If any one would know what sort of a man this moral monster, Shelley, was, let him read the eloquent account of him and his life at Oxford in the New Monthly Magazine for 1832, written by one who was his friend and companion, and who, Mrs. Shelley says, has described him most faithfully. There we find him full of zeal for learning; most zealous in accumulating knowledge; overflowing in kindness; indignant against all oppression to man or to animals. Never failing to rush in on witnessing any cruelty or hearing of any calamity, to stop the one and alleviate the other. Full of gayety and fun as a child, sailing his paper boats on every pool and stream, or rambling far and wide over the country in earnest talk and deep love of all nature. He was ready to caress children, to smile on even gipsies and beggars, to run for refreshment for starving people by the way side, pledging even his favorite microscope, his daily means of recreation, to assist a poor old man. Such was the dreadful creature that must be expelled from colleges, have his children torn from him to prevent the contamination of his virtues, and to be hooted out of his native land. Yet, amid all the anguish that this inflicted on him, he was ever ready still to do a sublime good, or enter with the most boyish relish into the merest joke. Nothing can convey a more vivid idea of the latter disposition—which is not that of a man systematically malicious, which is the true spirit of wickedness—than to quote a joke related to him by the writer of these articles, and see the manner in which it was enjoyed.
"I was walking one afternoon, in the summer, on the western side of that short street leading from Long Acre to Covent Garden, where the passenger is earnestly invited, as a personal favor to the demandant, to proceed straightway to Highgate or Kentish Town, and which is called, I think, James-street. I was about to enter Covent Garden, when an Irish laborer, whom I met bearing an empty hod, accosted me somewhat roughly, and asked why I had run against him. I told him briefly that he was mistaken. Whether somebody had actually pushed the man, or he only sought to quarrel, and although he, doubtless, attended a weekly row regularly, and the week was already drawing to a close, he was unable to wait till Sunday for a broken head, I know not, but he discoursed for some time with the vehemence of a man who considers himself injured or insulted, and he concluded, being emboldened by my long silence, with a cordial invitation just to push him again. Several persons, not very unlike in costume, had gathered round him, and appeared to regard him with sympathy. When he paused, I addressed him slowly and quietly, and it should seem with great gravity, these words, as nearly as I can recollect them: 'I have put my hand into the hamper; I have looked upon the sacred barley; I have eaten out of the drum! I have drunk, and was well pleased; I have said, [Greek: konx ompax], and it is finished!' 'Have you, sir?' inquired the astonished Irishman; and his ragged friends instantly pressed round him with, 'Where is the hamper, Paddy?' 'What barley? and the like. And ladies from his own country, that is to say, the basket-women, suddenly began to interrogate him; 'Now, I say, Pat, where have you been drinking? What have you had?' I turned, therefore, to the right, leaving the astounded neophyte, whom I had thus planted, to expound the mystic words of initiation as he could to his inquisitive companions. As I walked slowly under the piazzas, and through the streets and courts toward the West, I marveled at the ingenuity of Orpheus—if he were, indeed, the inventor of the Eleusinian mysteries; that he was able to devise words that, imperfectly as I had repeated them, and in the tattered fragment that has reached us, were able to soothe people so savage and barbarous as those to whom I had addressed them, and which, as the apologists for those venerable rites affirm, were manifestly well adapted to incite persons who hear them for the first time, however rude they may be, to ask questions. Words that can awaken curiosity even in the sluggish intellect of a wild man, and can open the inlet of knowledge!"
"Konx ompax; and it is finished!" exclaimed Shelley, crowing with enthusiastic delight at my whimsical adventure. A thousand times, as he strode about the house, and in his rambles out of doors, he would stop and repeat the mystic words of initiation, but always with an energy of manner, and a vehemence of tone and gesture, that would have prevented the ready acceptance which a calm, passionless delivery had once procured for them. How often would he throw down his book, clasp his hands, and, starting from his seat, cry suddenly, with a thrilling voice, "I have said Konx ompax; and it is finished!"
