In his notes toQueen Mab, Shelley writes: “When a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termedbelief.... Belief then is apassion the strength of which, like every other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement. The degrees of excitement are three. The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind; consequently their evidence claims the strongest assent. The decision of the mind founded upon our experience, derived from these sources, claims the next degree. The experience of others which addresses itself to the former one, occupies the lowest degree.†This reminds one of Locke’s division of knowledge into three parts—intuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive.
In the same note toQueen Mab, Shelley says: “The mind isactivein the investigation in order to perfect the state of perception of the relation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to each, which ispassive.†And in Locke, II, 22, we read: “The mind in respect of its simple ideas is whollypassiveand receives them all from the experience and operations of things.... The origin ofmixed modesis, however, quite different. The mind often exercises anactivepower in making these several combinations called notions.â€
According to Spinoza, judgment, perception, and volition are one and the same thing. “At singularis volitio et idea unum et idem sunt.â€[132]Shelley, on the other hand, says that many falsely imagine “that belief is an act of volition in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind.â€[133]Here we find reflected the philosophical ideas of Sir William Drummond, in whoseAcademical Questions, Shelley writes, “the most clear and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be found.â€[134]
According to Drummond, reasoning is entirely independent of volition. No man pretends that he can choose whether he shall feel or not. It is not because the mind previously wills it that one association of ideas gives place to another. It is because the new ideas excite that attention which the old no longer employ. Trains of ideas may be always referred to one principal idea. “Whatever be the state of the soul, we always find it to result from some one prevailing sentiment, or idea,which determines the association of our thoughts and directs for a time the course which they take.â€[135]We are impelled to action by the influence of the stronger motive. In his letter to Lord Ellenborough, Shelley holds that “belief and disbelief are utterly distinct from and unconnected with volition. They are the apprehension of the agreement or disagreement of the ideas which compose any proposition. Belief is an involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions, its intensity is purely proportionate to the degrees of excitement.â€[136]There is no certainty that Shelley was acquainted with the works of Spinoza when he wroteQueen Mab. It is likely that he obtained his Spinozan views from William Drummond.
“It is necessary to prove,†Shelley wrote, “that it (the universe) was created; until that is clearly demonstrated we may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity.... It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a being (beyond its limits) capable of creating it.â€[137]Again in hisEssayon a future state: “But let thought be considered as some peculiar substance which permeates, and is the cause of, the animation of living things. Why should that substance be assumed to be something essentially distinct from all others and exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other substance is exempt.†To Shelley everything was God.
Spirit of Nature! here!In this interminable wildernessOf worlds, at whose immensityEven soaring fancy staggersHere is thy flitting temple.Yet not the slightest leafThat quivers to the breezeIs less instinct with thee;Yet not the meanest wormThat lurks in graves and fattens on the deadLess shares thy eternal breath.[138]
With Spinoza, Drummond maintains that two substances having different attributes can have nothing in common between them; and that there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature. Infinite, immaterial, eternal, substance has nothing in common with substance which is material, finite, and perishable. How is it possible, then, that the former produced the latter? “An immaterial substance is necessarily without extension, or solidity, and never could have bestowed what it never possessed. God is infinite and consequently his substance is the sole, universal and eternal substance. Of this eternal substance there are two modifications—mind and extension. Human mind is part of the infinite mind of God. By body is meant the mode which expresses the essence of God, inasmuch as it is contemplated as extended substance, in a certain limited way, consequently though we do not call the Deity corporeal, as that would express what is finite, yet we say that all extended substance is contained in God, since extension and mind are the eternal attributes of his essence.â€[139]
Matter moves and acts according to its own laws; it preserves what we term the fair order of the universe, and it guides the motions of those worlds that are constituted out of it, by the properties which are inherent in it. “Why then should we not say that it feels, thinks and reasons in man. Thoughts and sentiments proceed from peculiar distributions of atoms in the human brain.†The same necessity which gives us a peculiar form and constitution also gives us a peculiar disposition and character. From these observations we may conclude with certainty that all bodies are capable of being affected by attraction and repulsion, of making combinations, of suffering dissolution, and that they always strive to persevere in that state in which they are while it is suitable to them.â€[140]
