΤΙΣ ΕΙΜ’ ΕΣΘΛΩΝ ἈΓΩΝΩΝ.--_Odip. Colon._
The last work published by Shelley himself. The remainder
are posthumous publications.
POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS.
Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: Printed for John and
Henry L. Hunt, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. 1824. 8vo, pp. xii. 415.
In nobil sangue vita umile e queta,
Ed in alto intelletto un puro core;
Frutto senile in sul giovenil fiore,
E in aspetto pensoso anima lieta.--_Petrarca._
The Masque of Anarchy. A Poem. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Now first
published, with a Preface by Leigh Hunt. London: Edward Moxon, 64 New
Bond Street. 1832. Fcp. 8vo, pp. xxx. 47.
Hope is strong:
Justice and Truth their winged child have found.--_Revolt of Islam._
The Shelley Papers. Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by T. Medwin, Esq.,
and Original Poems and Papers, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Now first
collected. London: Whittaker, Treacher, & Co. 1833. 18mo, pp. viii. 180.
Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments. By Percy
Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. In two volumes. London: Edward
Moxon, Dover Street. 1840. Crown 8vo, pp. xxxii. 320, viii. 360.
Relics of Shelley. Edited by Richard Garnett. London: Edward Moxon &
Co., Dover Street. 1862. Fcp. 8vo, pp. xvi. 191.
“Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.”
Contents.--(Preface)--Prologue to Hellas (with note)--The
Magic Plant (with note)--Orpheus (with note)--Scene
from Tasso (with note)--Fiordispina (with note)--To
his Genius--Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear--Lines (“We
meet not as we parted”)--Lines written in the Bay of
Lerici--Fragments of the Adonais (with notes)--Translation
of the First Canzone of Dante’s Convito.
INDEX.
Addison, his _Cato_, ii. 16
Æschylus, quoted, ii. 340
Alfieri, ii. 390
Alps, the, i. 119, 120, 348
Anacreon’s swallow, ii. 359
_Anastasius_, ii. 341
Annual Parliaments, i. 364, 365
Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, ii. 49
Apollonius Rhodius, i. 410
Ariosto, tomb of, ii. 245;
his arm-chair, 246;
handwriting of, 247
Aristotle, ii. 49
Aspasia, ii. 134, 135
Bacon, quoted, ii. 4;
a poet, 8, 49
Barthélemi, ii. 44
Bisham wood, ii. 278
Blackstone, quoted, i. 254
Boccaccio, ii. 294, 295
Buffon, his sublime but gloomy theory respecting the future of this
globe, i. 352
Byron, Lord, his _Hours of Idleness_, quotations or plagiarisms from?
i. 132, 174;
visit to, at Ravenna, 390, 391;
his meeting with “Monk” Lewis, ii. 208;
at Venice, 226;
a gondoliere’s opinion of, 236;
Shelley’s visit to, at Venice, 237;
his _Don Juan_, 241;
his _Childe Harold_, 259;
his low debauchery, _ib._;
a great poet, 260;
visit to, at Ravenna, 332-345;
his Letter to Bowles, 342;
his _Cain_, 355;
at Leghorn, 362, 364
Calderon, i. 388, ii. 14, 305, 306;
his _Magico Prodigioso_, 353, 354
Calvin and Servetus, i. 229
Castlereagh, ii. 268
Catholic emancipation, i. 242 _sqq._
Charlotte, Princess, death of, i. 369
Chaucer, ii. 27
Chesterfield, Lord, his distinction between simulation and
dissimulation, ii. 394
Chillon, castle of, i. 340
Cicero, ii. 8, 49
Clarens, i. 341
Cobbett, William, on Annual Parliaments, i. 365; ii. 276, 289
Coleridge, S. T., his tragedy of _Remorse_, ii. 292, 353, 354
Coliseum, the, i. 394; ii. 260
Como, ii. 223-225
Comyns, Lord Chief Baron, his definition of libel, i. 254
Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, atrocities of, i. 306;
arch of, ii. 261, 280, 281
Correggio, two pictures of, ii. 249, 250
Dante, i. 385; ii. 24;
the first religious reformer, 27, 40;
tomb of, 344
Danube, the, i. 15, 32
Democritus, i. 400
Diotima, the prophetess, ii. 88, 89
Dowden, Professor, ii. 387
Drummond, Sir William, his _Academical Questions_, i. 327; ii. 176
Eaton, Daniel Isaac, sentence on, for publishing Paine’s _Age of
Reason_, ii. 369-386
Ellenborough, Lord, Shelley’s letter to, ii. 369-386
Epicurus, i. 421
Evian, town of, i. 335, 336
Finnerty, Mr. Peter, i. 255; ii. 399
Fitzwilliam, Lord, recall of, ii. 303
Fletcher, John, his _Two Noble Kinsmen_, ii. 255
Forsyth’s Travels in Italy, ii. 285
Fox, Charles James, i. 238
Franceschini, pictures of, ii. 251, 252
Fust, specimens of his press, ii. 344
Genoa, i. 153
George III., i. 237
George IV., i. 238
Gibbon, his house at Lausanne, i. 343
Gisborne, Mr. and Mrs., letters to, ii. 229-231, 290-291, 296-299,
301-309, 312-319, 326-330, 350-356
Gisborne, Mrs., ii. 228, 229
Godwin, William, his novels, i. 412-416;
letter to, ii. 231-233, 317;
his answer to Malthus, 352;
his law-suit and pecuniary embarrassments, 360, 361
Goethe, his _Faust_, ii. 353
Guercino, pictures by, ii. 253
Guiccioli, Contessa, Byron’s liaison with, ii. 333, 337, 340;
her letter to Shelley, 343, 350, 351
Guido, his picture of the Rape of Proserpine, ii. 249;
his Samson, 250;
his Murder of the Innocents, 250, 251;
his “Fortune,” 251;
his “Madonna Lattante,” _ib._;
his picture of Beatrice Cenci, 293
Heraclitus, i. 400
Hermance, village of, described, i. 333
Hesiod, quoted, ii. 61
Heyne, on the opinions entertained of the Jews by ancient poets and
philosophers, i. 301
Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, his _Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff_, ii.
