In Laon and Cythna the hero of the poem describes his release from prison and his recovery from fever in the following terms:—
‘... in the deep
The shape of an old man did then appear,
Stately and beautiful, that dreadful sleep
His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.
And when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw
That column, and those corpses, and the moon,
And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw
My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon
Of senseless death would be accorded soon;—
When from that stony gloom a voice arose,
Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune
The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,
And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.
He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled;
As they were loosened by that Hermit old,
Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,
To answer those kind looks—he did infold
His giant arms about me, to uphold
My wretched frame, my scorchèd limbs he wound
In linen moist and balmy, and cold
As dew to drooping leaves;—the chain, with sound
Like earthquake, thro’ the chasm of the steep stair did bound.
********
... We came at last
To a small chamber, which with mosses rare
Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed
Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.
********
Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,
My thoughts their due array did re-assume
Thro’ the inchantments of that Hermit old;
Then I bethought me of the glorious doom
Of those who sternly struggle to relume
The lamp of Hope o’er man’s bewildered lot;
And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom
Of eve, to that friend’s heart I told my thought—
That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.’
From these passages of the puerile romance and the mature poem, readers may see how Shelley nursed and nourished every fancy that entered his brain; how, growing gradually in form and beauty under his fostering egotism, the conceits of his puerile inventiveness developed into the conceptions of his poetical genius; and how he weaved the story of his own life out of imaginations as baseless, and in the earlier stages of their development as grotesque, as the phantasies of departing slumber. The imprisonment of Laon was the outgrowth of Verezzi’s imprisonment. The hero of the poem resembles the hero of the romance in being the victim of secret and unscrupulous enemies; and in that respect they resembled the poet who created them,—the poet who only escaped captivity such as theirs by repeatedly flying from foes, bent on throwing him into a dungeon. The fever that seized Laon in the grated cage, and the fever that nearly killed Verezzi in the gloomy forest were romantic reproductions of the fever Percy Bysshe Shelley endured at Field Place. The tyrant who put Laon between brazen bars, and the villain who chained Verezzi in the darksome cavern, had their prototype in the unnatural father (of the poet’s ‘marvellous story’ to his second wife), who was set on sending his wretched heir to a madhouse. The physician who, braving a tyrant’s vengeance, rescued Laon from confinement and ministered to his mental disease, was the same hard-swearing Windsor doctor who, facing the malicious despot of Field Place, saved Percy Bysshe Shelley from his appointed doom, and carried him out of brain-fever. It was thus that Shelley wrote his wild views of his own story into the Byronic ‘egotisms’ of his literary productions:—the ‘egotisms’ which the Shelleyan enthusiasts would have the world accept as pieces of substantially veracious autobiography.
CHAPTER VII.
BETWEEN ETON AND OXFORD.
Literary Interests and Enterprise—A.M. Oxon. Letter—Shelley’s Hunger for Publisher’s Money—Winter 1809-10—Nightmare—The Wandering Jew—Medwin in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—The Fragment of Ahasuerus—Its Influence on Byron and Shelley—Matriculation at Oxford—Shelley at the Bodleian—John Ballantyne and Co.—Shelley in Pall Mall—Stockdale’s Scandalous Budget—Victor and Cazire—Their Original Poetry—Who was Cazire?—Felicia Dorothea Browne—Illumination of Young Ladies—Harriett Grove—The Groves and Shelleys in London—Shelley’s Interest in Harriett Grove.
Having written a large portion of his first publication (Zastrozzi; a Romance) by 7th May, 1809, Shelley had little leisure for ‘scientific studies’ between that date and the Christmas holidays of 1810-11. The literary aspirant during those twenty months worked successfully (in some of the cases, simultaneously) on (1) Zastrozzi; (2) The Nightmare; (3) Original Poetry of Victor and Cazire; (4) St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian, his second published romance; (5) The Wandering Jew; (6) The Verses to be regarded as the First Sketches for Queen Mab; (7) The Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson; (8) The very careful analysis of Hume’s Essays used in the composition of The Necessity of Atheism, that resulted in his expulsion from University College, Oxford; (9) A novel, described in the letter of 18th December, 1810, to Stockdale, as ‘principally constructed to convey metaphysical and political opinions by way of conversation,’ and (10) a novel (never finished) that was designed to give the death-blow to intolerance. With so many literary irons in the fire, he cannot have spent many half-hours in playing with the scientific instruments and apparatus that figured so conspicuously in his college rooms. During the same period, he found time for journeys to and fro between Field Place and Oxford; at least one stay of several weeks in London; a good deal of miscellaneous reading; much sentimental and sceptical correspondence, by letter, with Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne; much correspondence of the same nature with Miss Harriett Grove; long walks with Medwin in St. Leonard’s Forest; long walks with Hogg in the neighbourhood of Oxford; and some participation in the field-sports, seldom altogether neglected by country gentlemen.
Whether Zastrozzi (published on or a little before 5th June, 1810) was written to the last lines at Eton, is uncertain. Bearing in mind every young author’s impatience to see himself in print, and having regard to the natural consequences of this impatience in the excitable Shelley, I am disposed to think the book would have appeared sooner, had it been ready for the printers before the unruly Etonian left the public school. Time, doubtless, was wasted in the futile negotiation with the Messrs. Longman & Co. But the delay from this cause would scarcely account for the long postponement of the publication, if the author finished the MS. under Mr. Bethell’s roof, and on receiving it back from the Longmans, sent it straight to Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson.