Whilst Shelley addressed him in the most deferential strain, Godwin abounded with almost parental anxiety for the young man, who appeared to the literary veteran to have gone to Ireland on a mission, that could not fail to result in discredit to the adventurer, and might be fruitful of insurrection and bloodshed. Godwin would have been less apprehensive for his correspondent’s safety, had he known him personally, and would have had no fear whatever for the peace of Ireland, had he realized the indifference (qualified by the slightest sense of amusement) with which the Dublin police and populace regarded the proceedings of the boyish agitator.
The substance of Godwin’s admonitions to his youthful correspondent was just this:—Get out of Ireland promptly, or mischief will ensue to yourself and others from your madcap expedition; and after leaving Ireland, get the better of the misconceptions and self-conceit that make you think yourself competent to settle perplexing questions, that have proved too much for the wisest statesmen. It is to Shelley’s credit that he took such advice in good part, and wrote from 17 Grafton Street, on 18th March, 1812, to his Mentor, that, in deference to the expostulations and counsels of the author of Political Justice, he had withdrawn his Irish pamphlets from circulation, and was making ready to quit Dublin. Acknowledging the indiscretion, insufficiency, and unseasonableness of his measures for dealing with the grievances of Ireland, he declared his intention to leave the Irish, at least for a while, to manage their own affairs.
It was thus that, at the close of his fifth week in Dublin, and two days before writing to Mr. Medwin, of Horsham, for 250l. to be spent on the production of a new and voluminous History of Ireland, Shelley desisted from his efforts to force his two pamphlets upon public attention, and acknowledged the unsoundness of the measures they recommended. It does not, however, follow that Godwin was so largely accountable for this change of opinion as he had reason to imagine himself. One of the few points on which Mr. Hogg and Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy are of the same mind is, that Godwin’s arguments and expostulations had little or nothing to do with the speedy extinction of Shelley’s confidence in his own remedies for Irish grievances; and though the concession is by no means favourable to Shelley’s reputation for sincerity, it may be conceded that the point, on which the two biographers are thus unanimous, is also one of the points in respect to which both biographers are in the right. The fact is, that Shelley’s enthusiastic concern for the Irish people had played itself out when the second of Godwin’s expostulatory letters gave him a convenient pretext for retiring from a position that no longer afforded him congenial excitement. Hence the letter which moved Godwin to write to Curran, begging him even yet to pay some attention to the young enthusiast, who had shown so commendable and engaging a readiness to shape his course in obedience to the advice of his superiors by age and experience.
Whilst Godwin overflowed with approval of his young friend’s submissiveness to reason, Shelley could congratulate himself on the results of his announcement that, for the present, he should leave the Irish to manage their own affairs. Raising him in the regard of the philosopher, whose favour he was especially desirous of winning, the announcement brought him invitations to Curran’s dinner-table, where he discovered to his mortification, that a famous patriot may, in his declining years, love good cheer almost as much as his country, and be scarcely more distinguished by devotion to liberty than by a taste for obscene stories.
Enough has been said of Shelley’s ‘Irish campaign’ to show that, so far as his reputation is concerned, the kindest way of dealing with the farcical affair is to make fun of its absurdities; and that he suffers less from biographers who, dealing lightly with the expedition, palliate its foolishness with kindly reference to the adventurer’s juvenility, than from the apologists who discover wisdom and political sagacity in the extravagances of a puerile escapade. To laugh at the droll business is to be in good humour with the boy, whose self-sufficiency is only brought into offensive prominence by attempts to justify it. In this particular the poet’s admirers may well prefer Hogg’s pleasantry to Mr. MacCarthy’s seriousness. In other ways the later biographer defeats his own purpose. It is curious, how he produces evidence, supporting the very assertions whose accuracy he impugns. Maintaining that Shelley’s speech in Fishamble Street was favourably received, he prints the poet’s confession that he was checked with angry clamour against utterances, to which the newspapers made no reference. Indignant with Hogg for saying the poet was mortified by the miscarriage of his efforts for Ireland, he publishes the very words in which Shelley acknowledges the failure of his schemes. Maintaining that Shelley left Dublin ‘at the precise time he had originally arranged to leave it,’ he sets forth the testimony that, whereas he withdrew from Ireland on the 7th April, 1812, he had originally designed to stay in Dublin till ‘the end of April.’ It is thus the author of Shelley’s Early Life by turns disproves his own charges against Hogg’s accuracy, or shows himself more inexact than the biographer whom he accuses of falsehood.
