Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer Part 1

Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley as a Philosopher and Reformer.

by Charles Sotheran.

TO

CHARLES WILLIAM FREDERICKSON,

OF NEW YORK.

DEAR FRIEND:

As in ancient times, none were allowed partic.i.p.ation in the Higher Mysteries, without having proved their fitness for the reception of esoteric truth, so in these days only those seem to be permitted to breathe the hidden essence in Sh.e.l.ley, who have realized the acute phases of spiritality. Among the few who have enjoyed these bi-fold gifts, none have had more fortuitous experience than yourself, to whom I now take the liberty of dedicating this volume.

Yours fraternally,

CHARLES SOTHERAN.

_December_, 1875.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF Sh.e.l.lEY'S TOMB, IN THE PROTESTANT CEMETERY, AT ROME. FROM A SKETCH BY A.J. STRUTT.]

"To see the sun s.h.i.+ning on its bright gra.s.s, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees, which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young children, who, buried there, we might, if we were to die, desire a sleep they seem to sleep."--Sh.e.l.lEY.

To the Memory

OF

PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY,

BY

CHARLES W. FREDERICKSON.

Amid the ruins of majestic Rome, That told the story of its countless years, I stood, and wondered by the silent dust Of the "Eternal Child." Oh, Sh.e.l.ley!

To me it was not given to know thy face, Save through the mirrored pages of thy works; Those whisper'd words of wood and wave, are to mine ears, Sweet as the music of ocean's roar, that breaks on sheltered sh.o.r.es.

Thy sterner words of Justice, Love and Truth, Will to the struggling soul a beacon prove, And barrier against the waves of tyranny and craft.

Then rest, "_Cor Cordium_," and though thy life Was brief in point of years, its memory will outlive The column'd monuments around thy tomb.

NEW YORK, _Nov_. 25, 1875.

MY DEAR SOTHERAN:--

The copy of the lines on our Beloved-Poet, which you requested, are entirely at your service--make what use of them you please.

Yours, sincerely,

C.W. FREDERICKSON.

PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY, AS A PHILOSOPHER AND REFORMER.

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE NEW YORK LIBERAL CLUB, ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 6TH, 1875.

"Let us see the Truth, whatever that may be."--Sh.e.l.lEY, 1822.

_Mr. Vice-President and Members of the Liberal Club_:

"The Blood of the Martyr is the Seed of the Church." Persecution ever fails in accomplis.h.i.+ng its desired ends, and as a rule lays the foundations broad and deep for the triumph of the objects of and principles inculcated by the persecuted.

Driven from their homes by fanatical tyranny, not permitted to wors.h.i.+p as they thought fit, a band of n.o.ble and earnest, yet on some points mistaken men, were, a little over two hundred and fifty years ago, landed on this continent from the good s.h.i.+p "Mayflower." The "Pilgrim Fathers" were, in their native land, refused liberty of conscience and freedom of discussion; their apparent loss was our gain, for if it had not been for that despotism, and the corresponding re-action, which made those stern old zealots give to others many of the inalienable rights of liberty denied to themselves, you and I could not to-night perhaps be allowed to meet face to face, without fear, to discuss metaphysical and social questions in their broadest aspects, without the civil or theological powers intervening to close our mouths.

"Fragile in health and frame; of the purest habits in morals; full of devoted generosity and universal kindness; glowing with ardor to attain wisdom; resolved at every personal sacrifice to do right; burning with a desire for affection and sympathy," a boy-under-graduate of Oxford, described as of tall, delicate, and fragile figure, with large and lively eyes, with expressive, beautiful and feminine features, with head covered with long, brown hair, of gracefulness and simplicity of manner, the heir to a t.i.tle and the representation of one of the most ancient English families, which numbered Sir Philip Sidney on its roll of ill.u.s.trious names, just sixty-four years ago, and in this nineteenth century, for no licentiousness, violence, or dishonor, but, for his refusal to criminate himself or inculpate friends, was, without trial, expelled by learned divines from his university for writing an argumentative thesis, which, if it had been the work of some Greek philosopher, would have been hailed by his judges as a fine specimen of profound a.n.a.lytical abstruseness--for that expulsion are we the debtors to theological charity and tolerance for "Queen Mab."

Excommunicated by a mercenary and abject priesthood, cast off by a savage father, the admirer of that gloomy theology founded by the murderer of Michael Servetus, and charged by his jealous brother writers as one of the founders of a Satanic School, for neither immorality of life nor breach of the parental relation, but for heterodoxy to an expiring system of dogmatism, and for acting on and a.s.serting the right of man to think and judge for himself, a father was to have two children torn from him, in the sacred name of law and justice, by the princ.i.p.al adviser of a dying madman, "Defender of the Faith, by Law Established," and by us despised as the self-willed tyrant, who lost America and poured out human blood like water to gratify his l.u.s.t of power. By that Lord Chancellor whose cold, impa.s.sive statue has a place in Westminster Abbey, where Byron's was refused admittance, and whose memory, when that stone has crumbled into dust, will live as one who furnished an example for execrable tyranny over the parental tie, and that Lord Eldon whom an outraged father curses in imperishable verse:

"By thy most impious h.e.l.l, and all its terrors; By all the grief, the madness and the guilt Of thine impostures, which must be _their_ errors, That sand on which thy crumbling power is built;

By all the hate which checks a father's love; By all the scorn which kills a father's care; By those most impious hands that dared remove Nature's high bounds--by thee, and by despair.

"Yes, the despair which bids a father groan, And cry, 'my children are no longer mine.

The blood within those veins may be mine own, But, tyrant, their polluted souls are thine.'

"I curse thee, though I hate thee not. O slave!

If thou could'st quench the earth consuming h.e.l.l Of which thou art a demon, on thy grave This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well."

Sad as it is to contemplate any human being in his agony making use of such language to another; and however much we may sympathize with the poet, yet we cannot but have inwardly a feeling of rejoicing; for, if it had not been for this unheard of villainy, we should probably never have had the other magnificent poetry and prose of Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley composed during his self-imposed ostracism, and which furnish such glorious thoughts for the philosopher, and keen trenchant weapons for the reformer.

Have any of my hearers ever stood, in the calm of a summer evening, in Sh.e.l.ley's native land, listening to the lovely warble of the nightingale, making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and the woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken towards the skylark careering in the "blue ether," far above this sublunary sphere of gross, sensual earth, there straining after immortality, and

"Like a poet hidden, In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears, it heeded not,"

pouring out such bursts of song as to make one almost wors.h.i.+p and credit the fables, taught in childhood at our mothers' knees, of the angelic symphonies of heavenly choirs. Such was the poetry of Sh.e.l.ley; and as the music of the nightingale or the skylark is far exceeding in excellence that of the other members of the feathered kingdom, so does Sh.e.l.ley rank as a poet far above all other poets, making even the poet of nature, the great Wordsworth himself, confess that Sh.e.l.ley was indeed the master of harmonious verse in our modern literature. It is broadly laid down in the Marvinian theory that all poets are insane. I would much like to break a lance with the learned Professor of Psychology and Medical Jurisprudence; but as the overthrow of this dogma does not come within the scope of my essay, I would suggest to those who may have been influenced by that paper to read Sh.e.l.ley's "Defence of Poetry." I shall quote two extracts therefrom, each pertinent to my subject. The first describes the function of the poet: