·

England with Ireland has withdrawn the Protestant aristocracy and gentry from their native country, and with them their friends and connexions. Their resources are taken from this country, though they are dissipated in another. The very poor people are most nefariously oppressed by the weight of the burden which the superior classes lay upon their shoulders. I am no less desirous for the reform of these evils (with many others) than for the Catholic emancipation."

He assumes that those whom he addresses are agreed with him on the general object, but that he and they may differ as to the means of effecting it. "If you are convinced of the truth of your cause, trust wholly to its truth; if you are not convinced, give it up: in no case employ violence." He tells them "to think and talk and discuss." "Be free and be happy, but first be wise and good." He tells them of

advanced state of society, they believe just what they like; and it is not to be expected that they should give any assent whatever to Shelley's propositions. Your true Irishman will not even believe that a murder has been committed till some person is executed, and then it is the man who is hanged that he regards as murdered. "Some teach you that others are heretics, that you alone are right *Beware, my friends, how you trust those who speak in this way; they will, I doubt not, attempt to rescue you from your present miserable state-but they will prepare a worse. It will be out of the frying-pan into the fire.' Your present oppressors, it is true, will then oppress you no longer, but you will feel the lash of a master a thousand times more bloodthirsty and cruel. Evil, designing men will spring up who will prevent you from thinking as you please-will burn you, if you do not think as they do." He then prophesies Catholic Emancipa- the failure of the French Revolution, betion, but tells them to take "great care cause violence was employed by the people. that whilst one tyranny is destroyed ano-"The cause which they vindicated was that ther more fierce and terrible does not spring of truth, but they gave it the appearance up. Take care, then, of smooth-faced im- of a lie." He tells them that "rebellion postors, who talk indeed of freedom, but can never, under any circumstances, be would cheat you into slavery. Can there good for their cause. It will bind you be worse slavery than the depending for more closely to the work of the oppressor, the safety of your soul on the will of another and your children's children, whilst they man? Oh! Ireland, thou eme- talk of your exploits will feel that you rald of the ocean, whose sons are generous have done them injury instead of benefit." and brave, whose daughters are honourable, He advises sobriety, diligence in their reand frank, and fair, thou art the isle in spective callings, the education of themwhose green shores I have desired to see selves and their children, the avoidance of the standard of liberty erected-a flag of meeting in mobs :-"Before the restraints fire, a beacon at which the world shall light of government are lessened, it is fit that the torch of freedom!" we should lessen the necessity for them. Before government is done away with, we must reform ourselves." "In order to benefit yourselves and your country to any extent, habits of sobriety, regularity, and thought, are previously so necessary, that without these preliminaries all you have done falls to the ground. You have built on sand. Secure a good foundation, and you may erect a fabric to stand for ever as the glory and envy of the world."

*

The question of toleration is then discussed. Belief he regards as involuntary: -"We cannot believe just what we like, but only what we think to be true;" "It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime to be intolerant;""An Act passed in the British Parliament to take away the rights of Catholics to act in that assembly does not really take them away: it prevents them from doing it by force;" "Oh, Irishmen, I am interested in your cause, and it is not be- In his pamphlet, a distinct plan is procause you are Irishmen or Roman Catholics posed to aid in carrying out the projects of that I feel with you or feel for you-but be- Emancipation and the Repeal of the cause you are men and sufferers. Were Ire- Union. That these and all other desirable land at this moment peopled by Brahmins, changes are to arise as the natural consethis very same address would have been sug-quences of the cultivation of wisdom and gested by the very same state of mind. You virtue in each family of the nation, he ashave suffered not merely for your religion, sumes and imagines that he proves. The but some other causes which I am equally pamphlet, he tells us, was written in Engdesirous of remedying. The union of land before his visit to Ireland, but he adds

in a postscript the amusing information that "he has now been a week in Dublin,”— that he has made himself acquainted with the state of the public mind, and is prepared to recommend "an Association for the purpose of restoring Ireland to the prosperity which she possessed before the Union;" and he promises another pamphlet, in which he shall reveal the plan and structure of the proposed Association. Whether he printed that pamphlet we have not been able to learn. It does not take long to learn all about Ireland! Shelley-a boy of nineteen-learned all about it in a week! Mr. Nicholls, when devising a system of Poor-laws, destined to vary all the relations of property in that country, was able to accomplish his inquiry and prepare his Report in about six !

Shelley left Dublin for the Isle of Man- We think it certain that the confused and after some time we find him seeking to recollection of this, or some such passage, take a place in Radnorshire. He afterwards and of some frightful scene enacted in the rented a cottage in Caernarvonshire, from a country which he had just left, at a time gentleman whom Medwin knew intimately, when he was living in strange solitude, and with whom long afterwards he had oppressed his imagination. He was at this many conversations about a strange incident time, be it remembered, at war with his in Shelley's life while in Wales: Shelley family and with society-and this is a state stated that at midnight, while in his study of existence in which a man is likely on the ground-floor, he heard a noise at the enough to fancy society at war with him, windows, saw one of the shutters gradually and to fall into that first stage of madness, unclosed, and a head advanced into the which dreams of conspiracies, and mixes up room armed with a pistol. The muzzle was actual events with unrealities. We state directed towards him, the aim taken, the this, because we think, if it does not acweapon cocked, and the trigger drawn.tually solve, it yet aids in the solution of The pistol snapped fire, Shelley rushed out some of the problems which Shelley's life to seize the assassin, and soon found himself suggests. face to face with the ruffian, who again His first marriage was unhappy-it could raised his pistol, and it again snapped fire. scarce have been otherwise, though the Shelley seized his opponent, whom he de- recollections of those who have met the scribed as a short, stout, strong man. first Mrs. Shelley are exceedingly favourable "Shelley, though slightly built, was tall, to her. Shelley had neither house nor home, and though incapable of supporting much and a woman's heart is in her home. fatigue, had the faculty at certain moments A boy of nineteen-disowned by his family of evoking extraordinary powers, and con--often without a shilling-flying from one centrating all his energies to a given point. spot to another-sometimes because of debt This singular phenomenon, which has been sometimes because regarded by the ponoticed in others, he displayed on this occa- lice as mixed up with political objects of sion, and it made the aggressor and Shelley doubtful legality-can it be surprising that no unequal match." After long wrestling there was little opportunity for the feeling his antagonist extricated himself from his which he mistook for love, to ripen into grasp, and disappeared. Shelley the next anything of real affection? If there be day made a deposition of these facts before one impulse stronger than another in a a magistrate. We cannot but think that woman's mind, it is that which seeks in a the conclusion to which it would appear that higher nature than her own, an object in Captain Medwin and his friend, when con- which her thoughts may find all repose. versing on the incident, came, must have What happiness could be anticipated when been the true one, and that the whole scene this hope was torn from her on earth by was the coinage of the poet's own fevered Shelley's indifference or alienation, and brain. He had come from Ireland, where when it is probable that the refuge which

she might have had in religion was also de- | wrongly-some verses in an allegorical stroyed by his insane speculations? This poem, called Epipsychidion, into an attack unhappy union did not last many years. on his first wife. In spring 1813, a separation took place between him and his wife, and she went to reside with her father and sister in Bath. Her death occurred about two years after the separation.

"As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the continent," says Mrs. Shelley," he went abroad. Switzerland, and returned to England from LuHe visited some of the more magnificent scenes of cerne by the Reuss and the Rhine. This river navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem of Thalaba his imagination had been delighted by such a voyage. The summer of 1815 was passed, after a visit to Devonshire, on the borders of Windsor Forest. He visited the source of the Windsor to Cricklade. Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Alaster' was composed

on his return."

In 1816, Shelley married again. The restlessness of mere boyhood had ceased. His pecuniary circumstances had greatly improved. This alone would be likely to render his second marriage happy. His When Shelley had separated from his wife, wife, herself a woman of great genius, and he seems to have wandered for a year or who regarded Shelley with almost idolatwo over the continent. On her death he trous veneration, has preserved a perfect went to Bath to reclaim his children that record of his latter life. It was passed, for were under her father's care. Whenever the first two or three years of their union, this incident is alluded to, the writers of between visits to the continent and occaShelley's life feel it not unbecoming to up-sional residences in England, often in the braid Lord Eldon for his conduct, in what neighbourhood of the Thames. is called depriving Shelley of his children. The language is probably thoughtlessly used, but it suggests an absolutely false state of facts. One of the children was born after the separation, and neither of them had ever been under Shelley's exclusive care. When the separation took place, his daughter and the child then born were left with her father. Shelley never saw them afterwards. We cannot think it possible that any one who ever sat in the Chancellor's seat in England could have, on the facts stated, come to any other conclusion than that which was forced on Lord Eldon, in the case of a man who had printed and circulated works his friends stupidly seemed to rely on the fact, that they were not, in the bookseller's sense of the word, published works-in which he denied the existence of a God, and who gave the court no reason to think that he had changed his opinion. To such a man the education of children could not and ought not to have been intrusted-and we confess that our sympathies are altogether with the unfortunate grandfather of the children who had already lost his daughter, and who had bitter reason to judge of Shelley's principles by the fruit which he had seen them bear. Of Shelley himself it is impossible to think with other than feelings of tenderness; but the question for Lord Eldon was not how Shelley's opinions originated-and what the virtues of the individual were, which may perhaps have been in some views of the subject evidenced by the sort of persecution he underwent. We think Lord Eldon was throughout right in his judgment on this case, and his language, as given in Jacob's Law Reports, is calm and forbearing. Some very fierce verses of Shelley's, against Lord Eldon, are preserved by Mrs. Shelley, and Medwin interprets-we think

