But what do the statements of the last paragraph amount to? (1) That in making Laon and Cythna live like a married couple, the poet merely aimed at startling his readers out of the trance of ordinary life.—(2) That in so startling his readers he wished to enable them to break away from the notion, that there was something inherently vicious in a brother’s connubial association with his own sister.—(3) That Shelley rated such incest as a mere crime of convention, to be placed in the same category with offences against the game-laws, the excise-laws, or a custom’s tariff.—(4) That feelings should not be judged by their results, but by their effect on the disposition of the person entertaining them.—(5) That in so startling his readers out of an antiquated repugnance to the particular kind of incest, he hoped to render them tolerant of, and charitable towards, persons committing the mere offence against conventional morality.—(6) That though, in his opinion, no rule of natural morals forbade a man to marry his own sister, the poet thought his readers had better refrain from such incest, since, though innocent in itself, the perpetration of it would be likely to infuriate the bigoted multitude. This from the man who, according to his most fervid idolaters, would have redeemed the world from sin and wretchedness, had he worked for its regeneration under auspicious circumstances.
Is the incest of brother and sister a mere crime of convention? The science of morals, of course, is progressive. What is virtue in a rude state of society becomes crime in a high state of civilization. Some countries, lying well within the wide and vague boundaries of civilization, are behind other countries in the science of morals. What is crime in England may be honesty in Thibet. There are offences about which we may hesitate to say off-hand, whether they are offences against natural morals or mere crimes of convention. But surely action that is maleficent to the mental and physical welfare of mankind, wherever it may be practised, is not action about which there can be any uncertainty. Permitted in the country, where (by his own confession in prose) he commended it to tolerance and charitable consideration, the license commended by Shelley would poison the springs of domestic virtue, whilst producing its universal results on the bodily shape, nervous force, and moral health of the people. Permitted amongst the settlers on a barbarous coast, it would in a few generations be fruitful of such physical infirmity and debasement, as are ever accompanied with moral depravation. Action so universally maleficent is universally wicked. Though it may be less mischievous in its consequences, the conduct recommended in Laon and Cythna is no less essentially wicked, in a small and thinly populated island, than in a great city.
The poem having been written to the last line, Shelley sent it to Messrs. C. and J. Ollier, of Welbeck Street, whom he had selected for his publishers, at the request of their friend Leigh Hunt. As the book was to be produced at Shelley’s cost, the publishers of course wished to publish it. But these gentlemen looked for money, instead of disaster, from business with their client. On finding that the poem was an apology for incest, they took counsel with one another, and probably with their lawyer. The result was that, when the poem was nearly, if not altogether printed, one of the Messrs. Ollier wrote to Shelley, stating they could not venture to produce a work, so certain to put them in an ignominious position. Instead of feeling for the men of business, and shrinking from the thought of injuring them, Shelley urged them to go on in the road to ruin. But the publishers were less manageable than Shelley hoped to find them. They repeated their wish to be quit of so dangerous a book. Whereupon, dating from Marlow, on 11th December, 1817, Shelley wrote the Mr. Ollier (who was attending to the matter) a letter that contained these words,—
‘There is one compromise you might make, though that would still be injurious to me. Sherwood and Neely wished to be the principal publishers. Call on them, and say that it was through a mistake that you undertook the principal direction of the book, as it was my wish that it should be theirs, and that I have written to you to that effect. This, if it would be advantageous to you, would be detrimental to, but not utterly destructive of, my views. To withdraw your name entirely, would be to inflict on me a bitter and undeserved injury.’ (Vide Shelley Memorials.)
To see the nature of this advice, readers must remember how usual it was in former time for several different firms of booksellers to be concerned in the publication of the same work. The principal publisher in these joint-enterprises,—i.e. the publisher in negotiation with the author, and to whom the author looked as his publisher—had the direction of, and chief responsibility in, the business. His name, or the name of his house, appeared on the title-page before the names of the other publishers. Thus holding a place of honour, he held also the post of greatest danger; for in case of proceedings against the author and publisher of an unlawful publication, it was the way of the law to hold the first and principal publisher as more responsible than the other associated booksellers, and even in some cases to regard the latter as being in no degree morally accountable for the contents of the work. In accordance with this trade-usage, Messrs. Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, of Paternoster Row, were associated in 1817, as second and subordinate publishers with Messrs. C. and J. Ollier, of Welbeck Street.
Shelley’s suggestion was that, as the Olliers were frightened, they should slip out of the more dangerous position, by inducing Sherwood, Neely, and Jones to step into it by misrepresentation. The Olliers were instructed by Shelley to tell the other set of publishers an untruth, that was a rather complicated untruth. They were instructed to keep their alarm to themselves, and say to their comrades in the trade, ‘We took the principal direction of the book through a mistake’ (a sheer untruth), ‘as it was Mr. Shelley’s wish for you to be his principal publishers’ (another sheer untruth), ‘and therefore as Mr. Shelley has written us to that effect’ (a third untruth on a point of fact) ‘we think even at this late stage of the business you had better figure as principal publishers’ (a false suggestion of motive). That the Olliers did as Shelley thus instructed them, may be inferred from the fact that, on the title-page (the 1818 title-page) of Laon and Cythna, Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, figure as principal publishers.
Laon and Cythna was published, in so far that a few copies (three copies, according to some writers on the subject, but probably a larger number) passed into circulation; one of them being the copy, that afforded the Quarterly Reviewer an opportunity for making his memorable onslaught on the book. But this had barely been accomplished, when the poem was an addition to the considerable list of the works, written by Shelley and speedily suppressed. What was the immediate cause of the renewal of their alarm does not appear; but the book was no sooner out, than the Messrs. Ollier decided that not another copy should be issued with their name on the title-page. Probably they acted on their lawyer’s urgent representation, that, unless it were promptly suppressed, so scandalous a book would certainly result in their prosecution. It has been repeatedly averred that their alarm proceeded chiefly from the freedom with which the poem dealt with matters of religion and politics. But the changes which converted Laon and Cythna into The Revolt of Islam, show that this was not the case. Some of the changes, no doubt, modified the terms relating to the Almighty; but the prime purpose of the alterations was to relieve the poem of its incestuous sentiment. Unquestionably the publishers were alarmed by the book’s blasphemy and political extravagance; but their most serious apprehension was fear of such an outcry against the poem’s indecency, as would put them on trial for issuing an obscene book. On reconsideration the publishers saw that in case of such a prosecution, it would avail them nothing that their name appeared after ‘Sherwood, Neely, and Jones,’ on the title-page of the book, of which they would be proved to have been the principal publishers. No wonder they were firm. No wonder also that Shelley was in the highest state of excitement for his own interests,—and of indignation at his publisher’s cowardice. What the Olliers felt was, of course, felt by the other publishers.
Matters were in this position, when it occurred to some ingenious student of the suppressed poem, that it would be easy to relieve the work of its incestuous quality and some of its most objectionable passages touching religion, by cancelling a few leaves and replacing them with leaves, that would change the character and complexion of the whole performance. By dropping the final paragraph (with its note) from the Preface, producing a new title-page, and altering fifty-five lines of the body of the book, it would be easy to manipulate, at a trifling cost, the printed sheets out of their egregious offensiveness into comparative innocence. Who was the originator of this ingenious suggestion does not appear; but the editorial ingenuity of the proposal inclines one to attribute it to Leigh Hunt. Anyhow, the suggestion was carried out by a council, consisting of one of the Messrs. Ollier, the author, Peacock, and some other of the author’s personal friends (Leigh Hunt and Hogg being, no doubt, of the number). Never perhaps was stranger work done by a literary committee at successive meetings. At the sittings of the council, Shelley (says Peacock) ‘contested the proposed alterations step by step; in the end, sometimes adopting, more frequently modifying, never originating, and always insisting that his poem was spoiled.’ No wonder he fought his friends point by point. The poem had been written to demonstrate the purity and loveliness of the extremest kind of Free Love. By changing Cythna from Laon’s sister, to a mere orphan, living under the protection of his parents, the alterations deprived the poem of the prime doctrine it was intended to inculcate. The poem that should have proclaimed the beauty and holiness of incestuous Love was manipulated into a mere poetic apology for Lawless Love of an ordinary and less interesting kind. So castrated, the Poem of Incest could no longer generate the sentiment, whose activity was needful, in Shelley’s opinion, for the attainment of ‘a happier condition of moral and political society.’ As any reader may learn from a careful study of the poem, enough mischief was left in The Revolt of Islam to satisfy an ordinary enthusiast for lawless love; but Shelley was an ‘extra’-ordinary enthusiast for wedlock without restrictions. It is imputed to him for righteousness by his idolaters, that he persisted to the last in the pure and unqualified doctrine of the unaltered poem. In reference to Lady Shelley’s quite inaccurate statement that the poet (in 1817-18) was ‘convinced of the propriety of making’ the ‘alterations,’ which converted Laon and Cythna into The Revolt of Islam, Mr. Buxton Forman remarks proudly of the teacher, who might have been the Saviour of the World, ‘There is nothing in his subsequent history to countenance the idea that he regarded Laon and Cythna as in any way offensive.’
But before the superlatively offensive poem had been manipulated into a comparatively inoffensive one, some copies of Laon and Cythna had passed from the publisher’s hands to the world. Whether these copies were no more, or several more, than three, does not matter. If they were only three, they were enough to darken the poet’s fame and cloud his happiness for the rest of his days. Three hundred copies in circulation could not have been more disastrous to his social credit than those three, one of which was lent to the Quarterly Reviewer.
Is it wonderful that Shelley, during the few years still remaining to him of a brief existence, lived under the world’s ban, and though producing works of incomparable art in quick succession, produced them only to stir the wrath of critics, and aggravate the pain he endured from the world’s neglect of his genius? It was known, and could not be gainsaid, in every coterie of men of letters, how abruptly he had left his first childish wife; how, on breaking with so young and lovely a creature, he told her to ‘do as other women did’; how within a few weeks of breaking with this girl, he had carried off his familiar friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter; and how in language of matchless beauty and vigour, he had used all the powers of his poetic genius, not only to deride marriage, but to teach his readers that the most repulsive and blighting of all the several kinds of incestuous love was wholesome, innocent, and beautiful. Is it surprising that in less than a year and four months from the publication of Laon and Cythna, he wrote from Rome to Peacock, ‘I am regarded by all who know or hear of me, except, I think, on the whole, five individuals, as a rare prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look even might infect?’ Is it surprising that, critics, fully cognizant of the power and many excellences of his poetry, forbore to extol his genius, from a conscientious repugnance to his social philosophy, and a fear that by applauding the poet they should strengthen the hands of the social innovator? Is it surprising that, whilst temperate and judicious men of letters were silent about what they secretly admired, but could not venture to openly commend, less discerning critics in their abhorrence of the social innovator, wrote wild nonsense about the stupid trash, the drivel and buffoonery of his finest productions?