CHAPTER V
“Above all things, Liberty!” The political creed of Shelley may be comprised in a few words; it was, in truth, that of most men, and in a peculiar manner of young men, during the freshness and early springs of revolutions. He held that not only is the greatest possible amount of civil liberty to be preferred to all other blessings, but that this advantage is all-sufficient, and comprehends within itself every other desirable object. The former position is as unquestionably true as the latter is undoubtedly false. It is no small praise, however, to a very young man, to say that on a subject so remote from the comprehension of youth his opinions were at least half right. Twenty years ago the young men at our Universities were satisfied with upholding the political doctrines of which they approved by private discussions. They did not venture to form clubs of brothers and to move resolutions, except a small number of enthusiasts of doubtful sanity, who alone sought to usurp by crude and premature efforts the offices of a matured understanding and of manly experience.
Although our fellow-collegians were willing to learn before they took upon themselves the heavy and thankless charge of instructing others, there was no lack of beardless politicians amongst us. Of these, some were more strenuous supporters of the popular cause in our little circles than others; but all were abundantly liberal. A Brutus or a Gracchus would have found many to surpass him, and few, indeed, to fall short in theoretical devotion to the interests of equal freedom. I can scarcely recollect a single exception amongst my numerous acquaintances. All, I think were worthy of the best ages of Greece or of Rome; all were true, loyal citizens, brave and free. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? Liberty is the morning-star of youth; and those who enjoy the inappreciable blessing of a classical education, are taught betimes to lisp its praises. They are nurtured in the writings of its votaries, and they even learn their native tongue, as it were, at secondhand, and reflected in the glorious pages of the authors, who in the ancient languages and in strains of a noble eloquence, that will never fail to astonish succeeding generations, proclaim unceasingly, with every variety of powerful and energetic phrase, “Above all things, Liberty!” The praises of liberty were the favourite topic of our earliest verses, whether they flowed with natural ease, or were elaborated painfully out of the resources of art; and the tyrant was set up as an object of scorn, to be pelted with the first ink of our themes. How, then, can an educated youth be other than free?
Shelley was entirely devoted to the lovely theory of freedom; but he was also eminently averse at that time from engaging in the far less beautiful practices, wherein are found the actual and operative energies of liberty. I was maintaining against him one day at my rooms the superiority of the ethical sciences over the physical. In the course of the debate he cried with shrill vehemence—for as his aspect presented to the eye much of the elegance of the peacock, so, in like manner, he cruelly lacerated the ear with its discordant tones—“You talk of the pre-eminence of moral philosophy? Do you comprehend politics under that name? and will you tell me, as others do, and as Plato, I believe, teaches, that of this philosophy the political department is the highest and the most important?” Without expecting an answer, he continued: “A certain nobleman” (and he named him) “advised me to turn my thoughts towards politics immediately. ‘You cannot direct your attention that way too early in this country,’ said the Duke. ‘They are the proper career for a young man of ability and of your station in life. That course is the most advantageous, because it is a monopoly. A little success in that line goes far, since the number of competitors is limited; and of those who are admitted to the contest, the greater part are altogether devoid of talent or too indolent to exert themselves. So many are excluded, that, of the few who are permitted to enter, it is difficult to find any that are not utterly unfit for the ordinary service of the state. It is not so in the church, it is not so at the bar; there all may offer themselves. The number of rivals in those professions is far greater, and they are, besides, of a more formidable kind. In letters, your chance of success is still worse. There, none can win gold and all may try to gain reputation; it is a struggle for glory—the competition is infinite, there are no bounds—that is a spacious field indeed, a sea without shores!’ The Duke talked thus to me many times and strongly urged me to give myself up to politics without delay, but he did not persuade me. With how unconquerable an aversion do I shrink from political articles in newspapers and reviews? I have heard people talk politics by the hour, and how I hated it and them! I went with my father several times to the House of Commons, and what creatures did I see there! What faces! what an expression of countenance! what wretched beings!” Here he clasped his hands, and raised his voice to a painful pitch, with fervid dislike. “Good God! what men did we meet about the House, in the lobbies and passages; and my father was so civil to all of them, to animals that I regarded with unmitigated disgust! A friend of mine, an Eton man, told me that his father once invited some corporation to dine at his house, and that he was present. When dinner was over, and the gentlemen nearly drunk, they started up, he said, and swore they would all kiss his sisters. His father laughed and did not forbid them, and the wretches would have done it; but his sisters heard of the infamous proposal, and ran upstairs, and locked themselves in their bedrooms. I asked him if he would not have knocked them down if they had attempted such an outrage in his presence. It seems to me that a man of spirit ought to have killed them if they had effected their purpose.” The sceptical philosopher sat for several minutes in silence, his cheeks glowing with intense indignation.
