Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/96

* SHELLEY. 72 SHELLEY. lin on O'Conncll's platform are memorials. He became a subject of Government surveillance as a dangerous character. His position was improved by the financial arrangements made when he came of age in ISl.'i, but his domestic life had become troubled and coldness had come to exist between husband and wife. In July, 1S14, he eloped with Mary Godwin, putting in practice the principles he held and dealing openly with Harriet, for whom he made provision : but mis- fortune followed, and in 1816 Harriet committed suicide by drowning, and a few months later their two children were denied to Shelley's custody by the famous decision of Lord Eldon, on the ground that Shelley was an atheist. Shelley soon after left England and spent the remainder of his brief life in Italy, going from city to city, finally set- tling in the neighborhood of Pisa. July 8, 182'2, he sailed from Leghorn to Spezia, where he had settled for the summer. A squall overwlielmed the little craft in which Shelley was. and he was drowned. The body, which was thrown up on the shore at Viarcggio, was burned and the ashes, ex- cept the heart, which was nnconsumed, were buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome. He had several children, of whom one only survived him, Percy, who inherited the title on his grand- father's death. Shelley's works contain two easily distin- guished strains: one. the propagandism of opinion which is associated with his "passion for reform- ing the world"; the other, the espreFsion of his personality, his essential being, in the creation of lyrical beauty by spontaneous and half-un- eonscious art. He adopted from early youth radical formulas of Anglicized f'rer.ch thought, certain beliefs regarding the perfectibility of man, the evil of social institutions like property and marriage, and the inviolability of the indi- vidual. He had an active philosophical mind and an active philanthropic spirit: to these two. and to the necessity for expression inherent in his powerful genius, his first works were chiefly in- debted. Three times he did, in eflfect, utter his whole mind. In Queen ildb (c.18131, his first important poem and the one by which he was long tlie most widely known, he put forth all he had learned and thought. In it are amalgamated his first essays in verse and prose to make a whole view of the world and of society. In The Revolt of Islnm (1817-18), a more imaginative and elaborate poem, setting forth the moral revo- lution of the world under the form of a romantic epic, he did the same thing again. In Prome- theus Unbound (1820). though in forms of much higher poetry, he achieved the task still a third time. To say that in the social part of these great works he put Godwin's philosophy into verse is a very imperfect description. The prin- ciples of Godwin were no more than the chrysalis that released the butterfly; the poet transformed the philosophy of his teacher and it came forth as poetry with a different potency and meaning. Yet the intellectual units of his thought were to be found in English radicalism. Shelley, how- ever, never stifTened into any formula, but con- stantly and increasingly responded to fresh l^nowledge. The most efficient new element in his earlier development was Greek. In Queen JIah and The Revolt of If:Iam. this is not felt: in Promethevf! TJnhonnd it is the soul of the poem. Philosophically the study of Plato changed him from a materialistic atheist, of a Lucretian type, to a pantheist, though the term as applied to him is a crude one; and under .Eschylus he became a master of choral myth, and under the impulse of tireek imagination generally, a symbolic poet. In becoming less didactic and more imaginative in style, less Latin and French and more Greek rnd Kalian in inspiration, less definitely dog- matic and more intuitive, prophetic, and personal in method, he changed from a respectable minor poet of inlellectual and descriptive power and emotional aliandon to a great h'rical master of the imagination. Mystery is a constantly in- creasing element in his work, and almost meas- ures his growth ; in thought it plunges him into depths which he describes as speechless, and in the sensuous world it fills the atmosphere of the verse with light, color, and fragrance, and em- bodies forms of nature and idealities of char- acter which overpower and distract his readers. This presence of mystery is most obvious in the series of works which are more personal and dis- engaged from any preoccupation with the present world. In Ahistor (1815) it is not sufficient to cloud the narrative or the picture, but is a mood; in such poems as The Sriisitiee Plant (1820), and The Mitch of Atlas { 1820) , apparent- ly simple in fable, the evasiveness of the meaning is constant, like a retreating echo in the woods: in EpiiisychidioH (1821) the mystery has made the poem one only for elect readers. In the Adonais (1821), which after Alastor and Queen Mab is probably most easily read in a popular way, the mystery, though deep and pervasive, goes naturally with the theme of early death, in which both Keats and Shelley are the answering chords. So, too, on the purely intellectual side, the prose Defense of Poclri/ (1821, pub. in 1840) discloses to a careful reader the ground of mystery in all Shelley's later thinking. Apart from the major works of tile poet stand the brief lyrics and the odes, and the many fragments, which are also divided between a predominant social interest, as the Ode to Liberty, and a per.sonal inspirational interest, as the Lines to an Indian Air. In his growth he never lost touch with the present world, of which fact Hellas (1821) and The Masque of Auarehy (1819, pub. in 1832) are capital examples. In his dramatic attempts, seeking objective artistic results by effort, he was oft" the line of his genius, and neither The Cenci (1819) nor Charles /., of which only a few scenes exist, reaches an excellence comparable to that of his other achievements. The most obvious quality of his verse, melody, is so readily felt that he is placed without any division of opinion among the great lyrical poets of England with the first. In other respects, though his fame is now established for his century, in the minds of many he is regarded as vague in meaning, hysterical in feeling, loose and diffuse in style. He was the poet of abstract and ideal love, and set forth under that conception the concrete beauty and order of the universe as he saw it, and of man's life as he desired it to be. His personal character w-as such as to draw about him many devoted friends, of whom some, as Leigh Hunt. Byron. Peacock. Trelawny. and Hor- ace Smith, are well known: and he also attracted women, who are cliiefly known by the verse in which, as in life, he idealized them. The charm he exercised is best seen in their own words. In fact, every one who knew him seems to have loved him. He was by nature generous, and gave