Some of Shelley’s poetry is calculated to arouse one’s anger and hatred of wrong. A people who are destitute of these emotions are fit subjects for the yoke. As long as there are men ready to take advantage of another’s weakness; as long as there are selfish men who will advance themselves at the expense of others, so long will it be necessary to keep alive in men the spirit of hatred of injustice.
The difficulty with a great many critics of Shelley is that they confound Shelley’s railing at the evils of religion and governments with railing at religion and government itself. In places, it is true, he would seem to be a complete anarchist, but then allowance should be made for the sweeping generalizations that are characteristic of poetry and radicalism. Those passages in which he would seem to condemn all religion and government should deceive no one.
No doubt it is wrong to brood too much over the misery of the world. One misses a great deal if one sees only the evil, and never sees any of the good nor experiences any of the joy of life. Extreme pessimism is as harmful as extreme optimism. The pessimism that lets in no ray of hope is a plague. Such though is not the pessimism of Shelley. His pictures of the evils of society are illumined by the reflection from the happier state of society that is about to come to pass.
Shelley would do away with government and authority. Surely, some would say, that is enough to discredit him as a thinker forever. On the contrary, it shows how far in advance of his time he was; it shows he had a good grasp of the sociological principle that the less compulsion and the more cooperation under direction there is in any state the better it is. Shelley never meant to say that he would here and now abolish all authority. No one saw more clearly than he that chaos would result from the removal of authority from society as at present constituted. When Shelley writes about freedom from authority he is picturing the ideal state where men will be just and wise. He very likely doubted that such a state was possible here below, still he thought it was incumbent on everybody to strive after this ideal. He wanted men to so perfect themselves, to so act, that laws and policemen would become less and less necessary.
Shelley may not have the “sense of established facts,” and may be unable to offer suggestions which will work out well in practice, but he does infuse a higher and a nobler conception of life into the consciousness of a people. What Wordsworth said concerning his own poems is true of the works of Shelley. “They will cooperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The best critical edition of Shelley’s complete work is that by H. B. Forman in eight volumes, London, 1880. Other useful editions of the poetical works are: Professor G. E. Woodberry’s, four volumes, Boston, 1892; Professor Dowden’s, one volume, London, 1900; T. Huchinson’s, Oxford, 1905; and W. M. Rossetti’s, three volumes, London, 1881.
For an account of the earlier publications of Shelley’s works consult The Shelley Library: an Essay in Bibliography, by H. B. Forman.