Though he did not go to Ravenna in order to confer with Byron on Hunt’s affairs, Shelley journeyed thither with the purpose of interesting Byron in them. For some time Shelley had been troubled in his mind by the thought of his friend’s financial difficulties; and he had not been many hours in the Palazzo Guiccioli, before he found occasion to speak sympathetically of Hunt’s pecuniary distress. On hearing how Byron had given the Memoirs to Tom Moore, and how Moore had sold them to Murray for 2000l., Shelley grudged Moore the gift that would have been so serviceable to the author of Rimini. ‘I wish,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘I had been in time to have interceded for a part of it for poor Hunt.’ Though the Liberal was altogether Byron’s project, it was at Shelley’s instance that the projector of the luckless magazine selected Hunt for the position of editorial coadjutor; and whilst making this selection in his own interest, though at Shelley’s instance, Byron, no doubt, had pleasure in feeling that the arrangement, which promised advantage to himself, would be beneficial to a struggling man of letters. This fact alone gave the faint colouring of truth to Byron’s subsequent mis-statements, respecting the benevolent motives and humane purpose that determined him to start the Liberal. At Ravenna (where he carefully refrained from asking Byron to advance money for Hunt’s travelling expenses) Shelley could congratulate himself on Byron’s offer to take Hunt for his collaborateur, without regarding it as a favour done to himself, or thinking of it as a proposal for an arrangement that could, under any contingency, compromise his own independence of, and freedom from, obligation to the poet of exalted rank. The case was altered a few months later, when Byron’s vacillation put Shelley under the necessity of doing his utmost to hold him to his engagement with Hunt. On exerting himself for this end, it was natural for the sensitive Shelley to feel that he might be suspected of speaking in his own, no less than in Hunt’s, interest; to feel that after all he was asking a pecuniary favour of Byron. In this sensitiveness for his independence, and jealous care to avoid every appearance of seeking or accepting material advantage from his social superior, readers may see the explanation of Shelley’s resolve to share neither in the profits nor the éclat of the literary enterprise.
Under these circumstances, it would have been passing strange had Shelley persisted in his reverential regard for Byron. In any case, his idolatry of so imperfect a hero would have perished more or less abruptly under the conditions of close intimacy and daily intercourse for a considerable period; but the annoyance, resulting to the younger poet from a state of things which compelled him to combat Byron’s irresolution with words, that might expose him to ungenerous suspicion, accelerated the moment for the inevitable revulsion of feeling. The differences which, but for Shelley’s devotion to Hunt’s interest, would perhaps have developed rapidly into open rupture, were capable of adjustment; but they necessarily resulted in a permanent change in Shelley’s feeling for Byron. The differences admitted of adjustment. For a season they were adjusted. None the less they changed the younger poet’s regard for his noble friend. The transient revival of Shelley’s hope that, after all, the Liberal would enrich Hunt, was attended with no renewal of his old enthusiasm for the author of Don Juan, about whom he soon began to write and chatter as much too disparagingly as he had formerly written and talked too worshipfully. Instead of flaming into frank rage, he concealed his irritation from his former idol, whilst venting it from time to time in bitter words whispered to Mary’s ear, and bitter words written to correspondents, who were not likely to report them to Byron.
The old story of unreasonable hope, ending in unreasonable disappointment, was told yet again,—the story told so often in Shelley’s troublous record! Shelley idolized his eldest sister only to discover in a brief while how unworthy she was of his good opinion. The first period of his extravagant admiration of Hogg was followed abruptly by a period in which he detested him. After mistaking Eliza Hitchener for an angel, he soon mistook her for a brown she-devil. Delighting in Eliza Westbrook for a season, he quickly learnt to loathe her. Vowing to love Harriett Westbrook for ever, he found life intolerable with her in less than three nuptial years. Vowing to worship his second wife above all other women, he, in due course, discovered her inferiority to Emilia Viviani and Jane Williams. Meaning to be happy with Hogg for ever, he soon flitted from York, to get out of his way. Throwing himself on Byron in August, 1821, with the intention of delighting in him for ever, he quickly began to vapour about fighting him. Either Shelley lacked steadfastness of affection, or was singularly unfortunate in selecting his objects of affection. In this respect he resembled Byron, whom he also resembled in his unamiable and undignified practice of writing bitterly of people whom he had ceased to love.
