Making acquaintance with opium at a somewhat earlier time of life than Byron, though probably in the same year of grace as the older poet, Shelley was so liberal an opium-taker that the drug’s influence on the nervous system must be borne in mind by those, who would account for his successive hallucinations, and other exhibitions of nervous disorder. Even by the medical observer, the effects of laudanum are sometimes mistaken for manifestations of lunacy. Mr. Rossetti certainly had good grounds for suggesting that laudanum was at the bottom of the marvellous tale, with which Shelley thrilled the nerves of Eliza and Harriett in the last week of his stay at Keswick. The story, told with every show of sincerity by the victim of hallucination, or perplexing semi-delusion, if he is not to be regarded as the utterer of a deliberate invention, was that on returning from a walk to his home, he had been assailed by a robber, with consequences that might have been tragic, had not the assault been fortunately made under the very eaves of Mr. Calvert’s roof. By falling over his own door-step, Shelley had been so fortunate as to fall out of the bandit’s grasp. Few readers will hesitate in the opinion that if this wondrous tale was not in some degree an affair of hallucination, it was altogether untruth.
Shelley would have gone to Ireland with firmer confidence in his measures for emancipating the Catholics, and Repealing the Union, had he been attended to the field of philanthropic action by that equally sublime and swarthy young woman, Miss Eliza Hitchener, schoolmistress of Hurstpierpoint. Could this young woman, who seized every occasion for sowing the seeds of Deism and Republicanism in the minds of her infantile pupils, have been induced to throw up her school and start for Dublin at a moment’s notice, Shelley’s Irish expedition might have had a different ending. The need for Miss Hitchener’s presence on the field of moral and political illumination was felt so strongly by Shelley, that he had scarcely taken possession of furnished lodgings at No. 7 Sackville Street, Dublin, when he wrote to her, imploring she would come to him instantly—and for ever. But Miss Hitchener could not be moved so easily. Having charge of certain little Americans, a source of income not to be surrendered recklessly, she wished for time in which to dispose of the goodwill of her school, ere she flitted to Dublin for the sake of the poor Irish. Smuggler’s daughter though she was, Miss Hitchener lacked the spirit to think cheerily of crossing the Irish Channel without any escort. So Shelley was constrained to do his best for Ireland without her personal co-operation. It being clear that his reunion with Miss Hitchener must be deferred till he should have settled the Irish question, saved Ireland, and retired for ever to some delightful cottage in North Wales, Shelley wrote from 7 Sackville Street, Dublin, to the incomparable lady on 14th February, 1812, that he looked forward to the pleasure of meeting her in Wales, in the following summer. Joining hands once more in Wales, they would never again part company.
(1) Dublin: from 12th February, 1812, to 7th April, 1812: just seven weeks and five days!—Leaving Whitehaven for the Isle of Man on 3rd February, 1812, Shelley, with his two travelling companions (Eliza and Harriett), reached Dublin somewhere during the night of the 12th of the same month, after enduring manifold discomforts in the course of a journey that, rough and wretched by land, was yet rougher and more wretched by sea. After recovering from fatigue of travel, the three adventurers bestirred themselves for the good of Ireland, and in doing so, took two or three steps that may at least be declared not wholly and directly at variance with common sense. To avoid the costlier discomforts of a hotel, they lost no time in exposing themselves to the cheaper discomforts of a Sackville Street lodging-house. Having thus planted himself in the capital of the country he had visited from philanthropic motives, Shelley called (with Godwin’s letter of introduction in his hand) on the Master of the Rolls (Curran),—an attention the Master of the Rolls was in no hurry to repay; though Shelley came to Dublin with a not altogether groundless hope of being welcomed cordially by the great orator who, having done fairly well for himself by patriotism, had for several years held the official place that, whilst lowering his zeal for patriotic agitation, required him to exercise a certain amount of circumspection in admitting patriots to his domestic circle. Fortunately for Curran, he was ‘not at home’ on the occasion of Shelley’s first call; and it is conceivable that, having been so fortunate in all honesty, the Master of the Rolls decided to be equally fortunate on subsequent occasions of a visit from the adventurer, until more satisfactory information respecting William Godwin’s young friend should come to hand.
After leaving his card on the Master of the Rolls, Shelley took measures for offering his views on Irish affairs to the people whom he had come to serve and save. It is said that he tried in vain to find a regular publisher for his Address to the Irish People. For this statement, though there is other, I know of no better, authority than certain scarcely reliable words of the letter, written from Lynton by Shelley to Mr. Hookham, in 1812, just before Daniel Hill’s arrest. Certainly, the work was not a production with which a prudent bookseller, desirous of standing well in official circles, would care to connect himself. Nor was the youthful author (who, whilst numbering no more than nineteen, had the aspect of only fifteen years) a person to win the confidence of wary booksellers, who could learn nothing about him besides what he was moved to say of himself. If Shelley went about Dublin in search of a publisher, he certainly wasted no long time in the search, for the pamphlet was printed (in execrably bad type, and on paper of corresponding badness) before he had been fully twelve days in the Irish capital.
Whilst the pamphlet was passing through the press, Miss Westbrook bestirred herself for Ireland’s regeneration, by collecting ‘useful passages’ out of Tom Paine’s works, with a view to their publication. At the same time, the lady constituted herself keeper of the purse, and made a red cloak.
