Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets Part 29

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when, with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other in a wild surprise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

The two poets became speedily familiar and almost inseparable. They read, walked, and talked together continually; and Mr. Hunt gives us various particulars of Keats's haunts at this period which are nowhere else to be obtained. "The volume containing the above sonnet," he says, "was published in 1817, when the author was in his twenty-first year.

The poem with which it begins was suggested to him by a delightful summer day, as he stood beside the gate that leads from the battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood; and the last poem, the one on Sleep and Poetry, was occasioned by his sleeping in one of the cottages in the Vale of Health, the first one that fronts to the valley, beginning from the same quarter. I mention these things, which now look trivial, because his readers will not think them so twenty years hence.

It was in the beautiful lane running from the road between Hampstead and Highgate to the foot of Highgate Hill, that, meeting me one day, he first gave me the volume. If the admirer of Mr. Keats's poetry does not know the lane in question, he ought to become acquainted with it, both on his author's account and its own. It has been also paced by Mr. Lamb and Mr. Hazlitt, and frequently, like the rest of the beautiful neighborhood, by Mr. Coleridge; so that instead of Millfield Lane, which is the name it is known by 'on earth,' it has sometimes been called Poet's Lane, which is an appellation it richly deserves. It divides the grounds of Lords Mansfield and Southampton, running through trees and sloping meadows, and being rich in the botany for which this part of the neighborhood of London has always been celebrated." Mr. Hunt was at this time living at Hampstead, in the Vale of Health, and the house at which it is said Keats wrote the beautiful poem on Sleep and Poetry was his.

There is another fact in this account that deserves attention, and that is, the date of the publication of Keats's first small volume. This was 1817; in 1818 he published his Endymion; on the 26th of June, 1820, his third volume, Lamia, and other Poems, was published; and on the 27th of December of the same year he died at Rome. Thus the whole of his poetical life, from the issue of his first small volume to his death, was but about three years. During the greater part of that period he felt his disease, consumption, was mortal. Yet what progress in the development of his powers, and the maturing of his judgment and feeling of art, was manifested in that short s.p.a.ce and under those circ.u.mstances! The first volume was a volume of immature fancies and unsettled style, but with things which denoted the glorious dawn of a short but ill.u.s.trious day. The Endymion had much extravagance. It was a poetical effervescence. The mind of the writer was haunted by crowds of imaginations, and scenes of wonder, and dreams of beauty, chiefly from the old mythological world, but mingled with the pa.s.sion for living nature, and the warmest feelings of youth. It brought forward the deities of Greece, and invested them with the pa.s.sions and tenderness of men, and all the youthful glow which then reigned in the poet's heart.

The mind was boiling over from intense heat; but amid the luscious foam rose streams of the richest wine of poetry which ever came from the vintage of this world. The next volume, Lamia, Isabella, &c., showed how the heady liquor had cleared itself, and become spirit bright and strong. There was an aim, a settled plan and purpose in each composition, and a steady power of judgment growing up amid all the vivid impulses of the brain that still remained vivid as ever. The style was wonderfully condensed, and the descriptive as well as conceptive faculty had a.s.sumed a vigor and ac.u.men which was not, and is not, and probably never will be, surpa.s.sed by any other poet. For proofs to justify these high terms, it is only necessary to open the little volume, and open it almost any where. How powerful and tender is the narrative of Isabella; how rich, and gorgeous, and chaste, and well-weighed is the whole of St. Agnes's Eve; how full of the soul of poetry is The Ode to the Nightingale. Perhaps there is no poet, living or dead, except Shakspeare, who can pretend to any thing like the felicity of epithet which characterizes Keats. One word or phrase is the essence of a whole description or sentiment. It is like the dull substance of the earth struck through by electric fires, and converted into veins of gold and diamonds. For a piece of perfect and inventive description, that pa.s.sage from Lamia, where, Lycius gone to bid the guests to his wedding, Lamia, in her uneasy excitement, employs herself and her demon powers in adorning her palace, is unrivaled:

"It was the custom then to bring away The bride from home at blus.h.i.+ng shut of day, Veiled, in a chariot, heralded along By strewn flowers, torches, and a marriage-song, With other pageants: but this fair unknown Had not a friend. So being left alone-- Lycius was gone to summon all his kin-- And knowing surely she could never win His foolish heart from its most pompousness, She set herself, high-thoughted, how to dress The misery in fit magnificence.

