The Radicalism of Shelley and Its Sources Part 6

Sh.e.l.ley, on the contrary, says that the freedom and enlightenment of individuals should come first, and it is only when that is accomplished that tyrannical inst.i.tutions will disappear. G.o.dwin writes: "The only method according to which social improvements can be carried on is when the improvement of our inst.i.tutions advances in a just proportion to the illumination of the public understanding."[88] While Sh.e.l.ley writes in his address to the Irish people that reform "is founded on the reform of private men and without individual amendment it is vain and foolish to expect the amendment of a state or government." Although G.o.dwin says in the first book of _Political Justice_ that it is futile to attempt to change morals without first changing our inst.i.tutions, still, later on, he seems to forget this and to advocate the reform of individuals. "Make men wise," he writes, "and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this."[89] Sh.e.l.ley, unlike Plato, would give to poets the first place in his plan for the reform of society.

He calls them "the acknowledged legislators of the world."[90]

G.o.dwin's principle of justice is that each should do to others all the good that is in his power. It is an impartial treatment of every man in matters that relate to his happiness--a treatment which is to be measured solely by a consideration of the properties of the receiver and the capacity of him who bestows. Everything should be so disposed--material comforts so distributed as to give the same amount of pleasure to all.

Personal and private feelings such as grat.i.tude and parental affection should be destroyed. A just man will consider the general good only. Hence if my father and a stranger who is of more benefit to society than my father are both in danger of death, I am bound to try to save the stranger first.[91] Sh.e.l.ley has something similar to this in his _Essay on Christianity_: "I love my country, I love the city in which I was born, my parents, my wife and the children of my care, and to these children, this woman, this nation, it is inc.u.mbent on me to do all the benefits in my power.... You ought to love all mankind, nay every individual of mankind.

You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more." G.o.dwin says that one principle of justice is "to be no respecter of persons."[92] In a letter to Miss. .h.i.tchener, October, 1811, Sh.e.l.ley writes: "I ... set myself up as no respecter of persons." "The end of virtue," says G.o.dwin, "is to add to the sum of pleasurable sensation." In the _Essay on Christianity_ Sh.e.l.ley writes: "This and no other is justice: to consider under all circ.u.mstances and consequences of a particular case how the greatest quant.i.ty and purest quality of happiness will ensue from any action; this is to be just; and there is no other justice." G.o.dwin[93] attempts to tell how we can find out whether an action would be just or not. He warns us against measuring the morality of an action according to existing laws. We can determine its morality only by trying to estimate the amount of happiness or pain it will cause others. "One of the best practical rules of morality," he writes, "is that of putting ourselves in the place of another.... It is by this means only that we can form an adequate idea of his pleasures and pains."[94] Sh.e.l.ley expresses the same thought in his _Defense of Poetry_: "A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own."

For Sh.e.l.ley laws are "obscure records of dark and barbarous echos," "tomes of reasoned wrong glozed on by ignorance."[95] Lawyers are those who, skilled to snare

The feet of justice in the toils of law Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still.[96]

"Government," he says, "cannot make a law, it can only p.r.o.nounce that which was the law before its organization, _viz._: the moral result of the imperishable relations of things;"[97] and in his _Address to the Irish_: "No act of a national representation can make anything wrong which was not wrong before: it cannot change virtue and truth." All this is merely a repet.i.tion of G.o.dwin's principles. "Immutable reason," he says, "is the true legislator, and her decrees it behooves us to investigate. The functions of society extend, not to the making, but the interpreting of law; it cannot decree, it can only declare that which the nature of things has already decreed."[98]

G.o.dwin was a communist rather than a socialist. Every kind of cooperation was repugnant to him. With regard to the distribution of wealth he taught that any given article belonged to him to whom it will give the greatest sum of benefit or pleasure. A loaf of bread, _v. g._, belongs to the man who needs it most. Sh.e.l.ley holds that if the properties of the aristocrats were resolved into their original stock, and if each earned his own living, each would be happy and contented, and crime and the temptation to crime would scarcely exist. "If two children," he writes, "were placed together in a desert island and they found some scarce fruit, would not justice dictate an equal division? If this number is multiplied to any extent of which number is capable, if these children are men, families--is not justice capable of the same extension and multiplication? Is it not the same, are not its decrees invariable?"[99] Again in his _Essay on Christianity_: "With all those who are truly wise, there will be an entire community not only of thoughts and feelings but also of external possessions." Both Sh.e.l.ley and G.o.dwin put the rent-roll of lands in the same cla.s.s as the pension-list which is supposed to be employed in the purchase of ministerial majorities.