Shelley has the same thought:
Throughout this varied and eternal worldSoul is the only element; the blockThat for uncounted ages has remainedThe moveless pillar of a mountain’s weightIs active living spirit. Every grainIs sentient both in unity and partAnd the minutest atom comprehendsA world of loves and hatreds.[141]
Again in a letter to Miss Hitchener, November 24, 1811: “Yet that flower has a soul; for what is soul but that which makes an organized being to be what it is?... I will say then that all nature is animated; that microscopic vision, as it has discovered to us millions of animated beings, so might it, if extended, find that nature itself was but a mass of organized animation.â€
Southey told Shelley that he was a pantheist and not an atheist. He (Southey) says: “I ought not to call myself an atheist, since in reality I believe that the universe is God.†“Pantheism in its narrower and proper philosophic sense is any system which expressly (not merely by implication) regards the finite world as simply a mode, limitation, part or aspect of the one eternal being; and of such a nature, that from the standpoint of this Being no distinct existence can be attributed to it.â€[142]In so far as Shelley gives to nature the attributes of God he is a pantheist. This he often does. Thus, inJulian and Maddalo, “sacred natureâ€; inThe Revolt of Islam, V, II, “dread natureâ€; and in theRefutation of Deismhe speaks of “divine nature.†Often though he distinguishes between God and Nature; and in this respect differs from Spinoza and those who are pantheists in the stricter use of the term. Thus inThe Revolt of Islam, IX, 14, “by God and nature and necessity.â€
There is another difference between the pantheism of Shelley and that of Spinoza. Shelley does not make any difference between men, animals and plants. They are all about on the same level. Spinoza on the other hand makes man the king and center of the Universe.
Shelley may have gotten his pantheistic views from Volney and Holbach as well as from Drummond. In theSysteme de la Nature, II, c. VI, we read: “Tout nous pronne donc que ce n’est pas hors de la nature que nous devons chercher laDivinite. Quand nous voudrons en avoir une idée, disons que la nature est Dieu.â€
A characteristic of his later pantheism is that it identifies God with love. “Great Spirit, deepest love! Which rulest and dost move all things which live and are.â€[143]Again, “O Power!... thou which interpenetratest all things and without which this glorious world were a blind and formless chaos. Love, author of good, God, King, Father.â€[144]
Plato mounts up from sensuous love tointellectuallove, and so does Shelley. In theDefence of Poetry, III, s. 125, he shows us how another great poet accomplished this. “His (Dante’s) apotheosis of Beatrice in Paradise and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns himself to have ascended to the throne of the Supreme cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry.†One would be in this highest stage, according to Spinoza, when one has attained the intellectual love of God. “This intellectual love of God is the highest kind of virtue and it not only makes man free, but it confers immortality.â€[145]
Shelly makes all things love one another. Thus inAdonais:
All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight,The beauty and the joy of their renewed might (st. 19).
This harmonizes with his earlier views concerning inanimate objects. We saw he believed that they all had life, that they were all possessed of the “Spirit of Nature.†InPrometheus Unboundhe speaks of “this true, fair world of things a sea reflecting love.†Love draws man to man. It is thesine qua nonof man’s existence. His love is founded in beauty as perceived by the senses. The Spirit of Beauty and the Spirit of Love are one.
Great Spirit,deepest Love!Which rulest and dost moveAll things which live and are... Who sittest in thy star o’er Ocean’s western floorSpirit of Beauty.[146]
We love that which is beautiful. “Love is a going out of one’s own nature, or an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action or person not our own.â€[147]The beauty of the world leads us step by step to the love of pure Beauty, Love itself. In theSymposium, Diotima explains how the love of beautiful objects leads on to the conception of perfect abstract beauty, “eternal unproduced, indestructible.... All other things are beautiful through a participation of it ... When any one ascending from the correct system of Love begins to contemplate this supreme beauty he already touches the consummation of his labor.â€[148]The earth is not Beauty, Love, Divinity itself; it is but the shadow of God.
How glorious are thou, Earth! And if thou beThe shadow of some spirit lovelier still.[149]
Again
The awful shadow of some unseen PowerFloats unseen amongst us.[150]
This reminds us of platonism. The “Spirit†is the Idea, and the “shadow†is the earth. Plato’s Idea transcends the world of concrete existence. The two functions of the Idea are to cause things to be known and to constitute their reality. It is at the same time one and many.[151]It stood out most prominently in the mind of Plato as the Idea of Good or Beauty by which he meant God Himself. He says that the shadow of the power of intellectual Beauty inspires us and not intellectual Beauty itself. We could not endure that. Intellectual Beauty is God.
