It need not be said how frequently the thought occurs in Shelley. We might fix him to a metaphysical system if we interpreted him prosaically. When in 'Prometheus' Panthea describes to Asia a mysterious dream, suddenly Asia sees another shape pass between her and the 'golden dew' which gleams through its substance. 'What is it?' she asks. 'It is mine other dream,' replies Panthea. 'It disappears,' exclaims Asia. 'It passes now into my mind,' replies Panthea. We are, that is, in a region where dreams walk as visible as the dreamers, and pass into or out of a mind which is indeed only a collection of dreams. The archaic mind regarded dreams as substantial or objective realities. In Shelley the reality is reduced to the unsubstantiality of a dream. To the ordinary thinker, the spirit is (to speak in materialist language) the receptacle of ideas. With Shelley, a little further on, we find that the relation is inverted; spirits themselves inhabit ideas; they live in the mind as in an ocean. Thought is the ultimate reality which contains spirits and ideas and dreams, if, rather, it is not simpler to say that everything is a dream.
The Faery-land of Spenser might be classified in our inadequate phraseology as equally 'ideal' with Shelley's impalpable scenery. But Spenser's allegorical figures are as visible as the actors in a masque; and, in fact, the 'Faery Queen' is a masque in words. His pages are a gallery of pictures, and may supply innumerable subjects for the artist. To illustrate Shelley would be as impossible as to paint a strain of music, unless, indeed, some of Turner's cloud scenery may be taken as representative of his incidental descriptions.
This language frequently reminds us of metaphysical doctrines which were unknown to Shelley in their modern shape. Nobody, perhaps, is capable of thinking in this fashion in ordinary life; and Shelley, with all his singular visions and hallucinations, probably took the common-sense view of ordinary mortals in his dealings with commonplace or facts. It is surprising enough that, even for purely poetical purposes, he could continue this to the ordinary conceptions of object and subject. But his familiarity with this point of view may help to explain some of the problems as to his ultimate belief. It is plain that he was in some sense dissatisfied with the simple scepticism of Godwin. But he found no successor to guide his speculations. Coleridge once regretted that Shelley had not applied to him instead of Southey, who, in truth, was as ill qualified as a man could well be to help a young enthusiast through the mazes of metaphysical entanglement. It is idle to speculate upon the possible result. Shelley, if we may judge from a passage in his epistle to Mrs. Gisborne, had no very high opinion of Coleridge's capacity as a spiritual guide. Shelley, in fact, in spite of his so-called mysticism, was an ardent lover of clearness, and would have been disgusted by the haze in which Coleridge enwrapped his revelations to mankind. But Coleridge might possibly have introduced him to a sphere of thought in which he could have found something congenial. One parallel may be suggested which will perhaps help to illustrate this position.
Various passages have been quoted from Shelley's poetry to prove that he was a theist and a believer in immortality. His real belief, it would seem, will hardly run into any of the orthodox moulds. It is understood as clearly as may be in the conclusion to the 'Sensitive Plant':—
—in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we see the shadows of the dream.
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be
Like all the rest, a mockery.
That garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there
In truth have never passed away;
'Tis we, 'tis ours have changed; not they.
A fuller exposition of the thought is given in the 'Adonais;' and some of the phrases suggest the parallel to which I refer. I have already quoted from one of the popular works of Fichte, the 'Vocation of Man,' a vigorous description of that state of utter scepticism, which seems at one point to be the final goal of his idealism, as it was that of the less elaborate form of the same doctrine which Godwin had learnt from Berkeley. Godwin, as I have said, was content to leave the difficulty without solution. Fichte escaped, or thought that he escaped, by a solution which restores a meaning to much of the orthodox language. Whether his mode of escape was satisfactory or his final position intelligible, is of course another question. But it is interesting to observe how closely the language in which his final doctrine is set forth to popular readers resembles some passages in the 'Adonais.' I will quote a few phrases which may be sufficiently significant.
Shelley, after denouncing the unlucky 'Quarterly Reviewer' who had the credit of extinguishing poor Keats, proceeds to find consolation in the thought that Keats has now become
A portion of the eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.