from below. Come to Rome. It is a scene by which expression is overpowered, which words cannot convey. Still farther, winding up one-half of the shattered pyramids by the path through the blooming copse-wood, you come to a little mossy lawn surrounded by wild shrubs; it is overgrown with anemones, wallflowers, and violets, whose stalks pierce the starry moss, and with radiant blue flowers whose names I know not, and which scatter through the air the divinest odour, which, as you recline under the shade of the ruin, produces sensations of voluptuous faintness like the combinations of sweet music. The paths still wind on, threading the perplexed windings, other lawns, and deep dells of wood and lofty rocks and terrific chasms. When I tell you that these ruins cover several acres, and that the paths above penetrate at least half their extent, your imagination will fill up all that I am unable to express of this astonishing scene. Amidst such scenes the poet wandered while he composed the second and third acts of the Prometheus. Nature and art, however, were not enough. He felt keenly the contempt of the world for him as a man, its neglect of him as a poet. "I am regarded by all who know or hear me, except, I think, on the whole, five individuals, as a prodigy of crime and pollution whose look even might infect. Such is the spirit of the English abroad as well as at home.". In June another sorrow befell Shelley and his wife, their remaining child died. Shelley wrote to Peacock: "Yesterday, after an illness of only a few days, my little William died. There was no hope from the moment of the attack. You will be kind enough to tell all my friends, so that I need not write to them. It is a great exertion to me to write this, and it seems to me as if, hunted by calamity as I have been, that I should never recover my cheerfulness again." The summer of 1819 was spent in Leghorn and its neighborhood. Its chief literary outcome was The Cenci. The inspiration had come from the story and picture of Beatrice, with both of which he had become acquainted at Rome. A ! visit to Florence gave him an opportunity of enjoying the "The Shelley's works were almost unread in his own lifetime. In In so far as he was known to the public, he was known through second-hand reports of the immorality of Queen Mab and through the notoriety of the chancery suit. this year, however, he was reviewed in two leading periodicals. The Quarterly attacked The Revolt of Islam and the personal character of its author. On the other hand, his work received the most appreciative notice which it ever received during the life of the poet, in three articles in Blackwood written by Professor Wilson ("Christopher North"). Another joyful event of the same year was the birth of a son, Percy. During the last two years of Shelley's life (1820-1822) a circle of friends gathered about him. One of these was the Greek leader, Prince Mavrocordato, through whom the poet came into close relations with the revolutionary movement which was passing over Europe. To him was dedicated the lyrical drama Hellas (1821), based on the contemporary events of the Greek uprising, and framed after the model of the Persa of Eschylus. Another person to join the circle was Medwin, Shelley's former schoolfellow and subsequent biographer. There were, besides, several Italians of whom he saw a good deal. Towards the close of 1821 he became acquainted with Emilia Viviani, a young Italian lady, whose unhappiness, beauty, and sensibility elevated her, for a short time, in the poet's estimation into an incarnation of womanly perfection. This experience he embodied in Epipsychidion. A friendship not less important for his poetic work, and more important in his personal life, was that formed with Mr. and Mrs. Edward Williams. The former was a year or two younger than Shelley, of a simple and bright disposition, with literary interests, gentle, generous, and fearless. He shared in Shelley's fondness for boating, and the two friends made many expeditions on the water together. Mrs. Williams, the Jane so often addressed in Shelley's later lyrics, was possessed of great grace and sweetness. She seemed to Shelley to realize the idea he had formed of the lady in The Sensitive Plant. She also played and sang charmingly. In the happiness of this wedded pair and their mutual sympathy, Shelley saw the realization of a paradise such as he had dreamed might be his own, but which he had never yet found. In 1821 a bitter attack was made upon Shelley in The London Literary Gazette, on the occasion of the publication (notwithstanding Shelley's efforts to suppress it) of a pirated edition of Queen Mab. Shocking accusations, too, were circulated among personal friends in Italy by former household servants. Under all this Shelley suffered. A visit to Byron at Ravenna seemed to intensify this feeling of depression; for Shelley regarded Byron's genius as greatly superior to his own, and intercourse with Byron made him dissatisfied with his own work. Weighed down by these various influences, he writes from Ravenna to Mary: "My greatest content would be utterly to desert all human society. I would retire with you and our child to a solitary island in the sea and build a boat, and shut upon my retreat the flood-gates of the world. I would read no reviews and talk with no authors. If I dared trust my imagination, it would tell me that there are one or two chosen companions besides yourself whom I should desire. But to this I would not listen-where two or three are gathered together the devil is among them. And good, far more than evil impulses, love, far more than hatred, has been to me, except as you have been its object, the source of all sorts of mischief. So on this plan I would be alone, and would devote either to oblivion or to future generations the overflowings of a mind which, timely withdrawn from contagion, should be kept fit for no baser object." The sadness of Shelley's last years is mirrored in his later poems, and his power of giving it expression is the unique distinction of his work. It was not merely that there was little of joy and much of positive evil in the life of the homeless wanderer; a nature so visionary, so ardent, so blind to practical considerations was inevitably doomed to disappointment. Even his hopeful and unpractical spirit must have often become conscious that the millennium whose speedy approach he had in his early days anticipated was far remote; sometimes the chilling thought may have come home to him that it could never be realized. In the narrower sphere of his own personal concerns his faith in human nature had received many a shock; the anticipations of youthful love and friendship had been repeatedly disappointed. Miss Hitchener, Harriet, Mary, Emilia, Hogg, Southey, Godwin, had all fallen short of the poet's ideal. His own life and work must have seemed a failure. Not merely had he been wholly unsuccessful in reforming the world he had not even caught the public ear. His poetic gifts were almost unrecognized. He was a mark for scorn, and was avoided as a social leper. And so his sensitive nature gave utterance to that wonderful lyric note of loneliness, sadness, and yearning which pervades his work, and even to that strange cry for annihilation, for the dissolution of the finite in the infinite, which closes the Adonais and the last chorus of Hellas. In the autumn of 1821 Byron moved to Pisa, where Shelley was residing. The two poets determined to establish a periodical for the dissemination of advanced views, to be named The Liberal, and to be edited by Leigh Hunt. The desire of assisting Hunt was Shelley's chief motive for embarking in the enterprise. The circle at Pisa was increased in the beginning of 1822 by the addition of Edward John Trelawny, whose Records give by far the most vivid and satisfying impression of Shelley in his last days. Trelawny became acquainted with the poet through the Williamses, |