“Never did a more finished gentleman than Shelley step across a drawing-room!” Lord Byron exclaimed; and on reading the remark in Mr Moore’s Memoirs I was struck forcibly by its justice, and wondered for a moment that, since it was so obvious, it had never been made before. Perhaps this excellence was blended so intimately with his entire nature, and it seemed to constitute a part of his identity, and being essential and necessary was therefore never noticed. I observed his eminence in this respect before I had sat beside him many minutes at our first meeting in the hall of University College. Since that day I have had the happiness to associate with some of the best specimens of gentlemen; but with all due deference for those admirable persons (may my candour and my preference be pardoned), I can affirm that Shelley was almost the only example I have yet found that was never wanting, even in the most minute particular, of the infinite and various observances of pure, entire and perfect gentility. Trifling, indeed, and unimportant, were the aberrations of some whom I could name; but in him, during a long and most unusual familiarity, I discovered no flaw, no tarnish; the metal was sterling, and the polish absolute. I have also seen him, although rarely, “stepping across a drawing-room,” and then his deportment, as Lord Byron testifies, was unexceptionable. Such attendances, however, were pain and grief to him, and his inward discomfort was not hard to be discerned.
An acute observer, whose experience of life was infinite, and who had been long and largely conversant with the best society in each of the principal capitals of Europe, had met Shelley, of whom he was a sincere admirer, several times in public. He remarked one evening, at a large party where Shelley was present, his extreme discomfort, and added, “It is but too plain that there is something radically wrong in the constitution of our assemblies, since such a man finds not pleasure, nor even ease, in them.” His speculations concerning the cause were ingenious, and would possibly be not altogether devoid of interest; but they are wholly unconnected with the object of these scanty reminiscences.
Whilst Shelley was still a boy, clubs were few in number, of small dimensions, and generally confined to some specific class of persons. The universal and populous clubs of the present day were almost unknown. His reputation has increased so much of late, that the honour of including his name in the list of members, were such a distinction happily attainable, would now perhaps be sought by many of these societies; but it is not less certain, that, for a period of nearly twenty years, he would have been black-balled by almost every club in London. Nor would such a fate be peculiar to him.
When a great man has attained to a certain eminence, his patronage is courted by those who were wont carefully to shun him, whilst he was quietly and steadily pursuing the path that would inevitably lead to advancement. It would be easy to multiply instances, if proofs were needed, and this remarkable peculiarity of our social existence is an additional and irrefragable argument that the constitution of refined society is radically vicious, since it flatters timid, insipid mediocrity, and is opposed to the bold, fearless originality, and to that novelty which invariably characterise true genius. The first dawnings of talent are instantly hailed and warmly welcomed, as soon as some singularity unequivocally attests its existence amongst nations where hypocrisy and intolerance are less absolute.
If all men were required to name the greatest disappointment they had respectively experienced, the catalogue would be very various; accordingly as the expectations of each had been elevated respecting the pleasure that would attend the gratification of some favourite wish, would the reality in almost every case have fallen short of the anticipation. The variety would be infinite as to the nature of the first disappointment; but if the same irresistible authority could command that another and another should be added to the list, it is probable that there would be less dissimilarity in the returns of the disappointments which were deemed second and the next in the importance to the greatest, and perhaps, in numerous instances, the third would coincide. Many individuals, having exhausted their principal private and peculiar grievances in the first and second examples, would assign the third place to some public and general matter.