She did so; but 'tis doubtful how and whence Came, and who were her subtle servitors.

About the halls, and to and from the doors, There was a noise of wings, till in short s.p.a.ce The glaring banquet-room shone with wide-arched grace.

A haunting music, sole, perhaps, and lone Supportress of the fairy roof, made moan Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might fade.

Fresh carved cedar mimicking a glade Of palm and plantain, sent from either side High in the midst, in honor of the bride, Two palms, and then two plantains, and so on; From either side their stems branched one to one All down the aisled place; and beneath all There ran a stream of lamps straight on from wall to wall.

So canopied lay an untasted feast Teeming with odors. Lamia, regal dress'd, Silently paced about, and as she went, In pale, contented, silent discontent, Missioned her viewless servants to enrich The fretted splendor of each nook and niche: Between the tree-stems, marbled plain at first, Came jasper panels; then anon there burst Forth creeping imagery of slighter trees, And with the larger wove in small intricacies.

Approving all, she faded at self-will, And shut the chamber up, close, hushed, and still, Complete and ready for the revels rude, When dreadful guests would come to spoil her solitude."

The description of Lamia undergoing the metamorphosis by which she escaped from the form of a serpent to that of a beautiful woman, is marvelous for its power and precision of language.

"Left to herself, the serpent now began To change: her elfin blood in madness ran, Her mouth foamed, and the gra.s.s, therewith bespent, Withered with dew so sweet and virulent.

Her eyes in torture fixed, and anguish drear, Hot, glazed, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear, Flashed phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear.

The colors all inflamed throughout her train, She writhed about convulsed with scarlet pain: A deep, volcanian yellow took the place Of all her milder mooned body's grace; And as the lava ravishes the mead, Spoiled all her silver mail and golden brede; Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks, and bars, Eclipsed her crescents, and licked up her stars: So that in moments few she was undress'd Of all her sapphires, gems, and amethyst, And rubious argent; of all these bereft, Nothing but pain and ugliness was left.

Still shone her crown; that vanished, also she Melted and disappeared as suddenly; And in the air her new voice luting soft Cried 'Lycius, gentle Lycius!' Borne aloft With the bright mists about the mountains h.o.a.r These words dissolved: Crete's forest heard no more."

The most magnificent trophy of his genius, however, is the fragment of Hyperion. On this poem, which has something vast, colossal, and dreamy about it, giving you a conception of the unfoldings of an almost infinite scope of "the vision and the faculty divine" in this extraordinary youth, he was employed when the progress of his complaint, and the savage treatment of the critics, sunk his heart, and he abandoned the task, and went forth to die. How touching, under the circ.u.mstances, is the short preface affixed to this volume by the publishers. "If any apology be thought necessary for the appearance of the unfinished poem of HYPERION, the publishers beg to state that they alone are responsible, as it was printed at their particular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was intended to have been of equal length with the ENDYMION, but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding." Can a critic even read the pa.s.sage without some compunction? and who shall again repeat the stale sophism that unkind criticism never extinguished genuine poetry?

Mr. Hunt says of Keats, that "he enjoyed the usual privileges of greatness with all whom he knew, rendering it delightful to be obliged by him, and an equal, but not a greater, to oblige. It was a pleasure to his friends to have him in their houses, and he did not grudge it."

He was sometimes a regular inmate with Mr. Hunt at Kentish town, and used to ramble about the sweet walks of Hampstead and Highgate to his heart's content. "When Endymion was published, he was living at Hampstead with his friend Charles Brown, who attended him most affectionately through a long and severe illness, and with whom, to their great mutual enjoyment, he had taken a journey into Scotland. The lakes and mountains of the North delighted him exceedingly. He beheld them with an epic eye. Afterward he went into the South, and luxuriated in the Isle of Wight." He was, too, down in Devons.h.i.+re. The preface to his Endymion is dated from Teignmouth.

On Mr. Brown's leaving England a second time, "Mr. Keats," says Leigh Hunt, "was too ill to accompany him, and came to reside with me, when his last and best volume of poems appeared, containing Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and the n.o.ble fragment of Hyperion. I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this work; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury as 'the star of Lethe,' rising, as it were, and glittering when he came upon that pale region; with the fine, daring antic.i.p.ation in that pa.s.sage of the second poem,

'So the two brothers and _their murdered man_ Rode past fair Florence;'

and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes praying beneath the painted window."

