Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/46

 seat in Bisham Wood, partly as he glided or anchored in his boat amid the Thames islets and miniature waterfalls. Its publication occasioned a bitter attack in the ‘Quarterly,’ and drew enthusiastic praise from Professor Wilson, writing under the influence of De Quincey; but it was otherwise received with the indifference which, during Shelley's lifetime, the public, including his own friends, almost invariably manifested towards his works.

When not writing ‘The Revolt of Islam’ Shelley was much engaged in relieving the distress of the cottagers in his neighbourhood, and was publishing his political tracts under the signature of ‘The Hermit of Marlow.’ By the beginning of 1818 he had become restless, and indeed the motives for emigration were weighty as well as numerous. Of one he did not think—the great benefit which his genius was destined to receive by transplantation to a land of romantic beauty and classical association. He left England on 11 March, and arrived at Turin on 31 March 1818. He remained in Italy till his death.

The incidents of Shelley's life in Italy were mainly intellectual. After spending the spring of 1818 at Como and Milan, and the summer at the baths of Lucca, where he translated Plato's ‘Symposium,’ and finished ‘Rosalind and Helen’ (commenced the year before at Marlow), he went to Venice on the unwelcome errand of delivering Claire's daughter to her father, Byron. Here his own daughter Clara died of a disorder induced by the climate. Byron lent him a villa at Este, where he began ‘Prometheus Unbound,’ and wrote the ‘Lines on the Euganean Hills,’ published, along with ‘Rosalind and Helen’ and a few other poems, in the following year. He also wrote about this time ‘Julian and Maddalo,’ inspired by his visits to Byron at Venice. Venice and Byron stand out vividly in the poem against a background of utter obscurity. In November he set out for Rome, and began upon the journey the series of descriptive letters to Peacock, which places him at the head of English epistolographers in this department. The masters of a splendid prose style rarely carry this into their familiar correspondence, but Shelley's prose writings and his letters are of a piece. December was spent at Naples, where painful circumstances imperfectly known produced the ‘Lines written in Dejection,’ the first great example of that marvel of melody and intensity, the characteristically Shelleyan lyric. Returning to Rome, he remained there until June 1819, when the death of his infant son William drove him to Leghorn, and subsequently to Florence, where his youngest son, afterwards Sir Percy Florence Shelley, was born in November. The greater part of ‘Prometheus Unbound’ had been written at Rome, and immediately afterwards he turned to the tragedy of Beatrice Cenci, whose countenance, or reputed countenance, had fascinated him in Guido's portrait in the Colonna palace at Rome. Both pieces were published in the course of 1819–20 (‘The Cenci: a Tragedy in five Acts,’ Leghorn, 1819, 8vo; 2nd edit. London, 1821, 8vo; ‘Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical drama in four acts, with other Poems,’ London, 1820, 8vo). The ‘Prometheus’ is a dithyrambic of sublime exultation on the redemption of humanity, and an assemblage of all that language has of gorgeousness and verse of melody; the diction and passion of the ‘Cenci’ are toned down to their sombre theme, as different from the ‘Prometheus’ as the atrocity of its chief male character is from the transcendent heroism of the suffering demi-god. But both, the tragedy no less than the mythological drama, are effusions of lyrical emotion, and precisely correspond to the state of feeling which produced them.

The ‘Ode to the West Wind,’ perhaps the grandest of Shelley's lyrics, was written at Florence in October 1819, about which time he also produced ‘Peter Bell the Third,’ a parody of Wordsworth, evincing more genuine if more discriminating admiration than many panegyrics. ‘The Masque of Anarchy,’ a poem provoked by the indignation at the ‘Manchester massacre’ of August 1819, was another composition of this period. It did not appear until 1832. ‘Peter Bell the Third’ remained in manuscript until 1839. At the close of 1819 Shelley removed to Pisa, which was in the main his domicile for the rest of his life. He had become greatly interested in a project of his friends, the Gisbornes, for a steamboat between Genoa and Leghorn. The undertaking proved premature, but produced (July 1820) that comparable union of high and familiar poetry, the ‘Epistle to Maria Gisborne.’ The year 1820 also produced the dazzling ‘Witch of Atlas’ and the humorous burlesque on Queen Caroline's trial, ‘Swellfoot the Tyrant’ (‘Œdipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant: a Tragedy in two Acts. Translated from the original Doric,’ London, 1820, 8vo, written in August and published anonymously; on the Society for the Suppression of Vice threatening to prosecute, it was withdrawn, and only some seven copies of the original are known; reprinted, London, 1876, 8vo). But the year was chiefly remarkable for its lyrics, ranging from the