Since then Shelley’s Great Spirit, Spirit of Nature, Light, Beauty, Love, resembles the “Ideas†of Plato very closely, and since these Ideas have been identified by St. Augustine and other Christian platonists with the “mind of God,†it is doubtful that Shelley was an atheist in the strict sense of the term. His poetry at least will tend to imbue us with a realization of God’s Presence.
That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,That Beauty in which all things work and move,That Benediction which the eclipsing curseOf birth can quench not, that sustaining LoveWhich through the web of being blindly woveBy man and beast and earth and air and sea.Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors ofThe fire for which all thirst; now beams on me,Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.[152]
In his later years Shelley became more and more of an idealist. Towards the beginning of 1812 he became acquainted with Berkeley’s writings at the instance of Southey. Ideas, according to Berkeley, are communicated to the mind through the immediate operation of the Deity without the intervention of any actual matter. All our ideas are words which God speaks to us. Matter is only a perception of the mind.
——this WholeOf suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,With all the silent or tempestuous workingsBy which they have been, are, or cease to be,Is but a vision; all that it inhabitsAre motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor lessThe future and the past are idle shadowsOf thoughts eternal flight—they have no being:Nought is but that which feels itself to be.[153]
When Panthea, inPrometheus Unbound, describes to Asia a mysterious dream, suddenly Asia sees another shape pass between her and the “golden dew†which gleams through its substance. “What is it?†she asks. “It is mine other dream,†replies Panthea. “It disappears,†exclaims Asia. “It passes now into my mind,†replies Panthea. To Shelley dreams are as visible as the dreamers, and our minds are simply a collection of dreams. Reality is reduced to the unsubstantiality of a dream, and dreams are the only reality.
With regard to his belief in the immortality of the soul, we have the same difficulty and the same solution. All that we see or know, he says, perishes, and although life and thought differ from everything else, still this distinction does not affordus any proof that it survives that period beyond which we have no experience of its existence. The quotations, though, which can be twisted into an expression of disbelief in the immortality of the soul[154]are less numerous than those expressing disbelief in the existence of God. His writings teem with expressions of belief in existence after death. “You have witnessed one suspension of intellect in dreamless sleep ... you witness another in death. From the first, you well know that you cannot infer any diminution of intellectual force. How contrary then to all analogy to infer annihilation from death.â€[155]Again, “Whatever may be his true and final destination there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothing and dissolution.â€[156]
Plato claimed that the soul preexisted long before it was united to the body. In its supercelestial home “the soul enjoyed a clear and unclouded vision of ideas; and that, although it fell from that happy state and was steeped in the river of forgetfulness it still retains an indistinct memory of those heavenly intuitions of the truth.â€[157]Shelley was so impressed with the truth of this theory that he once walked up to a woman who was carrying a child in her arms and asked her if her child would tell them anything about preexistence. He believed that after death the soul returns to Plato’s world of Ideas whence it came.
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of heavenThe soul of Adonais, like a starBeacons from the abode where the eternal are.[158]
As to the nature of the soul his early views reflect the influence of Dr. G. Aberthney, who believed in a kind of universal animism. On January 6, 1811, he writes to Hogg: “I think we may not inaptly definesoulas the most supreme, superior and distinguished abstract appendage to the nature of anything.†Again, “I conceive (and as is certainly capable of demonstration) that nothing can be annihilated, but that everything appertaining to nature, consisting of constituentparts infinitely divisible, is in a continual change, then do I suppose—and I think I have a right to draw this inference—that neither will soul perish.â€[159]
InQueen Mabwe find Shelley believing in the doctrine of necessity. There he denies the freedom of the will. Later on he exempted the will from the law of necessity, but not the intelligence or reason of man. His views on this subject were derived principally from Godwin. “Every human being,†says Godwin, “is irresistably impelled to act precisely as he does act. In the eternity which preceded his birth a chain of causes was generated, which, operating under the name of motives, make it impossible that any thought of his mind and any action of his life should be otherwise than it is.â€[160]
The actions of every human being are determined by the dictates of reason; and, like the operations of nature, are subject to the law of necessity. This idea of necessity is obtained from our experience of the uniformity of the phenomena of nature. Similar causes invariably produce the same effect. In the material world an immense chain of causes and effects appears, the connection between which we cannot understand. The same thing is true of the moral world. There, motive is to voluntary action what cause is to effect in the physical order. A man cannot resist the strongest motive any more than a stone left unsuspended can remain in the air. Will is simply an act of the judgment determined by logical impressions. The murderer is no more responsible for his deed than the knife with which the crime was committed. Both were set in motion from without; the knife, by material impulse; the man, by inducement and persuasion. To hate a murderer, then, is as unreasonable as to hate his weapon. Educate him, but do not punish. In the material world
No atom of this turbulence fulfillsA vague and unnecessitated chance,Or acts but as it must and ought to act.[161]
In the same way
Not a thought, a will, an act,No working of the tyrant’s moody mind,Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boastTheir servitude, to hide the shame they feel,Nor the events enchaining every will,That from the depths of unrecorded timeHave drawn all-influencing virtue, passUnrecognized, or unforeseen by thee,Soul of the Universe![162]
In his notes toQueen Mab, Shelley admits that the doctrine of necessity tends to introduce a great change into the established notions of morality, and utterly to destroy Religion. It teaches that no event could happen but as it did happen; and that if God is the author of good He is also the author of evil.
