“One might imagine,” said Trelawny, “that Byron is jealous of Shelley. Yet Murray is obliged to call on the police to protect his premises every time he publishes a new canto of Childe Harold, while poor Shelley hasn’t got ten readers. Byron has high birth, riches, beauty, glory, love . . .”
“Yes,” Williams interrupted, “but Byron is the slave to his passions and to any woman who is at all decided. Shelley in his nutshell of a boat floats in mid-stream on the Arno, and refuses to let it carry him away. His ideas are well-grounded, he holds a doctrine. Byron is incapable of holding one for two consecutive hours. He is well aware of this, and can’t forgive himself for it. You see it in the triumphant tone in which he speaks of Shelley’s misfortunes.”
“Byron,” said Jane, “is a spoiled child, but neither he nor Shelley understands men. Shelley loves them too much, and Byron not enough.”
“What’s so terrible about Shelley,” said Trelawny, “is that he has not the smallest instinct of self-preservation. . . . The other day when I was diving in the Arno, he said he so much regretted not being able to swim. ‘Try,’ said I. ‘Put yourself on your back, and you’ll float to begin with.’
“He stripped and jumped in without the smallest hesitation. He sank to the bottom and lay there like a conger-eel, not making the least movement to save himself. He would have drowned if I had not instantly fished him out.”
Jane sighed, knowing how much the thought of suicide haunted Shelley’s mind. He often repeated that nearly every one he had loved had died in this way.
“Yet he doesn’t seem unhappy?”
“No, because he lives in his dreams. But in real life don’t you think he suffers from the impossibility of spreading his ideas, from his books that don’t sell, from his unhappy home life? Death must often appear to him like the awakening from a nightmare.”
“He believes in a future life,” said Trelawny. “Those who call him an Atheist don’t know him. He has often told me that he thinks the French philosophy of the eighteenth century false and pernicious. Plato and Dante have overcome Diderot for him. All the same he doesn’t regret his attitude towards established religion. . . . ‘Why,’ I asked him, ‘do you call yourself an Atheist? It annihilates your chances in this world.’ ‘It is a word of abuse,’ said he, ‘to stop discussion, a painted Devil to frighten fools. I used it to express my abhorrence of superstition. I took it up as a knight takes up a gauntlet, in defiance of injustice. The delusions of Christianity are fatal to genius and originality; they limit thought.’ ”
Thus spoke the chorus in unanimity, and did not perhaps perceive that their adoration of Shelley fed and grew on his misfortunes. We are more inclined to love that which we can pity than that which we must admire. Man finds in the spectacle of unmerited failure flattering arguments which explain his own ill-luck. The blend of admiration and compassion is one of the surest recipes for love. It would have needed much humility of mind for Williams and Trelawny to have the same affection for the brilliant Byron that they had for poor dear Shelley.