Alaster is a poem beautifully conceived, and beautifully executed. Of Shelley's poems, it alone is perfect in its truth-of Shelley's poems, it alone is free from the disturbing influences of the war with society in which he had so early and so madly engaged. We have said that in all Shelley's poems his study of Southey's works is manifested. In all Shelley's poems there is evidence of original genius of the very highest order; but the early works of a poet cannot but exhibit the food on which his spirit feeds. Shelley had not, at any period of his life, studied largely our earlier writers; and at the time Queen Mab and Alaster were written we think it improbable that he had read any English poetry of an earlier date than that of the great poets of his own time. Wordsworth's poem of Tintern Abbey, and the passage in Joan of Arc which describes the inspiration of the heroine, seem to have possessed his imagination when "Alaster" was written. Such imitation as this implies is for the most part unconscious, and only analogous to a child expressing its own thoughts and feelings in its parents' language. "Alaster "" represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius-we use Shelley's language-drinking deep of the fountains of knowledge, and

ceases to suffice.

Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
Strange symphony:
Night
Involved and swallow'd up the vision: sleep,
Like a dark flood suspended in its course,
Roll'd back its impulse on his vacant brain.”

Nothing can be finer than the passage that follows:-

"Roused by the shock, he started from his trance:
The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
The distinct valley and the vacant wood,
Spread round him where he stood. Whither have

fled

The hues of heaven that canopied his bower
The sounds that soothed his
Of yesternight?

sleep,

yet insatiate. While his desires point to
the external universe, he is tranquil and
joyous; but the period arrives when this
"His mind is at length
suddenly awakened, and thirsts for an in-
telligence suitable to itself. He images to
himself the being whom he loves." He is
the creature of imagination, and seeks to
unite in one object all that he can picture
to his mind of good, or pure, or true: he
seeks that which must end in disappoint-
ment. "Blasted by disappointment, he
descends into an untimely grave."
"The poet's self-centred seclusion is
avenged by the furies of an irresistible pas-
sion pursuing him to speedy ruin; and
hence the name of the poem-the word
"Alaster" signifying the avenger of crime,
and the criminal. Both uses of the word
seem present to Shelley's mind in a case
where the crime was that of too intense in-
dulgence of imagination, aud where the
punishment is a vain search in the world of
actual life for an ideal which is the creation
of the mind itself, and which could not, un-
der any conceivable conditions, be realized.
Shelley wrote the poem in the belief that
he himself was dying. Abscesses had
formed on his lungs, and recovery seemed
to his physicians impossible. Physical suf-O Sleep?
fering is the hot-bed of genius; and the
strange circumstances of his life were calcu-
lated to make Shelley look inward on his
own nature and being. The poem is one
of touching solemnity. In the language
there is not, as far as we know, a strain of
melody sustained throughout at the same

elevation.

The tale is the simplest in the world. The hero, a poet, leaves,

"When early youth has pass'd, His cold fireside and alienated home,"

The mystery and the majesty of earth,
The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes
Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
The spirit of sweet human love has such
A vision to the sleep of him who spurn'd
Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues,
Beyond the realm of dreams, that fleeting shade:
He overleaps the bounds!-
Lost, lost, for ever lost,

In the wide, pathless desert of dim sleep,
That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,

While daylight held

The sky, the poet kept mute conference
With his still soul. At night the passion came
Like the fierce fiend of a distemper'd dream,
And shook him from his rest, and led him forth
Into the darkness. As an eagle, grasp'd
In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast
Burn with the poison, and precipitates,
Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and
cloud,

Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight
O'er the wide aery wilderness: thus driven
By the bright shadows of that lovely dream,
He fled."

