"Yes, he died at last, and in his room was found bank notes to the amount of £10,000, some in the leaves of the few books he possessed, others in the folds of his sofa, or sewn into the lining of his dressing gown. But Ohe! jam satis.' "Timothy Shelley, his eldest son, and heir to the Shelley and Michell estates, whose early education was much neglected, and who had originally been designed to be sent to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which the great Sir Philip Sidney founded-and to which his descendant, and Timothy's halfbrother, Sir John, nominates the Master, President, or whatever the head of the College may be called, entered himself at University College, Oxford, and after the usual routine of academical studies, by which he little profited, made The Grand Tour. He was one of those travellers, who, with so much waste time, travel for the sake of saying they have travelled; and, after making the circuit of Europe, return home, knowing no more of the countries they have visited than the trunks attached to their carriages. All, indeed, that he did bring back with him was a smattering of French, and a bad picture of an Eruption of Vesuvius, if we except a certain air, miscalled that of the old school, which he could put off and on, as occasion served. "He was a disciple of Chesterfield and La Rochefoucauld, reducing all politeness to forms, and moral virtue to expediency; as an instance of which, he once told his son, Percy Bysshe, in my presence, that he would provide for as many natural children as he chose to get, but that he never would forgive his making a mesalliance; a sentiment which excited in Shelley anything but respect for his sire. "This anecdote proves that the moral sense in Sir Timothy was obtuse; indeed, his religious opinions were also very lax, although he occasionally went to the parish church, and made his servants regularly attend divine service, he possessed no true devotion himself, and inculcated none to his son and heir, se that much of Percy Bysshe's scepticism may be traced to early example, if not to precept. But I anticipate. Before Sir Timothy, then Mr. Shelley, set out on his European tour, he had engaged himself to Miss Pilfold (daughter of Charles Pilfold, Esq., of Effingham Place), who had been brought up by her aunt, Lady Ferdinand Pool, the wife of the well-known father of the turf, and owner of Potoooooooo,' and the equally celebrated 'Waxy' and 'Mealy.'" It is rather curious that the legendary fiction of the Wandering Jew should have such attraction for infidel writers. The recent blasphemous romance in France brought the subject to a climax. Shelley had his turn at the favorite theme : 66 Shelley having abandoned prose for poetry, now formed a grand design, a metrical romance on the subject of the Wandering Jew, of which the first three cantos were, with a few additions and alterations, almost entirely mine. It was a sort of thing such as boys usually write, a cento from different favourite authors; the vision in the third canto, taken from Lewis's Monk, of which, in common with Byron, he was a great admirer; and the Crucifixion scene, altogether a plagiarism from a volume of Cambridge Prize Poems. The part which I supplied is still in my possession. After seven or eight cantos were perpetrated, Shelley sent them to Campbell for his opinion on their merits, with a view to publication. The author of the Pleasures of Hope returned the MS. with the remark, that there were only two good lines in it: 'It seemed as if an angel's sigh Had breathed the plaintive symphony.' Lines, by the way, savouring strongly of Walter Scott. This criticism of Campbell's gave a death-blow to our hopes of immortality, and so little regard did Shelley entertain for the production, that he left it at his lodgings in Edinburgh, where it was disinterred by some correspondent of Fraser's, and in whose Magazine, in 1831, four of the cantos appeared. The others he very wisely did not think worth publishing." Shelley is thus personally described— "We now come to another epoch in the life of the poet-Shelley, at Oxford: "He was matriculated, and went to the University College at the commencement of Michaelmas term, at the end of October 1810. The choice of this college (though a respectable one, by no means of high repute) was made by his father for two reasons-first, that he had himself, as already mentioned, been a member of it, and secondly, because it numbered among its benefactors some of his ancestors, one of whom had founded an Exhibition. I had left the University before he entered it, and only saw him once in passing through the city. His rooms were in the corner, next to the hall of the principal quadrangle, on the first floor, and on the right of the entrance, by reason of the turn in the stairs, when you reach them, they will be on the right hand. It is a spot, which, I might venture to predict, many of our posterity will hereafter reverently visit, and reflect an honour on that college, which has nothing so great to distinguish it.' The portrait of him, drawn by his friend, from whom I have borrowed largely, corresponded with my recollection of him at this interview. 'His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joint were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of low stature.' De Quincey says, that he remembers seeing in London, a little Indian ink sketch of him, in his academical costume of Oxford. The sketch tallying pretty well with a verbal description which he had heard of him in some company, viz., that he looked like an elegant and slender flower, whose head drooped from being surcharged with rain.' Where is this sketch? How valuable would it be! 