Shelley soon broke away from the teaching of Godwin and Spinoza with regard to the freedom of the will. He maintained that the will is unrestrainedly free and that man is his own master. Thus, “Man whose will has power when all beside is gone†(The Revolt, VIII, 16). “Such intent as renovates the world a will omnipotent†(Ibid., II, 41). “Who if ye dared might not aspire less than ye conceive of power†(Ibid., XI, 16).
Man can obtain freedom if he really desires it. Godwin held that freedom from external restraints leads to freedom of the mind, whereas Shelley sees in external political freedom the blossoming forth of already obtained freedom of the soul. The interior freedom is obtained through self-abnegation and the determination of the will. Mrs. Shelley says in the introduction toPrometheus Unboundthat Shelley believed mankind had only to will that there should be no evil and there would be none. Evil is not something inherent in creation, but an accident that may be expelled. “But we are taught,†writes Shelley, “by the doctrine of necessity, that there is neither good nor evil in the universe, otherwise than as the events to which we apply these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of being.â€[163]
This view is very similar to that of Drummond. He held that order and disorder have no place but in our own imagination, and are the modes in which we survey the eternal and necessaryseries of things. Ideas of right and wrong depend upon the circumstances in which people are placed. They vary so much that we do not find the standard of morality to be precisely the same in any two countries of the world. Good and evil are modes of thinking; and what appears good to one person may appear bad to another, and neither good nor bad to a third. This is Spinoza’s doctrine: “Bonum et malum quod attinet, nihil etiam positivum in rebus, in se scilicet consideratis, indicant, nec aliud sunt praeter cogitandi modos, seu motiones, quas formamus ex eo, quod res ad invicem comparamus nam una eademque res potest eodem tempore bona et mala, et etiam indiffereus esse.â€Ethics, IV.
Shelley has two versions of the origin of good and evil. The first is manichean and represents them as twin genii of balanced power and opposite tendencies ruling the world. “This much is certain: that Jesus Christ represents God as the fountain of all goodness, the eternal enemy of pain and evil.... According to Jesus Christ, and according to the indisputable facts of the case, some evil spirit has dominion in this imperfect world.â€[164]Good is represented by the morning star and evil by a comet. According to the second version, which is Shelley’s own view, evil has not the same power that good has, and came later into the world. Evil is strong because man permits it to exist, and must disappear as soon as man wills this. Since it could be entirely eliminated, it is not an integral part of the world.
Man is naturally good. His vices are the result of bad education. They are nothing but errors of judgment. Let truth prevail; educate men properly, and then vice will entirely disappear. Shelley also writes:
Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that manInherits vice and misery, when forceAnd falsehood hang even over the cradled babeStifling with rudest grasp all natural good.
Godwin thinks that the influence of the emotions and passions has been overestimated. It is not true that they can force one to act in opposition to the dictates of one’s reason. They maintain their hold on men but by the ornaments withwhich they are decked out; and these are the things which compel a man to yield. Reduce sensual acts to their true nakedness and they would be despised. Whatever power the passions have to incline men to act will, in future, be offset by consideration of justice and self-interest. Many have overcome the influence of pain and pleasure in the past by the energies of intellectual resolution, and what these accomplished can be done by all. Reason and truth, then, are sufficient to change the whole complexion of society. They will ultimately prevail; and then all will be wise and good. The following from Shelley is an echo of this.