This must have been immediately before the young poet quitted England in the vain quest of health. There is a very affecting pa.s.sage in Mr.

Hunt's brief memoir of him, which shows what was the state of mind of this fine young poet at this crisis. The hunter had stricken him, death was dealing with him, and the pain of affections una.s.sured of a return was helping his other enemies to pull him down. "Seeing him once," says Mr. Hunt, "change countenance in a manner more alarming than usual, as he stood silently eyeing the country out of the window, I pressed him to let me know how he felt, in order that he might enable me to do what I could for him; upon which he said that his feelings were almost more than he could bear, and he feared for his senses. I proposed that we should take a coach and ride about the country together, to vary, if possible, the immediate impression, which was sometimes all that was formidable, and would come to nothing. He acquiesced, and was restored to himself. It was, nevertheless, on the same day, sitting on the bench in Well Walk, at Hampstead, nearest the heath, that he told me, with unaccustomed tears in his eyes, that 'his heart was breaking.' A doubt, however, was upon him at that time, which he afterward had reason to know was groundless; and during his residence at the last house that he occupied before he went abroad, he was at times more than tranquil."

His house, it appears, was in Wentworth Place, Downs.h.i.+re Hill, Hampstead, by Pond-street, and at the next door lived the young lady to whom he was engaged. Mr. Hunt accompanied Keats and this young lady to the place of embarkation in a coach, and saw them part. It was a most trying moment. Neither of them entertained a hope to see each other again in life, yet each endeavored to subdue the feelings of such a moment to the retention of outward composure. Keats was accompanied on his voyage by that excellent artist, Mr. Severn, and who, to quote again the same competent authority, possessed all that could recommend him for a companion: old acquaintances.h.i.+p, great animal spirits, active tenderness, and a mind capable of appreciating that of a poet. They first went to Naples, and afterward to Rome, where they occupied the same house, at the corner of the Piazza di Spagna. Mr. Severn made several sketches of Keats, both on the voyage and at Rome, and, while there, finished a portrait of him for Mr., now Lord Jeffery, who had spoken handsomely of him in the Edinburgh Review. At Rome, on the 27th of December, 1820, as already stated, John Keats died in the arms of his friend, completely worn out and longing for release. How the circ.u.mstance of this life-weariness reminds us of his longing for death in his inimitable Ode to the Nightingale!

"Oh for a draught of vintage that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green; Dance and Provencal song, and sunburned mirth!

Oh for a beaker full of the warm south, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth!

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim;

"Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret, Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs; Where youth grows pale, and spectre thin, and dies; Where still to think is to be full of sorrow, And leaden-eyed despairs: Where beauty can not keep her l.u.s.trous eyes, Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow."

"A little before he died, he said that 'he felt the daisies growing over him.' But he made a still more touching remark respecting his epitaph.

'If any,' said he, 'were put over him, he wished it to consist of nothing but these words: Here lies one whose name was writ in water;' so little did he think of the more than promise he had given; of the fine and lasting things he had added to the stock of poetry. The physicians expressed their astonishment that he had held out so long; the lungs turning out, on inspection, to have been almost obliterated. They said he must have lived upon the mere strength of the spirit within him. He was interred in the English burying-ground at Rome, near the monument of Caius Cestius, where his friend and poetical mourner, Mr. Sh.e.l.ley, was so shortly to join him."

Such is the brief but deeply interesting account of John Keats, drawn mostly from the written narrative, and partly from the conversation of his true friend and fellow-poet. It is not possible to close it in more just or appropriate words than those of this admiring but discriminating friend: "So much for the mortal life of as true a man of genius as these latter times have seen; one of those who are too genuine and too original to be properly appreciated at first, but whose time for applause will infallibly arrive with the many, and has already begun in all poetical quarters."

PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Keats was the martyr of poetry, but Sh.e.l.ley was the martyr of opinion.

Keats dared to write in a new vein, to disregard all the old canons of criticism, to pour out his heart, and all his fancies, in that way only which seemed naturally to belong to them, and this was cause enough to bring down upon him the vengeance of all the rule-and-line men of literature. But besides this, Keats kept suspicious company. Hunt and Sh.e.l.ley were notorious Radicals; and Hunt and Sh.e.l.ley were his friends.