It is a calculation of G.o.dwin, says Sh.e.l.ley, "that all the conveniences of civilized life might be produced if society would divide the labor equally among its members, by each individual being employed in labor two hours during the day."[100] G.o.dwin says that the means of subsistence belong entirely to the owner. The fruits of labor belong to the laborer, but he is only the steward of them. He can consume only what he needs, and must preserve and dispense the rest for the benefit of others. In his _Essay on Christianity_, Sh.e.l.ley writes "every man in proportion to his virtue considers himself, with respect to the great community of mankind, as the steward and guardian of their interests in the property which he chances to possess."[101] When Sh.e.l.ley proposed to share his income with Elizabeth Hitchener he said that he was not doing an act of generosity, but one of justice--"bare, simple justice." G.o.dwin says that new inventions and the refinements of luxury are inimical to the welfare of society. These mean more work for the poor while only the rich are benefited.[102] "The poor,"

writes Sh.e.l.ley, "are set to labor--for what? Not the food for which they famish; not the blankets for want of which ... no; for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth part of society." G.o.dwin says that the direct pleasure which luxuries give is very small. They are prized because of the love of distinction which is characteristic of every human mind. Fine bonnets and wealth would not be desired by a family living on a desert island. Why not let the acquisition of learning and the practice of virtue instead of wealth be the road to fame. Sh.e.l.ley writes--

And statesman boasts Of wealth.... How vainly seek The selfish for that happiness denied To aught but virtue.[103]

Again: "the man who has fewest bodily wants approachest nearest to the Divine Nature. Satisfy these wants at the cheapest rates and expend the remaining energies of your nature in the attainment of virtue and knowledge.... Ye can spend no labor on mechanism consecrated to luxury and pride."[104] "There is no wealth in the world," says G.o.dwin, "except this, the labor of man."[105] Every new luxury is a new weight thrown on the shoulders of the laborer, for which they receive no benefit. In the _Notes to Queen Mab_, Sh.e.l.ley writes: "there is no real wealth but the labor of man." "What is misnamed wealth," writes G.o.dwin, "is merely a power vested in certain individuals by the inst.i.tutions of society to compel others to labor for their benefit."[106] "Wealth," says Sh.e.l.ley, "is a power usurped by the few to compel the many to labor for their benefit."[107]

Sh.e.l.ley during his sojurn in Ireland, in the spring of 1813, published the _Declaration of Rights_. This pamphlet afterwards led to the arrest of his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, for distributing the same without authority.

Many propositions of the _Declaration of Rights_ bear considerable resemblance to some of the proposals of the _Declaration of Rights_ adopted by the Const.i.tutional a.s.sembly of France in August, 1789.

No. 3 of Sh.e.l.ley's _Declaration_ reads as follows: "Government is devised for the security of rights. The rights of men are liberty and an equal partic.i.p.ation in the commonage of nature." Proposition No. 2 of the _Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly_ is: "The object of every political a.s.sociation is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, security, resistance to oppression."

In No. 4 Sh.e.l.ley says: "As the benefit of the governed is, ought to be, the origin of government, no man can have any authority that does not expressly emanate from their will." The corresponding const.i.tuent proposition is: "The principle of all authority resides essentially in the nation; no body, no individual can exercise any authority that does not expressly emanate from it."

Compare Sh.e.l.ley's No. 6 with Nos. 1 and 17. No. 6: "All have a right to an equal share in the benefits and burdens of the government. Any disabilities for opinions imply, by their very existence, barefaced tyranny on the side of the government, ignorant slavishness on the side of the governed." No. 1 of the _a.s.sembly_: "Men are born and remain free and equal. Social distinctions can only be founded on the common good." No.

17: "Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of it, unless public necessity evidently demands it, and then only on condition that indemnity be made."

No. 7 of the _Declaration_ resembles the const.i.tuent Nos. 8 and 9. Sh.e.l.ley says: "The rights of man in the present state of society are only to be secured by some degree of coercion to be exercised on their violator. The sufferer has a right that the degree of coercion employed be as light as possible."

No. 8: "The law should establish only those punishments that are strictly and evidently necessary, &c."

No. 9: "... all unnecessary severity should be repressed by law."

Sh.e.l.ley's No. 9 and the const.i.tuent No. 7 declare that no man has the right to resist the law.

No. 15 of the _Declaration_ resembles No. 5 of the _Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly_.

No. 15: "Law cannot make what is in its nature virtuous or innocent to be criminal, any more than it can make what is criminal to be innocent.