387-396
Homer, quoted, ii. 56, 62;
on Calamity, 80, 81;
the most admirable of all poets, 115;
quoted, 124, 126, 127
Horace, quoted, i. 105; ii. 275
Hume, on causation, i. 327
Hunt, Leigh, letters to, i. 381-391;
invited by Lord Byron to Italy, ii. 268;
letter to, 294-296, 317, 362, 364
Kean, Edmund, ii. 293
Keats, John, his _Endymion_, ii. 322-324;
his sufferings, 323;
death of, 327
Lafayette, words of, i. 262
Lamb, Charles, i. 384; ii. 295
Laplace, demonstration of, i. 319
Lausanne, i. 343
Lear, King, ii. 14
Lewis, M. G., his ghost stories, ii. 208-212
Livy, ii. 9;
description by, 256
Lloyd, Charles, ii. 295
Locke, on sensation, i. 327
Lucretius, quoted, i. 296
Luther, ii. 27
Lyttelton, Lord, ii. 210, 211, 212
_Macbeth_, quoted, i. 47, 93, 273; ii. 21, 31, 375
Macchiavelli, on political institutions, ii. 17
Malthus, i. 280, 281;
Godwin’s answer to, ii. 232, 352;
a very clever man, 243
Marlow, ii. 223;
Shelley’s house at, 226
Marsyas, ii. 106, 107
Mellerie, i. 336, 337
Michael Angelo, i. 384, 385;
his Bacchus, 409
Milan Cathedral, ii. 225
Milton, death of, i. 370
Milton, his _Paradise Lost_ quoted, i. 146, 415;
stood alone, ii. 16;
his _Paradise Lost_, 25, 33;
quoted, 35
Mirabaud’s _Système de la Nature_, i. 326
Mont Blanc, i. 348
Moore, Thomas, ii. 339, 357, 358, 361
Music, ii. 70, 71
Nerni, village of, described, i. 334
Newton, Sir Isaac, ii. 374
Obscenity, blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, ii. 17
O’Neill, Miss, part of Beatrice Cenci fitted for, ii. 293
Oxford, reminiscence of, ii. 193
Paine, Thomas, i. 278
Peacock, Thomas Love, letters to, ii. 221-229, 241-290, 291-293
Petrarch, ii. 40
Petronius, poetical description of, ii. 265
Plato, i. 421;
essentially a poet, ii. 7, 22, 24;
the greatest among the Greek philosophers, 48;
his Symposium, 232
Pliny quoted, i. 294
Pompeii, ii. 270-275
_Queen Mab_, piratical republication of, ii. 328, 350
Raphael, i. 384;
his St. Cecilia, ii. 252, 253
Ravenna, ii. 338
Reveley, Henry, letters to, ii. 299-301, 309-312, 325, 326
Richardson, Samuel, his _Grandison_ quoted, ii. 237
Rome, a city of the dead, ii. 261;
English burying-place at, 262
Rousseau, his _Julie_, i. 333, 337, 339-341, 343;
essentially a poet, ii. 30
Schiller, his _Jungfrau von Orleans_, ii. 352
Scott’s _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ quoted, i. 47, 212;
_Marmion_ quoted, 100
Shakespeare, quoted, i. 384;
the greatest individual mind, ii. 40;
attribution to him of part of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, 255
Shelley, Mrs., her _Frankenstein_, i. 417-419
Socrates, ii. 53-135, 381
Sophocles, ii. 317
Southey, Robert, Shelley’s visit to, at Keswick, ii. 295
Spinosa, quoted, i. 328
St. Gingoux, village of, i. 338
St. Peter’s, Rome, ii. 282, 283
Suetonius, quoted, i. 294
Tasso, bold and true words of, ii. 35, 175;
manuscripts of, 246, 247
Terence, i. 409
Theocritus, ii. 19;
quoted, 291
Thomson, quoted, i. 77
Translation, vanity of, ii. 7
Tuberose, odour of the, ii. 17
Vallière, Madame de la, ii. 214
Velino, cataract of the, ii. 257
Venice, i. 87, 88; ii. 241
Vesuvius, ii. 263, 265-267
Vevai, i. 343
Virgil, quoted, ii. 25;
his Sixth Æneid, 264
Wellesley, Marquis, quotation from a speech of, ii. 369
Wieland, his novels, ii. 44
Wollstonecraft, Mary, her writings, i. 413
Wordsworth, i. 413;
quoted, ii. 206, 263, 353
Yvoire, village of, i. 335
THE END.
_Printed by_ Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
_Edinburgh and London_
Transcriber’s Notes
A number of typographical errors were corrected silently.
Cover image is in the public domain.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley [Vol. II of II]" ***
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