His wanderings are described, and then follows a very striking passage:

"The cottagers

Who minister'd with human charity
His human wants, beheld with wondering awe
Their fleeting visitant: the mountaineer,
Encountering on some dizzy precipice
That spectral form, 'deem'd that the spirit of wind,
With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet
Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused
In his career: the infant would conceal
His troubled visage in his mother's robe,
In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,

To remember their strange light in many a dream
Of after times; but youthful maidens, taught
By nature, would interpret half the woe

That wasted him, would call him with false names;
Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand
At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path
Of his departure from their father's door."

"A strong impulse urged
His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,
Beside a sluggish stream, among the reeds.
It rose as he approach'd, and with strong wings
Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course
High over the immeasurable main.

His eyes pursued its flight!' Thou hast a home,
Beautiful bird-thou voyagest to thine home,
Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck
With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes
Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy!'

*

*

The name of Allab, as he hasten'd on.
A Christian woman spinning at the door
Beheld him, and with sudden pity touch'd
She laid her spindle by," &c.-SOUTHEY'S Roderic.

The composition of the two passages is
the same, although the probability is, that
Shelley had no distinct recollection of the
passage he was imitating. Alaster is in all
respects superior to Queen Mab, Shelley's
earliest poem.
The vicious structure of
society is the subject of Queen Mab-and
all its evils are presented to the imagina-
tion as if they could be at once removed
by strong exertion of the will. It is but
for each individual to will it—war, mar-

Startled by his own thoughts, he look'd around-riage, religion, and all the miseries that
There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight
Or sound of awe, but in his own deep mind."

disquiet life will at once cease. Shelley's self-deception arises from his contemplat

The mystery of the poem deepens. A lit-ing man's nature as it is in self, as it extle shallop, floating near the shore, catches his eye,

"It had been long abandon'd, for its sides
Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints
Sway'd with the undulation of the tide.
A restless impulse urged him to embark,
And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;
For well he knew that mighty shadow loves
The slimy caverns of the populous deep."

isted in Paradise anterior to the existence
of society-and from this drawing inferences
that can have no application to the artifi-
cial state of existence which we, and our
parents, and our children, are born into.
Absolute, unmodified rights there are none;
and of the necessary modifications it is not
possible that a boy of eighteen should have
experience enough of life to form any right
estimate. Shelley is almost inspired when
he holds communion with his own mind
alone and reveals its movements.
tasies, when they would stretch at all be-
yond that which ought to have been "the
haunt and main region of his song," are
mere dreams, and ought to be remembered
As to religion, per-

His fan

His voyage is described, and finally his death. The poem is in form narrative, but, throughout, the language is steeped in the deepest hues of passion, and from it might be augured with certainty the future great dramatic poet. The romance of the subject justifies and almost demands a pomp of or forgotten as such. words which would be out of place in the haps the most valuable lesson that can be more sober scenes in which Wordsworth has learned from Shelley's poetry is, that man Keats dreamed placed the interlocutors in the Excursion. cannot exist without one. We are far from regarding Shelley as in any out a sort of heathen mythology for himmental power inferior to Southey, but we self, in which he seems to have had a kind can everywhere trace the influence of the of belief;-and Shelley in his Queen Mab -a poem in which the existence of a Creaelder poet's mind. We have alluded to Joan of Arc and Thalaba, and in the passages tor of the world is denied-speaks of a which we have just quoted from Alaster, is spirit of the universe, and a co-eternal it possible to avoid remembering the dream fairy of the earth. Verily, this Atheism by which Roderic is summoned to his is a strange pretence. It is at once lost in appointed task, and the effect of his appear- pantheism or polytheism; indeed, nothing ance among those engaged in the business but the transitoriness of words, and the of ordinary life?

impossibility of permanently uniting by such ties the combinations of thought in which Shelley almost revelled, enabled him. to distinguish his state of mind from that of a pagan, dreaming of Apollo, and the Hours, and the Graces. In Shelley's case "the figures quaint and sweet," are "all made out of the carver's brain;" but they are, as in the case of the idolatries of old, a sort of fanciful religion, evidencing the