Government cannot make a law; it can only p.r.o.nounce that which was the law before its organization, _viz._, the moral result of the imperishable relation of things." No. 5: "Law has only the right to prohibit those actions which are injurious to society. Anything that is not forbidden by the law cannot be prevented, and no one can be constrained to do that which is not ordained by law."

Sh.e.l.ley's No. 21 is: "The government of a country ought to be perfectly indifferent to every opinion. Religious differences, the bloodiest and most rancorous of all, spring from partiality." This corresponds to const.i.tuent No. 10: "No one should be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious ones, provided their manifestation does not endanger the public order established by law."

Finally compare Sh.e.l.ley's No. 27 with const.i.tuent No. 6. No. 27: "No man has a right to be respected for any other possessions but those of virtue and talents. t.i.tles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor." No. 6: "All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally admissable to every dignity, position, and public employment according to their capacity, and without any other distinction but those of virtue and talents."

Sh.e.l.ley's political views were somewhat modified by the influence of Leigh Hunt. The two friends probably met for the first time in January, 1814.

Both were sensitive and of a retiring disposition, dwelling in a world of books and dreams. Hunt, like Sh.e.l.ley, advocated Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, freedom of the press, and reform of parliamentary representation. He differed from Sh.e.l.ley in this, that he was more practical, and had more faith than his friend in the advantages of such partial reforms as the abolition of child labor and of the slave trade, the reduction and equalization of taxes, and the education of the poor. Hunt advocated the reform of military discipline, while Sh.e.l.ley claimed that standing armies should be abolished altogether. Hunt carried on his attacks against the evils of the time in the pages of _The Examiner_, which everybody read in those days. In 1813 the Hunt brothers were fined and imprisoned for an offensive article on the Prince Regent which appeared in their paper.

Sh.e.l.ley must have offered to pay this fine, as Hunt records in his autobiography that Sh.e.l.ley made him a princely offer. In December, 1816, the Sh.e.l.leys, after their return from the continent, were the guests of Hunt at Hampstead and received his support and sympathy during the Chancery suit. Through Hunt, Sh.e.l.ley made the acquaintance of the c.o.c.kney circle, including Keats, Hazlitt, Reynolds, Novello, Brougham and Horace Smith. In return for all this Sh.e.l.ley gave freely of his money to Hunt.

One acquainted with the Englishman's sense of honor may wonder at the unusual way Hunt and G.o.dwin accepted money from Sh.e.l.ley and others. It must be remembered though that these men believed no man had exclusive owners.h.i.+p in superfluous wealth. They received what Sh.e.l.ley could spare as if they were taking what belonged to themselves.

Early in 1817 Sh.e.l.ley wrote _A Proposal for Putting Reform to a Vote_, a pamphlet which today in England would be considered conservative. It suggested that a meeting be held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern "to take into consideration the most effectual measures for ascertaining whether or no a reform in Parliament is the will of the majority of the individuals of the British nation." It disclaimed any design of sanctioning the revolutionary schemes which were imputed to the friends of reform, and declares that its object is purely const.i.tutional. The pamphlet advocates annual parliaments, but not universal suffrage. In it Sh.e.l.ley expresses himself in favor of retaining the regal and aristocratical branches of our const.i.tution until the public mind "shall have arrived at the maturity that can disregard these symbols of its childhood." "Political inst.i.tutions," he there writes, "are undoubtedly susceptible of such improvement as no rational person can consider possible as long as the present degraded condition to which the vital imperfections in the existing system of government has reduced the vast mult.i.tude of men shall subsist. The securest method of arriving at such beneficial innovations is to proceed gradually and with caution."

In February, 1817, the Sh.e.l.leys went to live at Marlow. There was much suffering among the lacemakers of that town and Sh.e.l.ley went continually among the unfortunate population, relieving the most pressing cases of distress to the best of his ability. He had a list of pensioners to whom he made a weekly allowance. One day he returned home without shoes, having given them away to a poor man.

On March 11, 1818, Sh.e.l.ley, accompanied by his family, quitted England, never again to return. In Italy, as in England, he continually changed his place of abode. During the year 1818 he wrote _Lines Written among the Euganean Hills_, _Julian and Maddalo_, and also began _Prometheus Unbound_. This last work was completed in Rome during the summer and fall of 1819. "The poem," he says in the preface, "was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees which are extended in everwinding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air." _Prometheus Unbound_ is considered by many to be Sh.e.l.ley's most important work. Mr. J. A. Symonds declares that "a genuine liking for it may be reckoned the touchstone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry." Mr. Rossetti waxes eloquent over "The immense scale and boundless scope of the conception; the marble majesty and extra-mundane pa.s.sions of the personages; the sublimity of ethical aspiration; the radiance of ideal and poetic beauty which saturates every phase of the subject."