The youth who has formed his conceptions of the power, effects and aspect of eloquence from the specimens furnished by the orators of Greece and Rome, receives as rude a shock on his first visit to the House of Commons as can possibly be inflicted on his juvenile expectations, where the subject is entirely unconnected with the interests of the individual. A prodigious number of persons would, doubtless, inscribe nearly at the top of the list of disappointments the deplorable and inconceivable inferiority of the actual to the imaginary debate. It is not wonderful, therefore, that the sensitive, the susceptible, the fastidious Shelley, whose lively fancy was easily wound up to a degree of excitement incomprehensible to calmer and more phlegmatic temperaments, felt keenly a mortification that can wound even the most obtuse intellects, and expressed with contemptuous acrimony his dissatisfaction at the cheat which his warm imagination had put upon him. Had he resolved to enter the career of politics, it is possible that habit would have reconciled him to many things which at first seemed to be repugnant to his nature. It is possible that his unwearied industry, his remarkable talents and vast energy would have led him to renown in that line as well as in another; but it is most probable that his parliamentary success would have been but moderate. Opportunities of advancement were offered to him, and he rejected them, in the opinion of some of his friends unwisely and improperly; but, perhaps, he only refused gifts that were unfit for him: he struck out a path for himself, and, by boldly following his own course, greatly as it deviated from that prescribed to him, he became incomparably more illustrious than he would have been had he steadily pursued the beaten track. His memory will be green when the herd of everyday politicians are forgotten. Ordinary rules may guide ordinary men, but the orbit of the child of genius is essentially eccentric.
Although the mind of Shelley had certainly a strong bias towards democracy, and he embraced with an ardent and youthful fondness the theory of political equality, his feelings and behaviour were in many respects highly aristocratical. The ideal republic, wherein his fancy loved to expatiate, was adorned by all the graces which Plato, Xenophon and Cicero have thrown around the memory of ancient liberty; the unbleached web of transatlantic freedom, and the inconsiderate vehemence of such of our domestic patriots as would demonstrate their devotion to the good cause, by treating with irreverence whatever is most venerable, were equally repugnant to his sensitive and reverential spirit.
As a politician Shelley was in theory wholly a republican, but in practice, so far only as it is possible to be one with due regard for the sacred rights of a scholar and a gentleman; and these being in his eyes always more inviolable than any scheme of polity or civil institution, although he was upon paper and in discourse a sturdy commonwealth-man, the living, moving, acting individual had much of the senatorial and conservative, and was in the main eminently patrician.
The rare assiduity of the young poet in the acquisition of general knowledge has been already described; he had, moreover, diligently studied the mechanism of his art before he came to Oxford. He composed Latin verses with singular facility. On visiting him soon after his arrival at the accustomed hour of one, we were writing the usual exercise, which we presented, I believe, once a week—a Latin translation of a paper in the Spectator. He soon finished it, and as he held it before the fire to dry, I offered to take it from him. He said it was not worth looking at; but as I persisted, through a certain scholastic curiosity to examine the Latinity of my new acquaintance, he gave it to me. The Latin was sufficiently correct, but the version was paraphrastic, which I observed. He assented, and said that it would pass muster, and he felt no interest in such efforts and no desire to excel in them. I also noticed many portions of heroic verses, and even several entire verses, and these I pointed out as defects in a prose composition. He smiled archly, and asked, in his piercing whisper, “Do you think they will observe them? I inserted them intentionally to try their ears! I once showed up a theme at Eton to old Keate, in which there were a great many verses; but he observed them, scanned them, and asked why I had introduced them? I answered that I did not know they were there. This was partly true and partly false; but he believed me, and immediately applied to me the line in which Ovid says of himself—
‘Et quod tentabam dicere, versus erat.’”
Shelley then spoke of the facility with which he could compose Latin verses; and, taking the paper out of my hand, he began to put the entire translation into verse. He would sometimes open at hazard a prose writer, as Livy or Sallust, and, by changing the position of the words and occasionally substituting others, he would translate several sentences from prose to verse—to heroic, or more commonly elegiac, verse, for he was peculiarly charmed with the graceful and easy flow of the latter—with surprising rapidity and readiness. He was fond of displaying this accomplishment during his residence at Oxford, but he forgot to bring it away with him when he quitted the University; or perhaps he left it behind him designedly, as being suitable to academic groves only and to the banks of the Isis. In Ovid the facility of versification in his native tongue was possibly in some measure innate, although the extensive and various learning of that poet demonstrate that the power of application was not wanting in him; but such a command over a dead language can only be acquired through severe study.
