A Schedule of significant Matters—Delusion and Semi-Delusion—Certain phenomenal Peculiarities of Shelley’s Mind—The Psychological Problem—The Story that would have opened Southey’s Eyes—How it would be Received by Critical Persons—Misconceptions of Field Place—Bootlessness of publishing the Story—Shelley and Socialistic Literature—Marian Evans’s Great Error—Her Marriage—Mischievous Effects of the Apologies for Shelleyan Socialism—The Homage to which Shelley is entitled—The Homage to which he has no Title.
In this concluding chapter of my exhibition of the evidences respecting Shelley’s character and career, it will be well for readers to review, judicially, some of his many statements that, whether they are referable to falsehood, delusion, or ‘semi-delusion,’ were one and all untrue statements, in that they were statements contrary to fact, together with a few other matters which should dispose readers to accept his representations with suspicion and extreme caution.
(1) In or about 1800, little Bysshe Shelley entertained his sisters with an imaginary account of the visit he represented himself as having paid to the ladies (with a delightful garden), whom he had not visited; an incident of the poet’s childhood which, showing he resembled many other children in a particular kind of imaginativeness, points to his constitutional propensity, from an early age, to mistake the impressions of fancy for veritable cognition.
(2) In or about 1804, the Shelley of Sion House, Brentford, gave in to Dr. Greenlaw the two lines from Ovid as verses of his own composition; an incident showing that, instead of being so remarkably truthful in his infancy, as eulogistic biographers have declared him, he was, in his childhood, capable of the petty falsehoods and acts of deceit, of which children are often guilty.
(3) In or about the same year (1804), whilst a pupil at Sion House, Shelley volunteered to do his schoolmate’s (Gellibrand’s) Latin exercise for him; and, instead of keeping his word and doing it in a way to satisfy their master, deliberately did it in a way that could not fail to bring his friend Gellibrand to punishment; an incident showing that, instead of being the generous and loyal child his idolaters delight in imagining him, he was, in his childhood, capable of the little acts of treachery of which children are sometimes guilty. Whilst smiling at the incident and its consequences, the reader must admit that in this matter the child-Shelley broke his word of honour to his comrade.
(4) At Eton, whilst living under the influence of the virtuous Dr. Lind, Shelley became an habitual fabricator of mendacious letters, each of the epistles being made up of false statements, for which the power and activity of his imagination can in no degree be held accountable. The suggestion is not to be entertained that, when luring an ignorant correspondent into displaying his ignorance for the sake of the pleasure of laughing at him, Shelley sincerely imagined himself a genuine searcher after truth; seeking an enlargement of his knowledge from the person he addressed. When he signed himself ‘John Jones,’ Shelley cannot have imagined it was his real name. When he gave a false address for the purpose of concealment, Shelley cannot have imagined it was a real address.
(5) Whilst he was an Etonian, Shelley had, at Field Place, the illness attended with delirium, in which he appears to have been first visited with the monstrous and revolting notion that his father designed to lock him up in a madhouse. Long after this illness, he either suffered from this hallucination, or, with deliberate untruthfulness, slandered his father in declaring him to have entertained so monstrous a purpose. He told this story to his father’s infamy to Hogg at Oxford, to Peacock in later time, and various other persons. He used this story to compass his own selfish ends. It comes to us from Mary Godwin’s pen, that he used this story to stir her compassion for him when he was endeavouring to lure her to live in Free Contract with him, and that he used it to good purpose. Peacock, who knew him well, maintains that Shelley was haunted throughout life by this notion of his father’s enormous wickedness and revolting design to lock him up in a madhouse. Yet the evidence is certain that the kindly Squire of Field Place never entertained any such design against the boy, whose consent would be needful on his coming of age to the resettlement of the family estates A and B. It is certain that in this matter Shelley slandered his own father throughout successive years, and to various persons, his various utterances and re-utterances of the monstrous slander being one and all referable to deliberate falsehood, delusion, or what Peacock styles semi-delusion.
(6) In the year 1810, Shelley induced a London publisher to publish a collection of verses on the assurance that they were original poetry, and to offer the verses under a title proclaiming their originality, though he cannot have been unaware they were deficient in the alleged originality. Writing from memory, more than sixteen years after the event, the rascally and mendacious Stockdale declared that, on the discovery of the plagiarism, Shelley laid the blame of the fraud on his coadjutor. As Shelley’s coadjutor was his own sister, to believe Stockdale’s unsupported assertion is to take an even more unfavourable view of Shelley’s part in the affair.
(7) In the Christmas holidays of 1810-11, Shelley wrote from Field Place to Hogg at Oxford, that he meant to have recourse to deception to members of his own domestic circle, and having declared this intention, he told untruths to the persons he meant to deceive. For these untruths the power and liveliness of his imagination can be held in no degree accountable.
(8) In 1810, in order to become a member of the University of Oxford, after ceasing to be a Christian, he subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles, and solemnly declared himself a believer in Christianity.