Prometheus, according to W. Rossetti, is the mind of man. In his preface to the poem Sh.e.l.ley writes: "But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and truest motives to the best and n.o.blest ends." At the opening of the drama Prometheus is discovered bound to an icy precipice in the Indian Caucasus. He is kept there by the tyrant Jupiter, whom he helped to enthrone in place of Saturn. Mercury is sent to Prometheus and offers him freedom from torture on condition that he reveal the secret of averting the fall of Jupiter. This Prometheus refuses to do because it would seat the tyrant more securely on his throne. He is then left to the untender mercies of the Furies. These torture him by making him contemplate all the misery of the world and the futility of hoping for any release from it.

They expose to view the wrecks of all the schemes ever advanced for the regeneration of society, and especially the hate, bloodshed, and misery which followed in the wake of the most promising of them all, the French Revolution. They remind him that Christ's mission is a failure; that His followers are persecuted; and that Christianity has not lessened the deceit and selfishness of man. The anguish of Prometheus is mental rather than physical. He cries out to the Furies

Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes, And yet I pity those they torture not.

His hope and optimism, however, triumph over all; and the Furies vanish. A chorus of spirits come to console him and promise that he shall overcome Death. Prometheus feels, nevertheless, that all hope is vain without love.

Conditions will remain as they are until Asia, the spirit of love in nature, will be freed. At the end of the first act one of the nymphs, Panthea, departs to seek Asia. She is found in a lovely vale and is described as a being of exquisite beauty, "whose footsteps pave the world with loveliness." Panthea then conducted Asia to the cave of Demogorgon.

This being has neither limb, nor form, nor outline; yet it is felt to be a living spirit. Asia asks it when will the destined hour arrive for the release of Prometheus. The answer is "Behold!" and just then the roof of the cave bursts asunder, and the chariots of the Hours are seen pa.s.sing by. One of them stops and tells Asia that nightfall "will wrap heaven's kingless throne in lasting night." Asia is transformed before them. Misery gives place to love and joy. Another spirit with "dove-like eyes of hope"

conducts Asia to the throne of Jupiter.

The third act presents the catastrophe. It opens with a long speech of Jupiter in which he exults over what he believes to be the approaching conquest of man's soul. Little does he realize, however, that his fall is at hand. The car of the Hour arrives with Demogorgon. At this sight Jupiter is filled with terror and exclaims, "Awful shape, what art thou?"

Demogorgon answers, "Eternity. Demand no direr name. Descend and follow me down the abyss." The secret is now revealed. Jupiter has just married Thetis and the child of this union is to destroy his father. The curse is fulfilled; Jupiter falls into the abyss. Prometheus is then released by Hercules. Strength ministers to wisdom, courage, and long-suffering Love, as a slave to its master. Prometheus is united with Asia; mankind with love. The Golden Age has at last arrived. Henceforth there is to be no tyranny nor evil of any kind. Love is to be supreme and is to make all wise and happy. Man is released from bondage and is now free to do as reason directs.

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains, Scepterless, free, uncirc.u.mscribed, but man Equal, uncla.s.sed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, wors.h.i.+p, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man, Pa.s.sionless? no, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them, Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

The drama should end here. The tyrant is overthrown and man is happy. In a note on the play Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley says that it originally had but three acts.

Later on a fourth act was added, a sort of hymn of rejoicing over the fulfillment of the prophecies with regard to Prometheus. In it specters of the dead hours bear time to tomb in eternity. The spirits of the mind reappear and chant their hymns of praise and thanksgiving.

Prometheus represents mankind. He is oppressed by the very being, Jupiter, to whom he himself has given power. Jupiter must not be considered as the abstract power of moral evil. He represents those inst.i.tutions, political and religious, which man himself has created. Jupiter's downfall is brought about by his own offspring; man himself can overthrow tyranny. In the marriage of Jupiter and Thetis, Sh.e.l.ley seems to portray the overweening arrogance through which a political tyranny invests itself with the pomp of a false glory and which always precedes its downfall. The form of Demogorgon a.s.sumed by the child of this union undoubtedly means Revolution, that Revolution which follows the marriage of unrighteous power to arrogant display.[108] Demogorgon may be looked upon, too, as Reason; Asia, the Spirit of Love, comes in contact with Demogorgon, Reason, and moves it to action. The poet here means to image to us the profound truth, that it is only through contact with emotion that abstract thought can become roused to action and be a vital and dynamic power in the sphere of practical life. It is only after having met Demogorgon that the power of Asia is set free. If reason must be inspired by pa.s.sion before it can prevail, "love on the other hand must become instinct with wisdom before it can be made manifest in that glory which shall save the world."