On passing from affection for his sister Elizabeth, he wrote in angry disparagement of her. On coming to uneasy terms with his mother, he wrote disdainfully of her mental narrowness. On ceasing to delight in Eliza Hitchener, he wrote of her that she was a brown demon and an hermaphrodite. After idolizing Mrs. Boinville, he wrote about her insincerity. After quarrelling with Eliza Westbrook, he wrote of her that she was a loathsome worm. Writing thus of women with whom he was out of humour, he dealt in the same way with men he no longer liked. Having loved his father in his childhood, he was only at manhood’s threshold when he began to write monstrous untruths to his discredit. In the interval between the first period and the second period of his affection for Hogg, he wrote of him that he was a treacherous friend, a libertine, and a seducer. Whilst living in friendship with Thomas Love Peacock, he wrote of him as though he was attached to a free-handed benefactor by considerations of self-interest. Soon after worshiping Byron as a god, he wrote of him (on 2nd March, 1822, to Leigh Hunt) that certain dispositions of his character, rendered him intolerable as an intimate associate, and (on 18th June, 1822, to John Gisborne) that he was ‘the nucleus of all that is hateful and tiresome’ in society. It is thus Shelley wrote of his former friends after falling out with them. Whilst reflecting with reasonable severity on Byron’s readiness to ‘libel his friends all round,’ the Shelleyan apologists say nothing of Shelley’s exhibitions of the same ungenerous propensity.
Whilst Byron vacillated between hope and despair for the success of the Liberal, between a cordial disposition to persist in the enterprise and a fainthearted inclination to drop it, Shelley (for Hunt’s sake) and Hunt (for his own sake) were determined to hold their unsteady partner to his compact with them. If Byron suspected Shelley and Hunt of a design to use him for their own ends, the suspicion certainly was not groundless. Shelley and Hunt became in a certain sense confederates against their partner, in having an understanding and mutual confidence from which he was excluded. Shelley’s chief, though not sole, interest in the affair was his concern for Hunt (his senior by eight years). Had he been acting only for himself, Shelley, on discerning the faintest disposition on Byron’s part to withdraw from the venture, would have said, ‘If your heart is not in the enterprise, let it be dropt like so many other designs, as a mere project not to be acted upon.’ But Shelley was acting in the interest of a friend, to whom he was in the highest degree desirous of rendering substantial service; a friend whom he wished to have near him in Italy (a powerful consideration, that largely qualified the disinterestedness of his otherwise unselfish action); a friend who (vide Shelley’s letter of 2nd March, 1822—in Forman’s edition of the poet’s Prose Works) had committed to him ‘the task of keeping Byron in heart with the project until his arrival.’ Consequently, when Byron showed a wish to retire from the enterprise, Shelley said, ‘You are bound for poor Hunt’s sake to go on with it.’
Long before Hunt left England, Shelley knew Byron would fain have withdrawn from the project for starting the Liberal, but in his absent friend’s interest pressed Byron to persist in the enterprise. Long before he left England, Hunt himself knew that Byron had repented of inviting him to Italy, and would have dropt the project of the magazine, had it not been for Shelley. On sailing from England in May, Hunt knew he was setting out to fix himself on a man who, but for Shelley, would have told him to remain at home,—a fact not to be overlooked in the estimate of Hunt’s conduct, in going out to Italy with concealment of the main feature of his financial trouble. From the moment when they combined to hold Byron to an arrangement from which he wished to retire, Shelley and Hunt (acting together in the manner described by Shelley’s own pen) were confederates against him, in being set on using him for their own ends against his own will.
One would like to know how far Byron was cognizant of the irritation he caused Shelley by his vacillations about the literary project. Yet more one would like to know to what extent he was aware of Shelley’s permanent change of feeling for him. It is difficult to conceive that so sensitive a man failed to detect the change of sentiment. But Byron’s egotism may have blinded him to what his sensibility would otherwise have discovered. On the other hand, it must be remembered that, in his loyalty to the absent Hunt, and in his keen desire to nurse Byron’s favour and influence for Hunt’s benefit, Shelley was at great pains to conceal from his former idol the deep-seated alteration of his regard for him. It is conceivable that, notwithstanding the February ‘differences,’ Byron never knew how completely he had fallen from Shelley’s heart and homage. Anyhow, the two poets remained in daily intercourse with one another, and maintained a show of undiminished friendliness. Playing billiards with Byron, and contending with him in pistol-practice, Shelley often figured in the Byronic riding-parties, and appeared at the weekly dinner-parties of the Palazzo Lanfranchi. At the same time Mrs. Shelley lived sociably with Teresa Guiccioli.