'His clothes,' Mr. H. adds, were expensive, and, according to the most approved mode of the day, they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate, and almost feminine, of the purest red and white, yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting; and he said rightly, for he had, during September, often carried a gun in his father's preserves; Sir Timothy being a keen sportsman, and Shelley himself an excellent shot, for I well remember one day in the winter of 1809, when we were out together, his killing at three successive shots, three snipes, to my great astonishment and envy, at the tail of the pond in front of Field Place. His features, his whole face, and his head were particularly small, yet the last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (if I may use the word), of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands, passed his fingers swiftly through his locks, unconsciously, so that it was singularly rough and wild-a peculiarity which he had at school. His features were not symmetrical, the mouth perhaps excepted, yet was the effect of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation,—a fire-an enthusiasm―a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the intellectual, for there was a softness and delicacy, a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) an air of profound veneration, that characterises the best works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls) of the great masters of Rome and Florence.' 6 "I observed, too, the same contradiction in his rooms, which I had often remarked in his person and dress. The carpet, curtain, and furniture were quite new, and had not passed through several generations of students on the payment of the thirds, that is, the third price last given. This general air of freshness was greatly obscured by the indescribable confusion in which the various objects were mixed. Scarcely a single article was in its right place-books, boots, papers, shoes, philosophical instruments, clothes, pistols, linen, crockery, ammunition, and phials innumerable, with money, stockings, prints, crucibles, bags, and boxes, were scattered on the floor in every place, as if the young chemist, in order to analyze the mystery of creation, had endeavoured first to recon struct the primæval chaos. The tables, and especially the carpet, were already stained with large spots of various hues, which frequently proclaimed the agency of fire. An electrical machine, an air pump, the galvanic trough, a solar microscope, and large glass jars and receivers, were conspicuous amidst the mass of matter. Upon the table, by his side, were some books lying open, a bundle of new pens, and a bottle of japan ink, with many chips, and a handsome razor, that had been used as a knife. There were bottles of sodawater, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage. "Such, with some variations, was, as they come back on me, the appearance of Shelley and his rooms during this visit to him in the November of 1810.'" Can Captain Medwin be serious when he classes Shelley with Milton and Pope, or when he makes him form a trio of celebrity with Shakespeare and Schiller, or places him above Collins and Otway? The author of Such comparison is ridiculous. 66 The Pleasures of Hope," boldly declared that Shelley was no poet at all, and there are undeniably many who go to nearly the length of the opinion. Take from Shelley's writings the daring nature of his language, which has an execrable zest for some; take, also, away his prominent connexion with an unworthy class, and his association with Lord Byron, and we maintain that much of his attraction ceases. In proof, how seldom are even his innoxious verses now-a-days read? Shelley's main feature was his infidelity; he was little remarkable without it. Not so Byron, who was in his very essence great his anti-religion, when it occurred, came as a foul deformity. It was the only speck upon his sun-the only dimming spot upon the matchless beauty of his verse. But we digress; let us return to the memoir. The following episode is elegantly written : "P―was amico di casa and confessor to a noble family, one of the most distinguished for its antiquity of any at Pisa, where its head then filled a post of great authority. By his first countess he had two grown-up daughters, and in his old age had the boldness, the audacity I might say, to take unto him a wife not much older than either. The lady, whose beauty did not rival that of the Count's children, was naturally jealous of their charms, and deemed them dangerous rivals in the eyes of her Cavaliere; and exerting all her influence over her infatuated husband, persuaded him, though their education was completed, to immure them in two convents (pensions, I should say, or as they are called, conservatorios) in his native city. The Professor, who had known them from infancy, and been their instructor in languages and polite literature, made the Contessinas frequent subjects of conversation. He told us that the father was not over rich, owing to his young wife's extravagance; that he was avaricious withal, and did not like to disburse their dowries, which, as fixed by law, must be in proportion to the father's fortune, and was waiting till some one would take them off his hands without a dote. He spoke most enthuiastically of the beauty and accomplishments of Emilia, the eldest, adding, that she had been confined for two years in the convent of St. A'Poverina,' he said, with a deep sigh, 'she pines like a bird in a cage-ardently longs to escape from her prison-house,-pines with ennui, and wanders about the corridors like an unquiet spirit; she sees her young days glide on without an aim or purpose. She was made for love. Yesterday she was watering some flowers in her cell-she has nothing else to love but her flowers-'Yes,' said she, addressing them, 'you are born to vegetate, but we thinking beings were made for action-not to be penned up in a corner, or set at a window to blow and die.' A miserable place is that convent of St. A-,' he added; 6 and if you had seen, as I have done, the poor pensionnaires shut up in that narrow, suffocating street, in the summer, (for it does rot possess a garden,) and in the winter as now, shivering with cold, being allowed nothing to warm them but a few ashes, which they carry about in an earthen vase,—you would pity them.' "This little story deeply interested Shelley, and Ppoet and myself should pay the captive a visit in the parloir. "The next day, accompanied by the priest, we came in sight of the gloomy, dark convent, whose ruinous and dilapidated condition told too plainly of confiscation and poverty. It was situate in an unfrequented street in the suburbs, not far from the walls. After passing through a gloomy portal, that led to a quadrangle, the area of which was crowded with crosses, memorials of old monastic times, we were soon in the presence of Emilia. The fair recluse reminded me (and with her came the remembrance of Mephisto) of Margaret. 