After the interview with Demogorgon, Asia, love, is transfigured, "its rosy warmth pervades the whole creation, and its power is revealed triumphantly supreme. This is the act through which, in the secret mystery of creation, the redemption of Prometheus is achieved. Thus through a double process, destructive and constructive--by revolution and by love--is set free the human soul."[109] Rossetti regards Prometheus as the anthropomorphic G.o.d, created by the mind of man, and tyrannizing over its creator; but surely, as Miss Scudder says, the myth is quite as much political as theological.

_Prometheus Unbound_ was fiercely attacked in the _Quarterly_, and Sh.e.l.ley, thinking that Southey was the author of the article, wrote to him about it. Southey answered him that he did not write the article in question, and at the same time read him a lecture on the necessity of giving up his evil principles. Sh.e.l.ley felt that he was being misjudged and wrongfully accused by one whom he could not suspect of ill-will, and this no doubt helped to keep him a radical, even if he were inclined at this time to become more conservative.

During 1819, meetings were held all over the country by the laboring cla.s.ses to consider ways and means of bettering their condition. On August 16, 1819, a huge one was held at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, with the view of urging parliamentary reform. The magistrates had previously declared that such a meeting would be illegal and the city authorities had made extensive preparations for the preservation of the peace. After an enormous crowd had gathered around the speakers, forty of the yeomanry cavalry attempted to make their way through the mult.i.tude to arrest the ringleaders. When it was found that they could not reach the platform a hasty order was given to three hundred hussars to disperse the crowd. They made a terrific charge, which resulted in the killing of six people and in the wounding of fifty or sixty others. The news of this affair roused in Sh.e.l.ley violent emotions of indignation and compa.s.sion. Writing to his publisher, Mr. Ollier, he thus comments on the affair: "The same day that your letter came, came the news of the Manchester work, and the torrent of my indignation has not yet done boiling in my veins. I wait anxiously to hear how the country will express its sense of this b.l.o.o.d.y, murderous oppression of its destroyers. Something must be done. What, yet, I know not." He calls it "an infernal business" and says that it is but the distant thunders of the terrible storm which is fast approaching. "The tyrants here, as in the French Revolution, have first shed blood."

The Manchester "ma.s.sacre" inspired Sh.e.l.ley to write the _Mask of Anarchy_.

Leigh Hunt was asked to print it in _The Examiner_, but he refused. "I did not insert it," Hunt wrote, "because I thought that the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse."

In this poem Sh.e.l.ley is not so vague and indefinite as he is in _Prometheus Unbound_. He shows there that he has a grasp of the practical wants of men. "What art thou, Freedom?" Sh.e.l.ley asks, and he replies:

Thou art clothes, and fire, and food For the trampled mult.i.tude-- No--in countries that are free Such starvation cannot be As in England now we see.

Even here Sh.e.l.ley exhorts his countrymen to seek reform through peaceful methods. He tells them to oppose meekness and resoluteness to violence and tyranny; and then the tyrants

will return with shame To the place from which they came And the blood thus shed will speak In hot blushes on their cheek.

There is very little recorded concerning the relations that existed between Robert Owen (England's first socialist of note) and Sh.e.l.ley. One of Owen's biographers states that Sh.e.l.ley's spirit appeared to Owen at a spiritualistic seance, and that Owen exclaimed, "Oh, there is my old friend, Sh.e.l.ley." It is certain at any rate that Owen was a close friend of G.o.dwin, and consequently had at least an indirect influence on Sh.e.l.ley.

_Queen Mab_, moreover, was the gospel of the Owenites.

For Sh.e.l.ley's later views we are indebted to his _Philosophical View of Reform_ which Professor Dowden discusses in his volume _Transcripts and Studies_. Sh.e.l.ley wrote to Leigh Hunt on May 26, 1820, and enquired if he knew any bookseller who would publish an octavo volume, ent.i.tled a _Philosophical View of Reform_. The plan of the work was to include chapters on: (1) The sentiment of the necessity of change; (2) its causes and its objects; (3) practicability and necessity of change; (4) state of parties as regards it; (5) probable, possible, and desirable mode in which it should be effected. The work was never published, however, and it is said that the ma.n.u.script cannot now be found.[110]