Fifteen hundred copies of the Address having been printed and delivered to the author, he lost no time in offering them to the people he wished to illuminate. A copy of the work was left at each of the sixty principal public-houses. An Irishman, named Daniel Hill, was sent about Dublin with a supply of the pamphlets, and ordered to sell them at five-pence a-piece to all who would buy, and to use his discretion in giving them to persons who could not afford to buy them. At the same time, Shelley and Harriett dropt the pamphlet from the balcony of their windows to passers in Sackville Street, and never went abroad without copies for distribution. To Harriett, ‘ready to die with laughter’ at their measures for scattering the seeds of wholesome principles amongst the Irish people, the whole affair was a frolic. But what she regarded as comical pastime was the most serious business to Shelley, whose countenance wore its gravest expression, when he dropt his little books into the hands of wayfarers from his Sackville Street balcony, or in his walks about the town furtively slipt a copy of the Address into the hood of an old woman’s cloak. Having made away with four hundred copies in this manner, Shelley congratulated himself on having caused a prodigious sensation, and being far on the way to a peaceful revolution.
The Address to the Irish People, perhaps the weakest and most puerile piece of political pamphleteering that ever proceeded from the pen of a youth of Shelley’s years and education, was followed at a brief interval by another pamphlet of his composition, entitled, Proposals for an Association of those Philanthropists who, convinced of the Inadequacy of the Moral and Political State of Ireland to produce Benefits which are nevertheless attainable, are willing to unite to accomplish its Regeneration; this second tract being followed after a longer interval by the Declaration of Rights, a broadside manifesto of wholesome revolutionary principles, in thirty-one numbered articles, with a concluding appeal to all mankind to ‘Awake! Arise! or be for ever fallen!’ The first of the thirty-one articles (plagiarized without acknowledgment, as Mr. Rossetti has shown, from two documents of the French Revolution, (a) The Declaration by the Constituent Assembly in August, 1789, and (b) the Declaration proposed by Robespierre in April, 1793), announced to all Irishmen interested in the matter,—‘Government has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own.’
A copy of the Address was sent to Curran, who, of course, took no notice of the performance. Fretting at Curran’s disdainful indifference to his efforts for the regeneration of Ireland, Shelley wrote to Miss Hitchener of his mean opinion of the lawyer who had consented to serve a tyrannical Government as Master of the Rolls. But in leaving the trio to amuse themselves at their pleasure, without checking or discouraging them, Curran gave Shelley only the same cause of offence, as was given him by all Dublin society during the earlier weeks of his stay in the capital. If Expectation (to use the expression of one of Shelley’s letters to Miss Hitchener) was on the tiptoe respecting the purpose of the three lodgers at 7 Lower Sackville Street, she gave no other sign of interest in their proceedings. There may have been a little tittering in the highways, in Trinity College, and in the Four Courts, at the eccentric demeanour of the young gentleman and two ladies, who went about the town forcing copies of a foolish tract into the hands of wayfarers; but few people offered to pay for the literature thus put under their eyes. No one of social influence sought out the author who, after crossing the Channel for the benefit of Ireland, found the Irish people much less ready to know him, than he was ready to make their acquaintance. The trio had been a fortnight in Lower Sackville Street, when Harriett wrote of the Irish people to Miss Hitchener, ‘We have seen very little of them as yet; but when Percy is more known I suppose we shall know more at the same time.’ The ink with which Harriett wrote these words had been dry for little more than twenty-four hours, when Shelley was brought face to face with the Irish people, on the evening of 28th February, 1812, at the ‘Aggregate Meeting of the Catholics of Ireland,’ held in the Fishamble Street Theatre for the furtherance of Catholic Emancipation,—a meeting at which O’Connell was chief orator, and Shelley spoke as seconder of the sixth resolution, ‘That the grateful thanks of this Meeting are due, and hereby returned to Lord Glentworth, the Right Hon. Maurice Fitzgerald, and the other distinguished Protestants who have this day honoured us with their presence.’
To second the sixth resolution at a public meeting is not to take an important part in its proceedings. Under ordinary circumstances it is to utter a few words, that are heard by few in the stir and hubbub of the breaking up of the assembly, and are rated by the reporters for the press as a mere formality, undeserving commemoration in a separate paragraph. Shelley’s speech certainly attracted some attention at the moment of its delivery, and caused some subsequent talk. But it was only one of the concluding and insignificant incidents of an important demonstration. Chief-constable Michael Farrell disposed of the eloquence, that commended the sixth resolution to the aggregate Catholics, in this brief sentence, ‘Lord Glentworth said a few words; a Mr. Bennett spoke, also a Mr. Shelley, who stated himself to be a native of England.’ In an official report of an inferior constable, Shelley’s name does not appear; nor does the report contain any reference to his speech, unless Mr. Manning made the mistake of attributing to another youthful orator the words that proceeded from Shelley’s lips. Whilst the constables dealt thus lightly with Shelley’s oration, the reporters for the press noticed it in significant paragraphs. The Freeman’s Journal (29th February, 1812) honoured it with eighty words. The Dublin Evening Post gave it 216 words. The Patriot of the 2nd of March thought it worthy of 345 commemorative words. It is, therefore, well upon the record that Shelley spoke a piece of his mind to what Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy calls ‘an immense assembly.’
The speech was certainly made. But there is a curious conflict as to the length and tenor of the speech, the style in which it was delivered, and the way in which it was received. Lady Shelley wishes us to believe that, by an unreasonable display of tolerance for the Irish Protestants, Shelley provoked savage yells from his Catholic auditors. Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy produces half-a-dozen scraps of old newspapers in evidence, that the young poet’s maiden essay in political oratory charmed and moved its hearers in a singular degree, causing them to hail him with delight, ‘whilst joy beamed in every countenance and rapture glistened in every eye.’ Whilst the circumstances of the case, including the reports of the newspapers, dispose the discreet reader to think it probable that the speech held the attention of the meeting for five or ten minutes, persons who believe Shelley incapable of anything in the way of misstatement are convinced by a passage in one of his letters to Miss Hitchener that he spoke for upwards of an hour.