Though it is not to be imagined that the seconder of the sixth resolution was allowed to talk for more than an hour, there is sufficient evidence that, after rising on his legs, Shelley took occasion to introduce himself with unusual particularity to his hearers, and to inform them of the considerations and purpose that had brought him to Ireland. It is also certain that his utterances were received with alternate expressions of approval and dissent; that he was applauded for expressing his abhorrence of English misrule, and checked with even more emphatic indications of displeasure, when he spoke of mere differences of religious opinion, as trivialities that should not be allowed to divide the people of the same nation. Shelley himself certainly made none too much of the expressions of dissent when he wrote to Miss Hitchener on 14th March, 1812 (from 17 Grafton Street, to which address he had moved from 7 Lower Sackville Street), that his speech was misunderstood; that, though he won some applause by stating the objects of his expedition to Ireland, he was hissed for his remarks touching religion; and that ‘the newspapers,’ which gave significant prominence to his speech, ‘only noted that which did not excite disapprobation.’
With this confession of oratorical misadventure under their eyes, most readers will think Hogg right in saying:—
‘On one occasion he’ (i.e. Shelley) ‘told me that at a meeting—probably at the meeting of the philanthropists—so much ill-will was shown to the Protestants that, thereupon, he was provoked to remark that the Protestants were fellow Christians, fellow subjects, and as such were entitled to equal rights, to equal charity, toleration, and the rest. He was forthwith interrupted by savage yells; a tremendous uproar arose, and he was compelled to be silent.’
If Shelley showed himself so comically ignorant of Irish politics, as to assure a meeting of Dublin Catholics that religious equality with the majority of the Irish nation should at least be accorded to the Protestant minority, it is not surprising that he was silenced. Hogg may have exaggerated what Shelley told him with exaggeration, and his way of writing about ‘the Catholics’ and ‘the philanthropists,’ as though the terms meant the same thing, is not the only example of reprehensible looseness in his account of Shelley’s Irish campaign. But in the main the biographer’s account of the poet’s campaign is by no means too unfavourable to the youthful adventurer; and Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy is guilty of bad temper and worse manners, in stigmatizing the author of the faulty narrative a ‘liar of the first magnitude.’
That Shelley found an opportunity for introducing himself to the Irish people in Fishamble Street was due to the influence of Mr. John Lawless, whose acquaintance he had made shortly before the meeting. A keen politician, who enjoyed in his party the equally flattering and suspicious designation of ‘honest Jack Lawless,’ and a flighty gentleman of letters, who produced two years later an absolutely meritless contribution to The History of Ireland, Mr. Lawless was quick to recognize in Shelley a young gentleman, whom he would do well to befriend. An organizer of the aggregate meeting, Mr. Lawless used his influence to put the young gentleman to the fore. Had it not been for honest Jack, the Dublin papers would have been silent about the points of Shelley’s speech that ‘did not excite disapprobation,’ and more or less communicative about the points that occasioned uproar. After affording Shelley an opportunity for introducing himself to the Dublin public, and nursing him through the reports of the meeting, ‘honest Jack’ took occasion to introduce the youthful adventurer, yet more fully to the Irish people, in the article that appeared in the Dublin Weekly Messenger of ‘March, 1812;’ the article that was at the same time a personal memoir of the adventurer, and a critical review of his Address to the Irish People; the article that, after speaking of Shelley as the son of ‘a member of the Imperial Parliament’ and ‘the immediate heir to one of the first fortunes in England,’ concluded with a handsome reference to the ‘very beautiful poem’ which he had written for the benefit ‘of our distinguished countryman, Mr. Finerty.’
At the same time Mr. Lawless took occasion to introduce Mrs. Honest Jack Lawless to Shelley’s womankind, and to welcome the trio to his hearth, where he entertained them with the best fruit and vegetables of the Dublin market, and would have fed them on richer fare, had they not recently joined the Nineteenth Century Pythagoreans, and as Pythagoreans bound themselves to abstain from flesh and fermented liquors.