"Tell me what company you keep, and I will tell you what you are," is an old proverb, and was, in John Keats' case, most promptly applied. But Sh.e.l.ley was perhaps the most daring, as he was the most splendid offender of modern times. Born of a good family, educated in the highest schools of orthodoxy, it was to the public, which looked for a new champion of the old state of things, a most exasperating circ.u.mstance that, in his very teens, he should set all these expectations, and all the prospects of his own worldly advantage, at defiance, and boldly avow himself the champion of atheism. The fact is every way to be deplored. It became the source of blight and misery to himself through his whole life. It alienated his friends and family; it occasioned an excitement of fiery bigotry and party wrath, which, in their united virulence, were poured upon his head, and, destroying the sale of his works, greatly dispirited him, and so diminished the amount, and perhaps, in no slight degree, the joyous and buoyant spirit of what he did write. Who shall say, wonderful as are the works of Sh.e.l.ley, all accomplished amid ill health and the bitterest persecutions, before the age of thirty, and most of them before the age of twenty-six, what he would have produced had he written with the encouraging feeling of a generous public with him? And when we regard the whole affair impartially, it was the public which was really the greatest offender after all. On the part of Sh.e.l.ley, it was a rash and boyish action. It was the act of a really fine and n.o.ble spirit led away, and so far led wrong, by its impetuous indignation against popular delusions and impositions. He was not the first man, nor will he be the last, whom the spirit of a virtuous zeal precipitates into an offense against virtue itself. In him it was meant to be no such thing. He was honest as he was zealous, and the world ought to have respected his honesty, if it could not his opinions. It should have endeavored to show him, by calm and sound reason, that he was wrong as to the existence of a G.o.d, and by its charity and forbearance, that Christianity was true. There can be little doubt what effect a wise conduct like this would have had on a nature like his. As it was, spite of all the outrageous cries of infidel, blasphemer, and atheistic wretch with which he was pursued, time showed a wonderful change in his opinions on these matters.

The world should have recollected that it professed to be a Christian world, and it should not have let the spirit and conduct of the infidel put it to shame by its superior liberality and goodness. Our Savior nowhere preached or commanded persecution, but to bless those who curse us, and do good to those who hate us and despitefully use us. The world did not do thus: it left poor Sh.e.l.ley to show this conduct to it. Christ left a glorious example to all time--why is the Christian world blind to it? He declared a glorious doctrine on the treatment of unbelievers--why is the world deaf to it? He declared that he was come to seek and save that which was lost, and to die for the conversion of those who mocked and denied him. He nowhere left us the whip, the gag, or the sword of extermination. He brought no such things with him out of heaven, but the great corrector--patience; the great weapon--charity. When his disciples ran and called upon him to silence those who performed miracles, and yet did not follow him, he gave a reply which never should be forgotten while the sun rises and sets: "Let them alone; ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of."

It was Sh.e.l.ley who showed the spirit of the Christian, and the so-called Christian world the spirit of the infidel. It _was_ infidel. It did not trust to the sublime toleration of Christ, but fell to the dark, bitter paganism of curses and hatred.

There was another particular, too, which the virtuous world should here bear in mind. It was priestcraft, which had so disguised Christianity with the trappings of gentile-ism that it had reduced it to the level of a pagan system. It had introduced so much mummery, so many pagan fables, so many false doctrines, that it had taught thousands and millions, and does still, to confound it with the selfish impostures of heathenism itself. No man who does not go much among the people can tell the extent to which infidelity, and even atheism, has spread among them from this cause. They see the great and groaning oppressions which are done under the sun, and which endure from age to age, and they begin to doubt a Providence which can permit this. They see the selfish arts, the pride and luxury of pastors, and the misery of the many, and they say, these men do not believe what they teach--they know it to be a fable. When our countrymen travel into Catholic countries, and see millions of deluded wretches streaming up from all quarters to adore the so-called coat of Christ at Metz, or to have a cross touched with the Virgin Mary's chemise, the swaddling clothes, and the grave-clothes of Jesus, hoisted aloft in the Cathedral of Aix la Chapelle, they say, what is this Christianity but old paganism under another name? These are the things which make infidels. These are the men who, by their impious greed mocking G.o.d and man at once, under the garb of teachers, stab religion to the heart, murder faith, strangle charity, and spread moral death from end to end of Christendom. These are they against whom the holy anger of the zealous should be turned. The mocking devils in the tabernacle, who, for the bread and wine of the hour, scatter perdition through descending centuries. These are the men and things who convert the most beautiful spirits into apostles of unbelief--who make Sh.e.l.leys, ay, and far worse men.

