The Verses of ‘St. Irvyne.’
‘Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling
Rise on the night-rolling breath of the blast,
When o’er the dark ether the tempest is swelling,
And on eddying whirlwind the thunder-peal past?
‘For oft I have stood on the dark height of Jura,
Which frowns on the valley which opens beneath:
Oft have I brav’d the chill night-tempest’s fury,
Whilst around me, I thought, echo’d murmurs of death.
‘And now, whilst the winds of the mountain are howling,
O father! thy voice seems to strike on mine ear;
In air whilst the tide of the night-storm is rolling,
It breaks on the pause of the elements’ jar.
‘On the wing of the whirlwind which roars in the mountain
Perhaps rides the ghost of my sire who is dead;
On the mist of the tempest which hangs o’er the fountain,
Whilst a wreath of dark vapour encircles his head.’
In a note to St. Irvyne (in his edition of Shelley’s ‘prose works’), Mr. Buxton Forman calls attention to the obvious adoption of the two first lines of the quoted stanza of Byron’s poem, as though they were the whole of the youthful Shelley’s ‘small debt’ in this particular matter, to the youthful Byron. It cannot have escaped the notice of Shelley’s careful editor that, whilst Shelley speaks of his father’s ghost as riding on the whirlwind and the mist of the tempest, Byron sees ‘the forms of his fathers’ in the clouds over-hanging Loch-na-Garr, and sings how the soul of one of his ancestral heroes ‘rides on the wind.’ It can scarcely have escaped the careful editor that the whole thought of Shelley’s sixteen verses was ‘lifted’ out of Byron’s eight verses.
CHAPTER IX.
MR. DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY v. THOMAS JEFFERSON HOGG.
Shelley’s Matriculation at Oxford—Hogg’s Matriculation at Oxford—Hogg’s First Arrival at Oxford—Lord Grenville’s Election—Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy’s Blunders—Hogg’s ‘New Monthly’ Papers on Shelley at Oxford—Mrs. Shelley’s Reason for not Writing her Husband’s ‘Life’—Peacock’s Reason for not Writing it—Leigh Hunt’s Reason for not Writing it—Hogg undertakes the Task—Hogg’s Two Volumes—Their Merits and Faults—Hogg dismissed by Field Place—His Mistakes and Misrepresentations—Some of his Misrepresentations adopted by Field Place.
In a previous chapter it was stated that Shelley matriculated at Oxford, and entered University College on 10th April, 1810,—a date given for the first time to Shelleyan students. Hogg had then been a member of the University and the same College for more than two months, having matriculated on 2nd February, 1810,—another date never before given to Shelleyan students. To those who, unaware how much readier the Shelleyan enthusiasts are to abuse writers who differ from them than to gather facts needful for the perfect statement of the poet’s story, it may well appear strange that, after the publication of so many books and articles about Shelley, it should have been left for me to ascertain from the archives of University College, Oxford, these two important dates, by whose light the greater part of Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy’s vehement manifesto against Hogg’s account of his academic career is seen to be one big tangle of blunderings.
Seeing the need for the discovery of these dates, I wrote a letter that within forty-eight hours received this answer:
‘Trinity College, Oxford,
‘12th February, 1884.