It is not to be imagined that honest Jack showered these civilities on the Shelleys without a thought for civilities, to be rendered by the Shelleys in return. One may need money without being an Irishman. It is not to bring a blush to Erin’s cheek, that honest Jack is mentioned on this page as an Irish gentleman whose command of gold was insufficient for his necessities. Though he appeared very much a minor, ‘the immediate heir to one of the first fortunes of England’ was a person whom honest Jack regarded as a person who might prove a profitable acquaintance. A man of the world, more than thirty years old, Mr. Lawless was not so absolutely undeserving of his peculiar epithet, as to be capable of robbing so young a gentleman without throwing a show of honesty into the predatory business. Moreover, Mr. Lawless saw at a glance that his new acquaintance, who went to Miss Westbrook for sixpences as he wanted them, was no youth to be plucked at a card-table or plundered on a racecourse. The young gentleman who lived on milk and vegetables, and seldom had more than half-a-crown in his pocket, was no young gentleman to be bled and fleeced in the ordinary way. Mr. Lawless conceived the happy thought of drawing Shelley into partnership in a great and beneficent literary enterprise.
Himself a man of letters, Mr. Lawless wished to write a History of Ireland, that would exhibit the grandeur and misfortunes of the Irish people, and educate its readers in the sacred principles of Irish patriotism. Having already written the opening chapters of such a history, Mr. Lawless saw in the immediate heir to one of the first fortunes of England a fit coadjutor in so glorious an enterprise. Men of letters, they both burned to liberate Ireland. What more beautiful than for two such friends to co-operate for so sublime a purpose? For their needful enlightenment, the Irish people required above all things a good History of Ireland. To give Ireland what she most needed, the Irish politician and the English scholar must work in unison, throwing all their energies into the undertaking, and deeming no sacrifice too great for so grand an object. Mr. Lawless felt this and said it. On hearing honest Jack’s opinion, Shelley concurred in it cordially. To both gentlemen it was obvious that their enterprise would require money. To both it seemed preposterous and unendurable, that the Irish people should remain in ignorance of their country’s story, through the difficulty of raising the insignificant sum of two hundred and fifty pounds, which would suffice to put the presses to work. It might, perhaps, be necessary to spend another hundred pounds or so; but should the first volume have the sale, to be anticipated for the initial tome of an enthralling narrative, the ridiculously small sum of 250l. (a sum that would, of course, be repaid again and again by the profits of the publication) would suffice to break the fetters from Erin’s bruised and wounded limbs, and chase the darkness of ignorance from a liberated country. Was such a work to be deferred for the want of a miserable 250l., whilst John Lawless was known for his honesty in every castle and cabin, south of the Giant’s Causeway, and whilst his young friend was the immediate heir of one of the first fortunes of England? To obtain the equally trivial and necessary sum, Shelley seized a pen and wrote (vide Medwin’s Life of Shelley) to Mr. Medwin, the Horsham lawyer,—saying how he was engaged with a literary friend in producing a voluminous History of Ireland, and needed 250l. for the execution of the enterprise. Of course, the Horsham lawyer was assured by his youthful client, that the sale of the History would yield great profit, and that the 250l. would be repaid in eighteen months. It is more curious and remarkable that, in pressing Mr. Medwin to provide the needful money for the project, Shelley assured the lawyer that two hundred and fifty pages of the work were already printed:—a statement for which the vigour and liveliness of the writer’s imagination may perhaps be held accountable.
It speaks less for Mr. Lawless’s honesty, than for his cleverness, in drawing wind to his sails from every passing breeze, that this letter was written when Shelley had been barely five weeks in Dublin, and possibly had not known him for a month. How Mr. Medwin answered the letter does not appear; but it may be assumed confidently that if he provided the 250l., he required that the transaction should be withheld from the knowledge of Shelley’s father. Nor does it appear whether Mr. Lawless drew money for his literary project out of his young friend’s pocket. But the known circumstances of their intimacy leave little room for doubt that Shelley’s purse was accountable for the Irish gentleman’s persistence in the labours, that resulted in his Compendium of the History of Ireland, from the Earliest Period to the Reign of George I. (1814);—a work on which he was engaged between the dates of Shelley’s two visits to Ireland.
During his stay in Dublin, Shelley continued to correspond with the philosopher of Skinner Street, writing him at least three long letters, dated respectively on 24th February, 8th March, and 18th March; letters to which Godwin replied on 4th March, 14th March, and 30th March. Resembling in their adulatory and reverential extravagances his earlier epistles from Keswick to the same correspondent, Shelley’s letters from Dublin to William Godwin are chiefly remarkable for evidence that he was looking yearningly for the pleasures of personal intimacy with the sage, whom he was pleased to regard and address as his intellectual guide and guardian.