And when reason’s voiceLoud as the voice of nature shall have wakedThe nations; and mankind perceive that viceIs discord, war, and misery; that virtueIs peace and happiness and harmonyXXHow sweet a scene will earth become!Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place,Symphonious with the planetary spheres.
Godwin went so far as to say that eventually all sickness would disappear; and even in this Shelley follows his master. Shelley finds this view of evil in the teaching of Christ. “According to Jesus Christ,†he writes, “some evil spirit has dominion in this imperfect world. But there will come a time when the human mind shall be visited exclusively by the influence of the benignant power.â€[165]
All the philosophists who influenced Shelley agreed in this that virtue leads to happiness. The purpose of virtuous conduct, says Godwin, “is the production of happiness.†So with Shelley “virtue is peace, and happiness, and harmony.†Virtue, says Godwin, is the offspring of the understanding; and vice is always the result of narrow views. “Selfishness,†writes Shelley, “is the offspring of ignorance and mistake;... disinterested benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination, and has an intimate connection with all the arts whichadd ornament or dignity or power, or stability to the social state of man.â€[166]
Shelley does not believe in the existence of hell. He thinks that this doctrine is incompatible with the goodness of God. “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, that ye may be the sons of your Heavenly Father, Who makes the sun to shine on the good and the evil, and the rain to fall on the just and unjust.†How monstrous a calumny have not impostors dared to advance against the mild and gentle author of this just sentiment, and against the whole tenor of his doctrines and his life overflowing with benevolence and forbearance and compassion.â€[167]God, he says, would only be gratifying his revenge under pretence of satisfying justice were he to inflict pain upon another for no better reason than that he deserved it.
RADICALISM IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY
A poet is the product of his time. Shelley observes that there is a resemblance, which does not depend on their own will, between the writers of any particular age. They are all subjected to a common influence “which arises out of a combination of circumstances belonging to the time in which they live, though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded.†Hence it is that the works of any poet cannot be thoroughly appreciated unless the spirit that pervaded the life of the period be understood. This is particularly true of the poetry of Shelley. It embodies the aspirations and ideals of the philosophers of his time. Its themes are liberty, justice and revolt. On every side are heard protests against conventionality, against government, and against religion. The philosophers of the French Revolution are hailed as the saviors of society and their theories put forth as a panacea for all human ills. Shelley is the high water mark of the waves of revolt which threatened to inundate the country. A brief investigation, then, of the poetical atmosphere of the end of the eighteenth century will help us in our study of the sources of his radicalism.
There can be no doubt but contemporary literature had some influence on his sensitive nature. “The writings of the future laureate (Southey) as likewise of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and Landor’sGehirwere among those for which Shelley in early youth had a particular predilection.â€[168]Since the influence of Southey soon began to decline on account of his fulsome praise of George III, we shall confine our attention to Wordsworth and Coleridge. “One word in candor,†Shelley writes, “on the manner in which the study of contemporary writing may have modified my composition. I am intimately persuaded that the peculiar style of intensive and comprehensive imagery in poetry which distinguishes modern writers has not been as a general power the product of the imitationof any particular one. It is impossible that any one contemporary with such writers (Wordsworth and Coleridge were specified at first) as stand in the front ranks of literature of the present day can conscientiously assure themselves or others that theirlanguageandtone of thoughtmay not have been modified by the study of the productions of these extraordinary intellects.â€[169]
Radicalism, we said, was the characteristic of this period and this extended both to the form and the matter of poetry. Byron characterizes one eminent poet as “the mild apostate from poetic rule.â€[170]
During the greater part of the eighteenth century conservatism and classicism were in the ascendant. After the Revolution of 1688 everything medieval and Catholic was looked upon with suspicion. Old customs and festivities were allowed to fall into disuse. Compared with the past it was a material age. In the early part of the century agriculture and commerce flourished and with this advance in material prosperity came the decline of romanticism. “Correctness†in form and thought is the guiding light of prince and peasant, of poet and philosopher. Imagination is concerned almost entirely with society and fine manners. Pope’s themes are beaux and belles, pomatum, billets-doux, and patches. He preferred the artificial to the natural. Form, imitation of the classics, is to him and the men of that period, the all important matter in literature. In hisEssay on Criticismhe tells us again and again
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteemTo copy nature is to copy them.