There is much in the poetry of Shelley that seems to encourage the belief, that the inspiration of the Muses was seldom duly hailed by the pious diligence of the recipient. It is true that his compositions were too often unfinished, but his example cannot encourage indolence in the youthful writer, for his carelessness is usually apparent only. He had really applied himself as strenuously to conquer all the other difficulties of his art, as he patiently laboured to penetrate the mysteries of metre in the state wherein it exists entire and can alone be attained—in one of the classical languages.
The poet takes his name from the highest effort of his art—creation; and, being himself a maker, he must, of necessity, feel a strong sympathy with the exercise of the creative energies. Shelley was exceedingly deficient in mechanical ingenuity; and he was also wanting in spontaneous curiosity respecting the operations of artificers. The wonderful dexterity of well-practised hands, the long tradition of innumerable ages, and the vast accumulation of technical wisdom that are manifested in the various handicrafts, have always been interesting to me, and I have ever loved to watch the artist at his work. I have often induced Shelley to take part in such observations, and although he never threw himself in the way of professors of the manual erudition of the workshop, his vivid delight in witnessing the marvels of the plastic hand, whenever they were brought before his eyes, was very striking; and the rude workman was often gratified to find that his merit in one narrow field was, at once and intuitively, so fully appreciated by the young scholar. The instances are innumerable that would attest an unusual sympathy with the arts of construction even in their most simple stages.
I led him one summer’s evening into a brickfield. It had never occurred to him to ask himself how a brick is formed; the secret was revealed in a moment. He was charmed with the simple contrivance, and astonished at the rapidity, facility and exactness with which it was put in use by so many busy hands. An ordinary observer would have smiled and passed on, but the son of fancy confessed his delight with an energy which roused the attention even of the ragged throng, that seemed to exist only that they might pass successive lumps of clay through a wooden frame.
I was surprised at the contrast between the general indifference of Shelley for the mechanical arts and his intense admiration of a particular application of one of them the first time I noticed the latter peculiarity. During our residence at Oxford I repaired to his rooms one morning at the accustomed hour, and I found a tailor with him. He had expected to receive a new coat on the preceding evening; it was not sent home and he was mortified. I know not why, for he was commonly altogether indifferent about dress, and scarcely appeared to distinguish one coat from another. He was now standing erect in the middle of the room in his new blue coat, with all its glittering buttons, and, to atone for the delay, the tailor was loudly extolling the beauty of the cloth and the felicity of the fit; his eloquence had not been thrown away upon his customer, for never was man more easily persuaded than the master of persuasion. The man of thimbles applied to me to vouch his eulogies. I briefly assented to them. He withdrew, after some bows, and Shelley, snatching his hat, cried with shrill impatience,—
“Let us go!”
“Do you mean to walk in the fields in your new coat?” I asked.
“Yes, certainly,” he answered, and we sallied forth.
We sauntered for a moderate space through lanes and by-ways, until we reached a spot near to a farmhouse, where the frequent trampling of much cattle had rendered the road almost impassable, and deep with black mud; but by crossing the corner of a stack-yard, from one gate to another, we could tread upon clean straw, and could wholly avoid the impure and impracticable slough.
We had nearly effected the brief and commodious transit—I was stretching forth my hand to open the gate that led us back into the lane—when a lean, brindled and most ill-favoured mastiff, that had stolen upon us softly over the straw unheard and without barking, seized Shelley suddenly by the skirts. I instantly kicked the animal in the ribs with so much force that I felt for some days after the influence of his gaunt bones on my toe. The blow caused him to flinch towards the left, and Shelley, turning round quickly, planted a kick in his throat, which sent him sprawling, and made him retire hastily among the stacks, and we then entered the lane. The fury of the mastiff, and the rapid turn, had torn the skirts of the new blue coat across the back, just about that part of the human loins which our tailors, for some wise but inscrutable purpose, are wont to adorn with two buttons. They were entirely severed from the body, except a narrow strip of cloth on the left side, and this Shelley presently rent asunder.