Though it was less sudden and hasty than Hogg imagined, Shelley’s withdrawal from Ireland was made three weeks sooner than the time he appointed for the departure, when he was still hopeful for the success of his intervention between the Irish people and their despotic rulers. Whilst writing his last letter from Ireland to William Godwin (the letter in which he says nothing of his project for a new History of Ireland to the philosopher, whom he affects to treat with unqualified confidence), Shelley had determined to leave Dublin in the first week of the ensuing month, and was already making arrangements for migrating to Wales. One of his preliminary measures was to fill a large deal box with the few copies of his Address to the Irish People still remaining on his hand, the much larger number of his second Irish pamphlet yet resting in his possession, and the greater part of the edition of his Declaration of Rights,—the broadsides with which he hoped to rouse the farmers of his native county to a perception of their political grievances. This large deal box was addressed to Miss Hitchener, Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, and sent on board the boat for Holyhead, whence Shelley imagined it would pass without observation to the philosophical schoolmistress. In the absence of any person, duly authorized by its owner to pass it through the custom-house, this heavy box was in due course opened, and searched at Holyhead, by Mr. Pierce Thomas, Surveyor of Customs, who, writing to the Secretary of State for the Home Office an account of the inflammatory literature discovered in the chest, also put himself in communication with the Holyhead agent of the General Post Office. Hence the correspondence (still preserved at the Record Office) between secretaries of high degree and local officers of mean estate respecting the big box and its criminatory contents, nothing of which was more likely to agitate the official mind than the following letter from Harriett Shelley to her husband’s dear and incomparable friend Miss Hitchener, who had recently adopted the name of Portia, in lieu of her rightful Christian name Eliza (a name already appropriated in ‘Percy’s little circle’ to Miss Westbrook):—
‘Dublin, March 18th, 1812.
‘My Dear Portia,—As Percy has sent you such a large box, so full of inflammable matter, I think I may be allowed to send a little, but not of such a nature as his. I sent you two letters in a newspaper, which I hope you received safe from the intrusion of Postmasters. I sent one of the pamphlets to my Father in a newspaper, which was opened and charged; but which was very trifling compared with what you and Godwin paid.
‘I believe I have mentioned a new acquaintance of ours, a Mrs. Nugent, who is sitting in the room now and talking to Percy about Virtue. You see how little I stand on ceremony. I have seen her but twice before, and I find her a very agreeable, sensible woman. She has felt most severely the miseries of her country, in which she has been a very active member. She visited all the prisons in the time of the Rebellion, to exhort the people to have courage and hope. She says it was a most dreadful task; but it was her duty, and she would not shrink from the performance of it. This excellent woman, with all her notions of Philanthropy and justice, is obliged to work for her subsistence—to work in a shop, which is a furrier’s; there she is every day confined to her needle. Is it not a thousand pities that such a woman should be so dependent on others? She has visited us this evening for about three hours, and is now returned home. The evening is the only time she can get out in the week; but Sunday is her own, and then we are to see her. She told Percy that her country was her only love, when he asked her if she was married. She calls herself Mrs., I suppose, on account of her age, as she looks rather old for a Miss. She has never been out of the country and has no wish to leave it.
‘This is St. Patrick’s night, and the Irish always get very tipsy on such a night as this. The Horse Guards are pacing the streets and will be so all the night, so fearful are they of disturbances, the poor people being very much that way inclined, as provisions are very scarce in the southern counties. Poor Irish people, how much I feel for them! Do you know, such is their ignorance, that when there is a drawing-room held, they go from some distance to see the people who keep them starving to get their luxuries; they will crowd round the state carriages in great glee to see those who have stript them of their rights, and who wantonly revel in a profusion of ill-gotten luxury, whilst so many of those harmless people are wanting bread for their wives and children? What a spectacle! People talk of the fiery spirit of these distressed creatures, but that spirit is very much broken and ground down by the oppressors of this poor country. I may with truth say there are more beggars in this city than any other in the world. They are so poor they have hardly a rag to cover their naked limbs, and such is their passion for drink that when you relieve them one day you see them in the same deplorable condition the next. Poor creatures! they live more on whiskey than anything, for meat is so dear they cannot afford to purchase any. If they had the means I do not know that they would, whiskey being so much cheaper, and to their palates so much more desirable. Yet how often do we hear people say that Poverty is no evil. I think if they had experienced it they would soon alter their tone. To my idea it is the worst of all evils, as the miseries that flow from it are certainly very great; the many crimes we hear of daily are the consequences of poverty, and that, to a very great degree. I think the laws are extremely unjust—they condemn a person to death for stealing thirteen shillings and fourpence.