TO FIRST COLLECTED EDITION, 1839.
Obstacles have long existed to my presenting the public with a perfect
edition of Shelley’s Poems. These being at last happily removed, I
hasten to fulfil an important duty,—that of giving the productions of
a sublime genius to the world, with all the correctness possible, and
of, at the same time, detailing the history of those productions, as
they sprang, living and warm, from his heart and brain. I abstain from
any remark on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch as
the passions which they engendered inspired his poetry. This is not
the time to relate the truth; and I should reject any colouring of the
truth. No account of these events has ever been given at all
approaching reality in their details, either as regards himself or
others; nor shall I further allude to them than to remark that the
errors of action committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley,
may, as far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who
loved him, in the firm conviction that, were they judged impartially,
his character would stand in fairer and brighter light than that of
any contemporary. Whatever faults he had ought to find extenuation
among his fellows, since they prove him to be human; without them, the
exalted nature of his soul would have raised him into something
divine.
The qualities that struck any one newly introduced to Shelley
were,—First, a gentle and cordial goodness that animated his
intercourse with warm affection and helpful sympathy. The other, the
eagerness and ardour with which he was attached to the cause of human
happiness and improvement; and the fervent eloquence with which he
discussed such subjects. His conversation was marked by its happy
abundance, and the beautiful language in which he clothed his poetic
ideas and philosophical notions. To defecate life of its misery and
its evil was the ruling passion of his soul; he dedicated to it every
power of his mind, every pulsation of his heart. He looked on
political freedom as the direct agent to effect the happiness of
mankind; and thus any new-sprung hope of liberty inspired a joy and an
exultation more intense and wild than he could have felt for any
personal advantage. Those who have never experienced the workings of
passion on general and unselfish subjects cannot understand this; and
it must be difficult of comprehension to the younger generation rising
around, since they cannot remember the scorn and hatred with which the
partisans of reform were regarded some few years ago, nor the
persecutions to which they were exposed. He had been from youth the
victim of the state of feeling inspired by the reaction of the French
Revolution; and believing firmly in the justice and excellence of his
views, it cannot be wondered that a nature as sensitive, as impetuous,
and as generous as his, should put its whole force into the attempt to
alleviate for others the evils of those systems from which he had
himself suffered. Many advantages attended his birth; he spurned them
all when balanced with what he considered his duties. He was generous
to imprudence, devoted to heroism.
These characteristics breathe throughout his poetry. The struggle for
human weal; the resolution firm to martyrdom; the impetuous pursuit,
the glad triumph in good; the determination not to despair;—such were
the features that marked those of his works which he regarded with
most complacency, as sustained by a lofty subject and useful aim.
In addition to these, his poems may be divided into two classes,—the
purely imaginative, and those which sprang from the emotions of his
heart. Among the former may be classed the “Witch of Atlas”,
“Adonais”, and his latest composition, left imperfect, the “Triumph of
Life”. In the first of these particularly he gave the reins to his
fancy, and luxuriated in every idea as it rose; in all there is that
sense of mystery which formed an essential portion of his perception
of life—a clinging to the subtler inner spirit, rather than to the
outward form—a curious and metaphysical anatomy of human passion and
perception.
The second class is, of course, the more popular, as appealing at once
to emotions common to us all; some of these rest on the passion of
love; others on grief and despondency; others on the sentiments
inspired by natural objects. Shelley’s conception of love was exalted,
absorbing, allied to all that is purest and noblest in our nature, and
warmed by earnest passion; such it appears when he gave it a voice in
verse. Yet he was usually averse to expressing these feelings, except
when highly idealized; and many of his more beautiful effusions he had
cast aside unfinished, and they were never seen by me till after I had
lost him. Others, as for instance “Rosalind and Helen” and “Lines
written among the Euganean Hills”, I found among his papers by chance;
and with some difficulty urged him to complete them. There are others,
such as the “Ode to the Skylark and The Cloud”, which, in the opinion
of many critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his
productions. They were written as his mind prompted: listening to the
carolling of the bird, aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the
cloud as it sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on
the Thames.
No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration.
His extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his
intellectual pursuits; and rendered his mind keenly alive to every
perception of outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations.
Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the
disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and
errors, fraught with pain; to escape from such, he delivered up his
soul to poetry, and felt happy when he sheltered himself, from the
influence of human sympathies, in the wildest regions of fancy. His
imagination has been termed too brilliant, his thoughts too subtle. He
loved to idealize reality; and this is a taste shared by few. We are
willing to have our passing whims exalted into passions, for this
gratifies our vanity; but few of us understand or sympathize with the
endeavour to ally the love of abstract beauty, and adoration of
abstract good, the to agathon kai to kalon of the Socratic
philosophers, with our sympathies with our kind. In this, Shelley
resembled Plato; both taking more delight in the abstract and the
ideal than in the special and tangible. This did not result from
imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he made
Plato his study. He then translated his “Symposium” and his “Ion”; and
the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition than
Plato’s Praise of Love translated by Shelley. To return to his own
poetry. The luxury of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself
(as a child burdens itself with spring flowers, thinking of no use
beyond the enjoyment of gathering them), often showed itself in his
verses: they will be only appreciated by minds which have resemblance
to his own; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts will share
the same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterizes much of what
he has written was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart
from those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what
he considered the true and good, he was himself particularly attached.
There is much, however, that speaks to the many. When he would consent
to dismiss these huntings after the obscure (which, entwined with his
nature as they were, he did with difficulty), no poet ever expressed
in sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse, the gentler
or more forcible emotions of the soul.
A wise friend once wrote to Shelley: ‘You are still very young, and in
certain essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that
you are so.’ It is seldom that the young know what youth is, till they
have got beyond its period; and time was not given him to attain this
knowledge. It must be remembered that there is the stamp of such
inexperience on all he wrote; he had not completed his
nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not
add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by
the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to
ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of
susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of
a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and
forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal
irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was
almost always on the stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had
gone through more experience of sensation than many whose existence is
protracted. ‘If I die to-morrow,’ he said, on the eve of his
unanticipated death, ‘I have lived to be older than my father.’ The
weight of thought and feeling burdened him heavily; you read his
sufferings in his attenuated frame, while you perceived the mastery he
held over them in his animated countenance and brilliant eyes.
He died, and the world showed no outward sign. But his influence over
mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting; and, in the
ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of his
country, we may trace in part the operation of his arduous struggles.
His spirit gathers peace in its new state from the sense that, though
late, his exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of the
liberty he so fondly loved.
He died, and his place, among those who knew him intimately, has never
been filled up. He walked beside them like a spirit of good to comfort
and benefit—to enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations of
genius, to cheer it with his sympathy and love. Any one, once attached
to Shelley, must feel all other affections, however true and fond, as
wasted on barren soil in comparison. It is our best consolation to
know that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once among us, and
now exists where we hope one day to join him;—although the
intolerant, in their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of
Good, who can judge the heart, never rejected him.
In the notes appended to the poems I have endeavoured to narrate the
origin and history of each. The loss of nearly all letters and papers
which refer to his early life renders the execution more imperfect
than it would otherwise have been. I have, however, the liveliest
recollection of all that was done and said during the period of my
knowing him. Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, and
I have no apprehension of any mistake in my statements as far as they
go. In other respects I am indeed incompetent: but I feel the
importance of the task, and regard it as my most sacred duty. I
endeavour to fulfil it in a manner he would himself approve; and hope,
in this publication, to lay the first stone of a monument due to
Shelley’s genius, his sufferings, and his virtues:—
Se al seguir son tarda,
Forse avverra che ‘l bel nome gentile
Consacrero con questa stanca penna.