I never saw him so angry either before or since. He vowed that he would bring his pistols and shoot the dog, and that he would proceed at law against the owner. The fidelity of the dog towards his master is very beautiful in theory, and there is much to admire and to revere in this ancient and venerable alliance; but, in practice, the most unexceptionable dog is a nuisance to all mankind, except his master, at all times, and very often to him also, and a fierce surly dog is the enemy of the whole human race. The farmyards in many parts of England are happily free from a pest that is formidable to everybody but thieves by profession; in other districts savage dogs abound, and in none so much, according to my experience, as in the vicinity of Oxford. The neighbourhood of a still more famous city—of Rome—is likewise infested by dogs, more lowering, more ferocious and incomparably more powerful.
Shelley was proceeding home with rapid strides, bearing the skirts of his new coat on his left arm, to procure his pistols that he might wreak his vengeance upon the offending dog. I disliked the race, but I did not desire to take an ignoble revenge upon the miserable individual.
“Let us try to fancy, Shelley,” I said to him, as he was posting away in indignant silence, “that we have been at Oxford, and have come back again, and that you have just laid the beast low—and what then?”
He was silent for some time, but I soon perceived, from the relaxation of his pace, that his anger had relaxed also.
At last he stopped short, and taking the skirts from his arm, spread them upon the hedge, stood gazing at them with a mournful aspect, sighed deeply and, after a few moments, continued his march.
“Would it not be better to take the skirts with us?” I inquired.
“No,” he answered despondingly; “let them remain as a spectacle for men and gods!”
We returned to Oxford, and made our way by back streets to our college. As we entered the gates the officious scout remarked with astonishment Shelley’s strange spencer, and asked for the skirts, that he might instantly carry the wreck to the tailor. Shelley answered, with his peculiarly pensive air, “They are upon the hedge.”
The scout looked up at the clock, at Shelley and through the gate into the street, as it were at the same moment and with one eager glance, and would have run blindly in quest of them, but I drew the skirts from my pocket and unfolded them, and he followed us to Shelley’s rooms.
We were sitting there in the evening at tea, when the tailor, who had praised the coat so warmly in the morning, brought it back as fresh as ever, and apparently uninjured. It had been fine-drawn. He showed how skilfully the wound had been healed, and he commended at some length the artist who had effected the cure. Shelley was astonished and delighted. Had the tailor consumed the new blue coat in one of his crucibles, and suddenly raised it, by magical incantation, a fresh and purple Phœnix from the ashes, his admiration could hardly have been more vivid. It might be, in this instance, that his joy at the unexpected restoration of a coat, for which, although he was utterly indifferent to dress, he had, through some unaccountable caprice, conceived a fondness, gave force to his sympathy with art; but I have remarked in innumerable cases, where no personal motive could exist, that he was animated by all the ardour of a maker in witnessing the display of the creative energies.
Nor was the young poet less interested by imitation, especially the imitation of action, than by the creative arts. Our theatrical representations have long been degraded by a most pernicious monopoly, by vast abuses and enormous corruptions, and by the prevalence of bad taste. Far from feeling a desire to visit the theatres, Shelley would have esteemed it a cruel infliction to have been compelled to witness performances that less fastidious critics have deemed intolerable. He found delight, however, in reading the best of our English dramas, particularly the masterpieces of Shakespeare, and he was never weary of studying the more perfect compositions of the Attic tragedians. The lineaments of individual character may frequently be traced more certainly and more distinctly in trifles than in more important affairs; for in the former the deportment, even of the boldest and more ingenuous, is more entirely emancipated from every restraint. I recollect many minute traits that display the inborn sympathy of a brother practitioner in the mimetic arts. One silly tale, because, in truth, it is the most trivial of all, will best illustrate the conformation of his mind; its childishness, therefore, will be pardoned.
