Friends who by practice of some envious skill
Were torn apart—a wide wound, mind from mind,
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
And besides all this, as already indicated, there was to be a new era of universal peace for mankind:
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism,
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan’s sooty abysm
Beating their swords to Plough-shares.
In the face of these and many other points in the poems, we can only regard it as a kind of perversity, and a last relic of ancient prejudice, to refuse to recognise Shelley’s whole-hearted efforts in the great cause of human emancipation, and not to see how sincerely and at what a cost to himself these efforts were undertaken—not to see, indeed, that in his love-nature (the very kernel of his life) he was pushing his way forward to a new conception of the world, far more intimate and important than any at present generally attained to. We have alluded to Goethe already, and it is clear that the English poet, like his great German contemporary, possessed in his own nature an extraordinary sympathy with, and understanding of, every variety and phase of human temperament.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHELLEY
BY
GEORGE BARNEFIELD
I
THE multitude of books about Shelley, and the partisan spirit which the majority of them breathe, are evidence of the force, complexity, and attractiveness of the poet’s personality. The biographers, however, have all been too confused by the inherent contradictions of his character to analyse it satisfactorily. Indeed, most of them have been too much put to it justifying, or explaining away, his peculiarities ever to ask themselves calmly how and why their hero differed from the average of poetic geniuses. They paint him for us as a young, graceful, rather feminine aristocrat, of revolutionary opinions, and somewhat unstable mind. They credit him with all the Christian virtues, and especially with purity of mind; yet they must record that his contemporaries saw in him a Satanist, who not only preached moral anarchy, but actually committed adultery and abandoned his faithful wife. Of explanation they are totally barren.
We may, however, explain and resolve these contradictions by the light of modern psychology. That this should give us the key to his character will seem the less astonishing if we reflect that Shelley was preeminently the poet of unsatisfied love, through whose every poem there sounds the note of vague, often formless, erotic longing.
Let us first repeat some of the descriptions of his appearance. In Trelawny’s Records we find the author’s first impression noted thus: “Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall thin stripling held out both his hands; and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed feminine and artless face that it could be the poet, I returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible that this mild-looking, beardless boy could be the veritable monster at war with all the world?”