ページの画像
PDF
ePub

graceful imitations of Lord Byron and the Italian poets. There is, however, nothing Satanic in the dulcet breathings of his Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna; they are composed of beautiful verses and rich paraphrases. Many of his fragments appositely figure in the Albums and poetical almanacks of England, a peculiar class of pleasing publications, embellished with valuable contributions in verse as well as engravings. The most original of all the members of the little Radical School of Pisa, is Shelley, or the Snake as Byron familiarly called him: Shelley was a devoted friend, of gentle manners, more amiable than Hunt; melancholy but not sullen; affectionate, and if he ever was, severe severe only to himself; sober as a brahmin, and yet when wielding the pen, resembling a young Titan in audacity; waging war, both in verse and prose, on heaven, and human institutions. While he was still at school, and at an age when the soul surrounded by natural impulses, attaches itself alternately to the most opposite illusions, and when there does not exist an error, which it is not liable to embrace or abandon for another, or for a truth, and that without hypocrisy, young Shelley had the misfortune to seek food for his reveries in the philosophical systems of Spinoza, Payne and Godwin. He became their convert, and from that moment consecrated his expanding reason and his poetical talent to the service of atheism. The consequence, it seems to me, has proved that a better feeling in reserve, secured his imagination

from the chilling influence which those desolating doctrines could not avoid exerting over his poetry. · Discontented with every thing as it stood, and dreaming of a perfectibility which he could scarcely define to himself, Shelley wished in the first instance to overthrow and destroy the social fabric, in the hope that some preserving Pharos might arise from the ruins. He did not seek atheism in religion and anarchy in empires as a final object, but solely as a means of regeneration. It was like desiring to burn a town, in order to rebuild it on a more regular plan, and embellish it with new temples, consecrated to new gods. Society treated Shelley as an enemy. The theologians of Oxford expelled him from the university, and his father from the paternal mansion. Becoming himself a father, he was deprived of his children by the chancellor, under sanction of the law against atheism.*

Shelley, seeing himself without asylum, and even without bread, sold his father his rights of inheritance for an annuity. After living a solitary life for some time in the country, he finally exiled himself to Italy, to which he had previously made one voyage. It was in Switzerland that he became acquainted with Lord Byron, and it was there, also, that at the foot of one of these sublime mountains, which appear to elevate man to a communication with heaven, he had the temerity

This law is at once Spartan and ecclesiastical. But its consequences might be rendered cruel and terrible: by it man sits in judgment on his brother man.

to subscribe himself an Atheist in the Album of Mount Anvert.

It is surprising, after the details of such a life, and such principles, to find in the verses of this demagogue, this infidel, this atheist, a vein of poetry so contemplative and so mystic, so sweet a charm of tenderness and melancholy, and an expression at once so natural and so impassioned of the purest emotions. There are, certainly, declamatory passages by the side of others of great energy and animation; and there is an occasional obscurity in some of the visions of a spirit too deeply imbued with a feeling of disappointment, and with personal anxieties. Shelley appears, in short, like a kind of Manfred, or Faustus, who suffers the penalty of having aspired to gather the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. If, on the one hand, by reason of his hatred to all those barriers which religion and social institutions raise against the impatient independence of man, Shelley may be said to belong to the Satanic school, on the other, his early admiration of the lake poets, whom he visited and studied, has tinctured his style, and even his thoughts; and the natural beauties of rural scenery, or the simplicity of childhood, inspire him with the same enthusiasm as the wild dreams of his adventurous spirit. Shelley has depicted himself with more obvious delineation in his Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude. Alastor is a young enthusiast, who has vainly sought in the works of the philosophers, and in foreign climates, the living impersonation of a beau ideal which

has no existence; and he dies despairingly, on finding that he has spent his life in a dream. The descriptive parts of this allegory occasionally exhibit an admirable vividness and richness.

The Revolt of Islam conveys us to the paradise of the Genius of Good; for Shelley, in renouncing the Christian's heaven, creates a new heaven and new deities for his otherwise latitudinarian philosophy. The souls of virtuous and illustrious men, reciprocally commemorate the sacrifices and the labours which have earned for them the crowns of the just. A young Greek and his beloved, record how, after having delivered their natal city from tyranny, fickle victory had suddenly replaced tyranny on the throne. The object of the poet is to prove that they have already been happy in their martyrdom, since it has given them the hope of leaving to more fortunate avengers the task of breaking the chains of slavery. In the midst of all the adventures of this pair of lovers, the recollection of their love originating in early childhood, inspires the poet with the conception of a delightful picture. Shelley himself was a mere boy, when he became a husband for the first time. He united himself by his second marriage with a daughter of the famous Godwin.

4

Nothing could be more pathetic than his species of eclogue, entitled Rosalind and Helena, especially the tale of Rosalind, if it were not spoiled by an affected design of the poet, to legitimatize an incestuous love between brother and sister, to condemn the marriage tie, as an institution

against nature, and to brand that privilege which law confers on the human will, of surviving itself by a legacy.

What does the abuse of a right prove against the goodness of a right? It is true, one sympathizes with Rosalind on the subject of the frightful persecution she endures from her old, and miserly, and wicked husband; one may blamelessly participate the terror and hatred which this person imparts to his wife and children; a hatred and terror, depicted in hues of gloomy energy; but the same institution which has united Rosalind to her tyrant, sanctions the chaste affection of a happier married couple, and protects them from the designs of the powerful of the earth, who are compelled to respect the domestic hearths of the humblest of their vassals.

Shelley was well versed in the literature of Germany and Spain; he was also a profound Greek scholar; the task of repairing the loss of Eschylus's Prometheus Delivered, was only fit for his genius or that of Lord Byron. Shelley's Prometheus, composed at Rome, is stamped with an antique character; but it is, nevertheless, an entirely modern allegory. His Prometheus resembles Milton's Satan more than the Greek Prometheus. This is enough to indicate who the Jupiter is that his Prometheus braves.

It was at Rome, also, that Shelley composed his tragedy of Cenci. In order to vie with all the horrors of Edipus, and the family of Atreus,

« 前へ次へ »