6 Time seemed to her To crawl with shackled feet, and at her window She stands, and watches the heavy clouds on clouds, and the sequel, "Emilia was indeed lovely and interesting. Her profuse black hair, tied in the most simple knot, after the manner of a Greek Muse in the Florence gallery, displayed to its full height, her brow, fair as that of the marble of which I speak. "She was also of about the same height as the antique. Her features possessed a rare faultlessness, and almost German contour, the nose and forehead making a straight line, a style of face so rare, that I remember Bartolini's telling Byron that he had scarcely an instance of such in the numerous casts of busts which his studio contained. Her eyes had the sleepy voluptuousness, if not the colour, of Beatrice Cenci's. They had, indeed, no definite colour, changing with the changing feeling, to dark or light, as the soul animated them. Her cheek was pale, too, as marble owing to her confinement and want of air, or perhaps to thought.' There was a lark in the parloir, that had lately been caught. 'Poor prisoner,' said she, looking at it compassionately, 'you will die of grief! How I pity thee! What must thou suffer, when thou hearest in the clouds, the songs of thy parent birds, or some flocks of thy kind on the wing, in search of other skies-of new fields-of new delights! But like me, thou wilt be forced to remain here always-to wear out thy miserable existence here. Why can I not release thee? 6 "Might not Shelley have taken from this pathetic lamentation, his— "Poor captive bird! who from thy narrow cage, — proposed that the "Such was the impression of the only visit I paid Emilia; but I saw her some weeks after, at the end of a carnival, when she had obtained leave to visit Mrs. Shelley, accompanied by the abbess. In spite of the contessina's efforts to assume cheerfulness, one might see she was very, very sad; but she made no complaint; she had grown used, to suffering-it had become her element," "But Emilia's term of bondage was about to expire; she was affiancel to a VOL. IV., NO. XX. TT "Yes, he died at last, and in his room was found bank notes to the amount of £10,000, some in the leaves of the few books he possessed, others in the folds of his sofa, or sewn into the lining of his dressing gown. But Ohe! jam satis.' "Timothy Shelley, his eldest son, and heir to the Shelley and Michell estates, whose early education was much neglected, and who had originally been designed to be sent to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which the great Sir Philip Sidney founded-and to which his descendant, and Timothy's halfbrother, Sir John, nominates the Master, President, or whatever the head of the College may be called, entered himself at University College, Oxford, and after the usual routine of academical studies, by which he little profited, made The Grand Tour. He was one of those travellers, who, with so much waste time, travel for the sake of saying they have travelled; and, after making the circuit of Europe, return home, knowing no more of the countries they have visited than the trunks attached to their carriages. All, indeed, that he did bring back with him was a smattering of French, and a bad picture of an Eruption of Vesuvius, if we except a certain air, miscalled that of the old school, which he could put off and on, as occasion served. "He was a disciple of Chesterfield and La Rochefoucauld, reducing all politeness to forms, and moral virtue to expediency; as an instance of which, he once told his son, Percy Bysshe, in my presence, that he would provide for as many natural children as he chose to get, but that he never would forgive his making a mesalliance; a sentiment which excited in Shelley anything but respect for his sire. "This anecdote proves that the moral sense in Sir Timothy was obtuse; indeed, his religious opinions were also very lax, although he occasionally went to the parish church, and made his servants regularly attend divine service, he possessed no true devotion himself, and inculcated none to his son and heir, se that much of Percy Bysshe's scepticism may be traced to early example, if not to precept. But I anticipate. Before Sir Timothy, then Mr. Shelley, set out on his European tour, he had engaged himself to Miss Pilfold (daughter of Charles Pilfold, Esq., of Effingham Place), who had been brought up by her aunt, Lady Ferdinand Pool, the wife of the well-known father of the turf, and owner of Potoooooooo,' and the equally celebrated 'Waxy' and' Mealy.'" It is rather curious that the legendary fiction of the Wandering Jew should have such attraction for infidel writers. The recent blasphemous romance in France brought the subject to a climax. Shelley had his turn at the favorite theme : "Shelley having abandoned prose for poetry, now formed a grand design, a metrical romance on the subject of the Wandering Jew, of which the first three cantos were, with a few additions and alterations, almost entirely mine. It was a sort of thing such as boys usually write, a cento from different favourite authors; the vision in the third canto, taken from Lewis's Monk, of which, in common with Byron, he was a great admirer; and the Crucifixion scene, altogether a plagiarism from a volume of Cambridge Prize Poems. The part which I supplied is still in my possession. After seven or eight cantos were perpetrated, Shelley sent them to Campbell for his opinion on their merits, with a view to publication. The author of the Pleasures of Hope returned the MS. with the remark, that there were only two good lines in it: 'It seemed as if an angel's sigh Had breathed the plaintive symphony.' Lines, by the way, savouring strongly of Walter Scott. This criticism of Campbell's gave a death-blow to our hopes of immortality, and so little regard did Shelley entertain for the production, that he left it at his lodgings in Edinburgh, where it was disinterred by some correspondent of Fraser's, and in whose Magazine, in 1831, four of the cantos appeared. The others he very wisely did not think worth publishing." |