This child-like, this great, and greatly kind, and if men would have let him, this light-hearted man, thus then quitted England. Like Byron, he sought a home in Italy. He lived in various cities, and wrote there his very finest works; among them, Prometheus Unbound; The Cenci; Hellas; part of Rosalind and Helen; his Ode to Liberty, perhaps the very finest ode in the language, and certainly, in its description of Athens, never excelled in any piece of description in any language; Adonais, an elegy on the death of Keats, and those very melancholy verses written in the Bay of Naples. He was drowned, as is well known, by the sinking of his boat in a squall, in the Gulf of Spezia, in the summer of 1822, at the age of thirty.
Shelley must have enjoyed this portion of his life beyond all others, had he been in health and spirits. He was united to a woman worthy of him, and who could partake of all his intellectual pleasures. Children were growing around him, and he was living in that beautiful country, surrounded by the remains of former art and history, and under that fine sky, pouring out from heart and brain, glorious, and impassioned, and immortal works. But his health failed him, and the darts of calumny were rankling in his bosom, depressing his spirits, and sapping his constitution. I can only allow myself a few passing glances at his homes in Italy, of which Mrs. Shelley has given us such delightful sketches in the notes to her edition of her husband's poems.
They went direct to Milan, and visited the Lake of Como; then proceeding to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back to Rome for the winter. There he chiefly wrote his Prometheus. In 1818 they were at the Baths of Lucca, where Shelley finished Rosalind and Helen. Thence he visited Venice, and occupied a house lent him by Lord Byron at Este. "I Capucini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious houses. It was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill, at the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk, or pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began the Prometheus; and here, also, as he mentioned in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo. A slight ravine, with a wood in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient Castle of Este, whose dark, massive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ivied crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements. We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the west by the far Apennines; while to the east, the horizon was lost in misty distance. After the picturesque but limited view of mountain, ravine, and chestnut wood at the Baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect commanded by our new abode."
Here they lost a little girl, and quitting the neighborhood of Venice, they proceeded southward. Shelley was delighted beyond expression with the scenery and antiquities of Italy. "The aspect of its nature, its sunny sky, its majestic streams; the luxuriant vegetation of the country, and the noble, marble-built cities, enchanted him. The first entrance to Rome opened to him a scene of remains of ancient grandeur that far surpassed his expectations; and the unspeakable beauty of Naples and its environs added to the impression he received of the transcendent and glorious beauty of Italy."
The winter was spent at Naples, where they lived in utter solitude, yet greatly enjoyed their excursions along its sunny sea or into its beautiful environs. From Naples they returned to Rome, where they arrived in March, 1819. Here they had the old MS. account of the story of the Cenci put into their hands, and visited the Doria and Colonna palaces, where the portraits of Beatrice were to be found. Her beauty cast the reflection of its grace over her appalling story, and Shelley conceived the subject of his masterly drama. In Rome they lost their eldest child, a very lovely and engaging boy, and, quitting the Eternal City, took the villa Valsovano, between Leghorn and Monte Nero, where they resided during the summer. "Our villa," says Mrs. Shelley, "was situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during the heat of a very hot season; and in the evening the water-wheel creaked as the progress of irrigation went on, and the fire-flies flashed among the myrtle hedges; nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed.
"At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such in Italy, generally roofed. This one was very small, yet not only roofed, but glazed. This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The storms that sometimes varied our day, showed themselves most picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean. Sometimes the dark, lurid clouds dipped toward the waves, and became water-spouts, that churned up the waters beneath as they were chased onward, and scattered by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he wrote the principal part of the Cenci."
They spent part of the year 1819 in Florence, where Shelley passed several hours dayly in the Gallery, studying the works of art, and making notes. The summer of 1820 was spent chiefly at the Baths of Guiliano, near Pisa, where Shelley made a solitary journey on foot during some of the hottest weather of the season to the summit of Monte San Pelegrino, a mountain on which stands a pilgrimage chapel, much frequented; and during this expedition he conceived the idea of The Witch of Atlas, and immediately on his return sat down and wrote it in three days. An overflowing of the Serchio inundated the house, and caused them to quit San Guiliano: they returned to Pisa.