A young man of studious habits and of considerable talent occasionally derived a whimsical amusement, during his residence at Cambridge, from entering the public-houses in the neighbouring villages, whilst the fen-farmers and other rustics were smoking and drinking, and from repeating a short passage of a play, or a portion of an oration, which described the death of a distinguished person, the fatal result of a mighty battle, or other important events, in a forcible manner. He selected a passage of which the language was nearly on a level with vulgar comprehension, or he adapted one by somewhat mitigating its elevation; and, although his appearance did not bespeak histrionic gifts, he was able to utter it impressively and, what was most effective, not theatrically, but simply and with the air of a man who was in earnest; and if he were interrupted or questioned, he could slightly modify the discourse, without materially changing the sense, to give it a further appearance of reality; and so staid and sober was the gravity of his demeanour as to render it impossible for the clowns to solve the wonder by supposing that he was mad. During his declamation the orator feasted inwardly on the stupid astonishment of his petrified audience, and he further regaled himself afterwards by imagining the strange conjectures that would commence at his departure.
Shelley was much interested by the account I gave him of this curious fact, from the relation of two persons, who had witnessed the performance. He asked innumerable questions, which I was in general quite unable to answer; and he spoke of it as something altogether miraculous, that anyone should be able to recite extraordinary events in such a manner as to gain credence. As he insisted much upon the difficulty of the exploit, I told him that I thought he greatly over-estimated it, I was disposed to believe that it was in truth easy; that faith and a certain gravity were alone needed. I had been struck by the story, when I first heard it; and I had often thought of the practicability of imitating the deception, and although I had never proceeded so far myself, I had once or twice found it convenient to attempt something similar. At these words Shelley drew his chair close to mine, and listened with profound silence and intense curiosity.
I was walking one afternoon in the summer on the western side of that short street leading from Long Acre to Covent Garden, wherein the passenger is earnestly invited, as a personal favour to the demandant, to proceed straightway to Highgate or to Kentish Town, and which is called, I think, James Street. I was about to enter Covent Garden, when an Irish labourer, whom I met, bearing an empty hod, accosted me somewhat roughly, and asked why I had run against him. I told him briefly that he was mistaken. Whether somebody had actually pushed the man, or he sought only to quarrel—and although he doubtless attended a weekly row regularly, and the week was already drawing to a close, he was unable to wait until Sunday for a broken head—I know not; but he discoursed for some time with the vehemence of a man who considers himself injured or insulted, and he concluded, being emboldened by my long silence, with a cordial invitation just to push him again. Several persons, not very unlike in costume, had gathered round him, and appeared to regard him with sympathy. When he paused, I addressed to him slowly and quietly, and it should seem with great gravity, these words, as nearly as I can recollect them:—
“I have put my hand into the hamper; I have looked upon the sacred barley; I have eaten out of the drum! I have drunk and was well pleased! I have said Konx ompax, and it is finished!”
“Have you, sir?” inquired the astonished Irishman, and his ragged friends instantly pressed round him with “Where is the hamper, Paddy?” “What barley?” and the like. And ladies from his own country—that is to say, the basket-women, suddenly began to interrogate him, “Now, I say, Pat, where have you been drinking? What have you had?”
I turned therefore to the right, leaving the astounded neophyte, whom I had thus planted, to expound the mystic words of initiation as he could to his inquisitive companions.
As I walked slowly under the piazzas, and through the streets and courts, towards the west, I marvelled at the ingenuity of Orpheus—if he were indeed the inventor of the Eleusinian mysteries—that he was able to devise words that, imperfectly as I had repeated them, and in the tattered fragment that has reached us, were able to soothe people so savage and barbarous as those to whom I had addressed them, and which, as the apologists for those venerable rites affirm, were manifestly well adapted to incite persons, who hear them for the first time, however rude they may be, to ask questions. Words, that can awaken curiosity, even in the sluggish intellect of a wild man, and can thus open the inlet of knowledge!
“Konx ompax, and it is finished!” exclaimed Shelley, crowing with enthusiastic delight at my whimsical adventure. A thousand times, as he strode about the house, and in his rambles out of doors, would he stop and repeat aloud the mystic words of initiation, but always with an energy of manner, and a vehemence of tone and of gesture that would have prevented the ready acceptance, which a calm, passionless delivery had once procured for them. How often would he throw down his book, clasp his hands, and starting from his seat, cry suddenly, with a thrilling voice, “I have said Konx ompax, and it is finished!”