Sh.e.l.ley, indeed, was a good and n.o.ble creature. He had, spite of his skepticism, clearly and luminously stamped on his front the highest marks of a Christian; for the grand distinction appointed by Christ was--love. Sh.e.l.ley was a Christian spite of himself. We learn from all who knew him that the Bible was his most favorite book. He venerated the character of Christ, and no man more fully carried out his precepts. His delight was to do good, to comfort and a.s.sist the poor. It was his zeal for truth and for the good of mankind which led him, in his indignation against those who oppressed them and imposed upon them, to leap too far in his attack on those enemies, and pa.s.s the borders which divide truth from error. For his conscientious opinion he sacrificed ease, honor, the world's esteem, fortune, and friends.h.i.+p. Never was there so generous a friend, so truly and purely poetical a nature. Others are poets in their books and closets; the poet's soul in him was the spirit of all hours and all occasions. His conduct to his friend Hunt was a magnificent example of this. Mr. Hunt himself tells us that he at once presented him with fourteen hundred pounds to free him from embarra.s.sments, and he meant to do more, an intention which his son has n.o.bly remembered. Where are the censorious zealots who can show like deeds? "He was," says Mr. Hunt, "pious toward his friends, toward the whole human race, toward the meanest insect of the forest. He did himself an injustice with the public in using the popular name of the Supreme Being inconsiderately. He identified it solely with the vulgar and tyrannical notions of a G.o.d, made after the worst human fas.h.i.+on, and did not sufficiently reflect that it was often used by a juster devotion to express a sense of the great Mover of the universe."

The same generous, enthusiastic spirit was the living and glowing principle of his poetry. With an imagination capable of soaring into the highest and most ethereal regions, and drawing thence most gorgeous colors, and most sublime, spiritual, and beautiful imagery, he preached love and tenderness to the whole family of man, except to tyrants and impostors. For liberty of every kind he was ready to die. For knowledge, and truth, and kindness, he desired only to live. He was a rare instance of the union of the finest moral nature and the finest genius. If he erred, the world took ample vengeance upon him for it; while he conferred, in return, his amplest blessing on the world. It was long a species of heresy to mention his name in society; that is pa.s.sing fast away. It was next said that he never could become popular, and therefore the mischief he could do was limited. He _is_ become popular, and the good that he is likely to do will be unlimited. The people read him: though we may wonder at it, they comprehend him--at least so far as the principles of freedom and progress are concerned; and in these he will not lead them astray. He is the herald of advance, and every year must fix him more widely and firmly in men's hearts. How truly does he describe himself and his mission in Laon, the poet of the Revolt of Islam:

"Yes, from the records of my youthful state, And from the lore of bards and sages old, From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create, Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold, Have I collected language to unfold Truth to my countrymen; from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e Doctrines of human power my words have told; They have been heard, and men aspire to more Than they have ever gained, or ever lost of yore.

"In secret chambers parents read, and weep, My writings to their babes, no longer blind; And young men gather when their tyrants sleep, And vows of faith each to the other bind; And marriageable maidens, who have pined With love, till life seemed melting through their look, A warmer zeal, a n.o.bler hope now find; And every bosom thus is rapt and shook, Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain brook.

"Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds Abound for fearless love, and the pure law Of mild equality and peace succeeds To faiths which long had held the world in awe, b.l.o.o.d.y, and false, and cold: as whirlpools draw All wrecks of ocean to their chasm, the sway Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw This hope, compels all spirits to obey, Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array."

