‘I am perfectly happy. After so much discontent, such violent scenes, such a turmoil of passion and hatred, you will hardly believe how enraptured I am with this dear, quiet little spot. I am as happy when I go to bed as when I rise. I am never disappointed, for I know the extent of my pleasures.’
Clearly the sisters-by-affinity had spoken smartly to one another before parting ‘for ever,’—a ‘for ever’ that fell considerably short of twelve months. At sweet seventeen the mutual resentments of two quick-tempered sisters blow over and leave no heart-burnings behind them. It would be ill for our homes were it otherwise. What would become of us were English girls so incapable, as Mr. Froude imagines them to be, of ‘making it up’ and ‘beginning again’ when they have had a smart tiff? It was all in the ordinary course of human nature that in the ensuing spring Claire and Mary were animated by ‘mutual affection, glowing with the impetuosity of girlish romance.’
Much as they delighted in their new home, Shelley and Miss Godwin needed the diversion of visiting scenes, even more alluring to lovers of nature than the glades of Windsor and the rich landscapes of the surrounding country. Besides making a tour along the coast of south Devon, and staying at Clifton during the summer, they went, at the end of August, with Peacock and Charles Clairmont, by the Thames to Lechlade in Gloucestershire, the river-trip mentioned in a previous chapter. Returning in September, 1815, to Bishopgate for the enjoyment of the autumnal colouring of the forest, Shelley may be supposed to have spent the happiest hours of his existence whilst meditating Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, under the oaks of the Great Park,—the poem that was almost as great an advance from Queen Mab as the Queen was in advance of his previous poetry. The first of his supremely great works—a poem that, had he lived to produce nothing greater, would, by itself, have given him a place amongst the poets who never die—Alastor, was published in an early (if not the earliest) month of 1816, together with the stanzas to Coleridge, the April-1814 stanzas (from which so many futile efforts have been made to extort evidence touching the causes of his defection from Harriett); the verses on Mutability, the lines on the verse from Ecclesiastes, the Lechlade verses, the sonnet to Wordsworth, the sonnet on the Fall of Bonaparte, the lines taken from Queen Mab on Religion (styled Superstition in the reprint, for security’s sake), the sonnet from Dante’s Italian, the revised fragments of Queen Mab, styled The Demon of the World, and the translation from Moschus,—the last-mentioned item of the miscellany being one of the reasons why successive Shelleyan biographers and editors have ante-dated the unfinished Essay on Christianity by five or six years.
Had it not been for this trifle from Moschus in the Alastor volume, and the passage in Shelley’s letter (dated to Hogg from ‘Bishopgate, September, 1815’), where he says, ‘I have been engaged lately in the commencement of several literary plans which, if my present temper of mind endures, I shall probably complete in the winter,’ it would probably never have occurred to any editor of Shelleyan MSS. that Shelley produced, in 1815, a composition so foreign to his way of dealing with religious questions at any time, between the publication of The Necessity of Atheism and the production of Laon and Cythna, as the fragmentary treatise on the character and teaching of the Saviour of the World. It is not far to seek how the editorial mind came to commit so strange a mistake. On the discovery amongst Leigh Hunt’s MSS. of the beginning of a translation of Moschus’s third idyll (the elegy on Bion), written by Shelley on the same paper as a missing piece of the Essay on Christianity, it became obvious that the Essay was written at a time when he was interested in the writings of Moschus. This being manifest the first of the misleading editors argued thus: The Essay on Christianity was written near the time when Shelley was working at Moschus; the Alastor volume which passed through the press soon after the composition of the poem in the autumn and winter of 1815, contains a translation from the Greek of Moschus, showing that somewhere about that time the poet was interested in the Moschian idylls; moreover we have Shelley’s assurance that in September, 1815, he was engaged on several literary enterprises which he hoped to complete in the course of the ensuing winter. Therefore one may safely assign the fragmentary Essay on Christianity to the year 1815.
It is obvious that to show the Essay is wholly out of accord with Shelley’s temper and views on matters of religion in 1815, and on the other hand to show he was more strongly interested in the Moschian verse at a later period of his career, when his temper and views were in accordance with those of the Essay, is to sweep away the whole of the editorial argument. It is not too much to say that in 1815 Shelley could no more have written the Essay, than he could have composed the music of a great opera. On the other hand, the Adonais affords conclusive evidence that the poet was influenced by both Bion and Moschus during the composition of the noble elegy. Besides the translated fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Bion, by Moschus (written on the same paper as the portion of the Essay on Christianity), Shelley left a translation of Bion’s Elegy on the Death of Adonis, both manuscripts being in the style of the poet’s later penmanship. Yet further, the Shelleyan manuscript of the translated fragment of Bion’s Elegy on the Death of Adonis exhibits on its back a draft of Pan, Echo, and the Satyr, translated from the Greek of Moschus. Thus, whilst the last-named manuscript shows that Shelley was working about the same time on translations from both Greek poets, and the Adonais affords conclusive evidence that its author was influenced in its composition by the same two poets, the manuscript of the translated fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Bion shows it to have been produced by Shelley’s pen in the same period as the Essay on Christianity. It follows, therefore, that the Essay on Christianity was produced at least in the same period as the Elegy on John Keats. This abundant evidence that the Essay on Christianity should be assigned to the Adonais period of Shelley’s literary career is further confirmed by these two important facts: (1) That the temper and reasoning of the Essay are in harmony with Shelley’s views and feeling on religious matters towards the close of his life; and (2) That in conversation with Trelawny, who knew the poet only at the close of his career, Shelley ‘said he had wished to write a Life of Christ, revoking the hasty afterthought’ (expressed in a note to Queen Mab) ‘that Jesus was an ambitious man who aspired to the throne of Judea,’ at the same time adding ‘that he found the materials too deficient for reconstructing a Life having some solidity and authority,’—words indicating that at a time no long while anterior to his brief association with Trelawny, the poet had been reconsidering and reshaping his views of the Saviour’s career. Mr. Rossetti justly remarks that the Essay on Christianity may have been the out-come of this project. Most readers will also think the out-come, instead of being ascribed to a period prior to the composition of Laon and Cythna, should be assigned to the Adonais term of the poet’s story. In truth the discovery of a Shelleyan copy of the Essay, dated 1820 or 1821, would not materially strengthen the evidence that Shelley wrote it in his life’s concluding term.
At Bishopgate, Shelley saw little of his neighbours; the few of them who called upon him being so little to his mind that they were not encouraged to call again. Indeed, the only gentleman of the neighbourhood who seems to have approached the new settler on the verge of Windsor Park, without impressing him unfavourably, was Dr. Pope, the Quaker doctor of Staines, who, visiting the poet in the way of professional service, visited him also for the friendly discussion of religious questions. ‘I like to hear thee talk, friend Shelley: I see thee art very deep,’ the doctor remarked on one occasion to the author of Queen Mab. With the exception of this new acquaintance, who was only an occasional caller, and the two familiar comrades who had held to him staunchly in the previous winter of harassment and neglect, Shelley seems to have received no one at Bishopgate on a footing of sociability, from the middle of September, 1815, to the opening of the next spring. But the time of seclusion passed pleasantly in literary effort and the society of the two friends, with whom he read Greek authors;—Peacock strolling over to him twice or thrice a-week from Marlow, whilst Hogg (though a less frequent visitor at the cottage) seldom let a fortnight pass without walking down from London. Whilst reading Greek literature with the two scholars, Shelley found time to bring Mary forward in Latin. ‘Mary,’ he wrote to Hogg in September, 1815, ‘has finished the fifth book of the Æneid, and her progress in Latin is such as to satisfy my best expectations,’—words reminding one pathetically how, three years earlier, he took a similar interest in Harriett’s Latin studies, and wrote about them with the same satisfaction to the same correspondent.
As the time is nearing for Shelley to achieve his ambition of winning Byron’s friendship, the occasion has arrived for glancing at the regard in which the more famous poet was held by the author of Alastor, and also for glancing at the efforts made by certain of the Shelleyan enthusiasts to minimize the idolater’s admiration of the poet they abhor, by insisting that the admiration was qualified with disapproval, and strictly limited to certain of Byron’s more creditable literary productions. Let us see, by Shelley’s own words and acts, how he thought of Byron from 1816, when they made the personal acquaintance of one another, to the opening of the year memorable for the fatal boat accident in the Bay of Spezia.
(1)—Of Shelley’s regard for Byron in that year (1816), it is enough, for the present, to say that, after making Byron’s acquaintance under remarkable circumstances, and spending some weeks in close intimacy with him in Switzerland, Shelley was at much pains from that time till the opening of 1822, to cultivate and preserve his friendship:—a fact which may, at least, be regarded as conclusive evidence that their intercourse on the marge of Lake Leman was not fruitful of disappointment in the younger poet. Admiring the author of Childe Harold, whilst he was living in Free Love with Mary’s sister-by-affinity, Shelley admired him none the less for dismissing Claire, and in later times worshipt him with a sentiment of idolatry that will ever remain one of the most remarkable examples of hero-worship in literary annals.
(2)—It is no slight indication of Shelley’s esteem for Byron in 1817,—when, according to Mr. Froude, he must have regarded the author of Childe Harold with repugnance, as Claire’s seducer,—that he left Byron a legacy of 2000l. by his will (dated 18th Feb., 1817), and also appointed him to be an executor of the will, and a trustee for the performance of its trusts.
In the same year, 1817, when the discarded mistress had given birth to Allegra, Shelley wrote in the preface to the Six Weeks’ Tour these words:—