This extraordinary man, and most purely poetic genius of his age--this great and fearless, and yet benign apostle of freedom, whose influence on succeeding ages it is impossible to calculate, or calculating, perhaps, to overrate, mixed, it is true, with a skeptical leaven deeply to be deplored, was a descendant of a true poetic line, that of Sir Philip Sidney. He was born at Field Place, in Suss.e.x, on the 4th of August, 1792. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Sh.e.l.ley, Bart., of Castle Goring in that county; and his son, Percy Florence Sh.e.l.ley, now bears the family t.i.tle. His family connections belonged to the Whig aristocrats of the House of Commons; and Mr. Hunt has, in the circ.u.mstances of such birth and connection, hit, perhaps, upon the fact which solves the mystery of a mind like Sh.e.l.ley's rus.h.i.+ng into the extreme course he did. "To a man of genius," he observes, "endowed with a metaphysical acuteness to discern truth and falsehood, and a strong sensibility to give way to his sense of it, such an origin, however respectable in the ordinary point of view, was not the very luckiest that could have happened for the purpose of keeping him within ordinary bounds. With what feelings is truth to open its eyes upon this world, among the most respectable of our mere party gentry? Among licensed contradictions of all sorts? Among the Christian's doctrines, and the worldly practices? Among fox-hunters and their chaplains? Among beneficed loungers, noli-episcoparian bishops, rakish old gentlemen, and more startling young ones, who are old in the folly of _knowingness_? In short, among all those professed demands of what is right and n.o.ble, mixed with real inculcations of what is wrong and full of hypocrisy? * *

* Mr. Sh.e.l.ley began to think at a very early age, and to think, too, of these anomalies. He saw that at every step in life some compromise was expected between the truth which he was told he was not to violate, and a coloring and a double meaning of it, which forced him upon the violation."

This is, no doubt, the great secret of both the n.o.ble resolve of Sh.e.l.ley to burst at once loose from this conventional labyrinth, and of the length to which the impetus of his effort carried him. He saw that truth and falsehood were so intimately mixed in all the education, life, and purposes of the cla.s.s by which he was surrounded, that he suspected the same mixture in every thing; and the very effort necessary to clear himself of this state of things, plunged him into the natural result of rejecting indiscriminately, in the case of Christianity, the grain with the chaff. At every school to which he was sent, he found the same system existing. Education was molded to a great national plan--to a future support of a church and a party. The n.o.ble heart of the boy rebelled against this sacrifice of truth to interest, and, I believe, at every school to which he went, showed a firm resolve never to bend to it. He was brought up for the first seven or eight years in the retirement of Field Place with his sisters, receiving the same education as they; and hence, it is stated, he never showed the least taste for the sports or amus.e.m.e.nts of boys. Captain Medwin tells us that it was not Eton, but Sion House, Brentford, to which he alludes in his introductory stanzas to the Revolt of Islam, where he says,

"There rose From the near school-room voices that, alas!

Were but an echo from a world of woes, The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes."

Captain Medwin, who is a relative, was Sh.e.l.ley's schoolfellow there, and says, "this place was a perfect h.e.l.l to Sh.e.l.ley. His pure and virgin mind was shocked by the language and manners of his new companions; but, though forced to be _with_ them, he was not _of_ them. Methinks I see him now, pacing with rapid strides a favorite and remote spot of the play-ground, generally alone, and where, he says, he formed these resolutions:

'To be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power; for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannize Without reproach or check.'

"Tyranny," continues Captain Medwin, "generally produces tyranny in common minds; not so with Sh.e.l.ley. Doubtless much of his hatred of oppression may be attributed to what he saw and suffered at this school; and so odious was the recollection of the place to both of us, that we never made it a subject of conversation in after life. He was, as a schoolboy, exceedingly shy, bashful, and reserved; indeed, though peculiarly gentle, and elegant, and refined in his manners, he never entirely got rid of his diffidence; and who would have wished he should?

With the character of true genius, he was ever modest, humble, and prepared to acknowledge merit wherever he found it, without any desire to s.h.i.+ne himself by making a foil of others."

Yet it was this gentle and shy boy, who had so early resolved to be "just, and free, and mild," that was roused by his sense of truth, and his abhorrence of oppression, to make the most bold and determined stand against unjust and degrading customs, however sanctioned by time, place, or persons. At Eton, whither he went at the age of thirteen, he rose up stoutly in opposition to the system of f.a.gging. He organized a conspiracy against it, and for a time compelled it to pause. While thus resisting school tyranny, he was reading deeply of German romances and poetry; and to Burger's Leonora, and the ghost stories and legends of the Black Forest, has been traced his fondness for the romantic, the marvelous, and the mystic. His mind was rapidly unfolding, and to the high pitch of his moral nature and aims, these stanzas from the Dedication to the Revolt of Islam bear touching testimony:

"Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first The clouds that wrap this world from youth did pa.s.s.

I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-day it was When I walked forth upon the glittering gra.s.s, And wept, I knew not why; until there rose From the near school-room voices that, alas!

Were but an echo from a world of woes, The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.