“To his immediate successors Pope was the grand exemplar of what a poet should be,â€[171]but unfortunately he was followed by a horde of imitators whose only claim on the muse of poetry was ability to turn out heroic couplets. As a consequence poetry became a cold, lifeless affair, devoid of imagination and “divorced from living nature and the warm spontaneity of the heart.â€[172]
A reaction against this pseudo-classicism was inevitable.That small but constantly flowing stream of romanticism which is found in the works of Thomson, Blake, Warton and Gray, increased in size until it broke loose in theLyrical Balladsof 1798. This was the joint work of Coleridge and Wordsworth. The two poets met for the first time in 1796. Coleridge was then 24 years of age and Wordsworth but two years his senior. In July, 1797, Wordsworth and his sister moved to Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, that they might be near Coleridge, who was living with his wife at Nether-Stowey. They were, as Coleridge has said somewhere, three people but one soul. A good description of the relationship between them is given in Dorothy Wordsworth’sAlfoxden Journal, and in Coleridge’sThe Nightingale; a conversation poem. Their most frequent topic of conversation was “the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination.â€[173]From these conversations originated the plan of theLyrical Ballads. The work was divided into two parts. Coleridge was to direct his attention to romantic and supernatural characters and to enshroud these with a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to engage our interest and attention. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to produce the same effect by giving the charm of novelty to objects chosen from ordinary life. It seemed to them that the beauty of a landscape often depended on the accidents of light and shade; that moonlight or sunset sometimes transformed an uninviting scene into one of entrancing beauty; and so they believed that they could diffuse the glow of their imagination over any object and make it attractive. As might be expected the publication of theBalladsdid not meet with success. The change from the stereotyped verse of the age to these carelessly formed effusions was too much for the critics. Some scoffed at them; others thought they were being hoaxed. The subjects dealt with in these poems were long considered as unfit for poetry; and of course the conservative felt it his bounden duty to protest against the innovation. In the second edition of theBallads,which was entirely Wordsworth’s own work, an attempt is made to justify this radical departure from the beaten path. A poet, he explains, is a genius, and should not be hampered by any conventions of art or traditions of society. His imagination is the purifying fire which transmutes the rough ore of the commonplace into the choice gold of literature. “Good poetry,†he writes, “is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.†“He (the poet) is a man speaking to men; a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.â€[174]This is a good picture of Shelley. “With a spiritual gaze turned first inward, on his own passions and volitions, and then turned outward upon the universe, Shelley looked in vain for external objects answering to the forms generated by his dazzling imagination.â€[175]
Meter and poetic diction, Wordsworth says, are something altogether accidental to poetry, and consequently there is no essential difference between the language of poetry and that of prose. “The distinction,†Shelley writes, “between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. Plato was essentially a poet.â€[176]Wordsworth contends, too, that the proper language of poetry is the ordinary language of the rustic. The excellence of poetry depends not so much on the dignity of the words used as on their capacity to arouse emotions. “The language of poets,†Shelley writes, “is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before-unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension; until words which represent them, become, through time, signs for portions or classes of thought instead of pictures of integral thoughts.... Everyoriginal language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem.â€[177]
Not only Shelley’s principles as regards “the use of language†but also his “tone of thought†was influenced by Wordsworth. Coleridge and Wordsworth removed the sphere of poetry from social action to philosophical reflection; they exchanged the ancient method, consisting in the ideal imitation of external objects, for an introspective analysis of the impressions of the individual mind.[178]Many of Wordsworth’s poems are records of the moods of his own soul, and of phases of his life; so also are Shelley’s. A brief examination of some of Wordsworth’s works will serve to make this clear.
Wordsworth planned an epic poem,The Recluse, of whichThe Prelude, or introduction, andThe Excursionare the only parts extant. In these two poems we can trace out the history of his radicalism.The Preludeis his autobiography; andThe Excursionsupplements what is lacking to a thorough revelation of the workings of his mind. He beginsThe Preludeby telling about his childhood and schooltime, his residence at Cambridge, vacation and love for books. He then treats of his first trip to the Continent and his residence in London. Book IX is concerned with his second visit to France in 1791. While there he mixed up with all classes
... and thus ere longBecame a patriot; and my heart was allGiven to the people, and my love was theirs.[179]
It was natural for him to do so, because he lived from boyhood among those whose claims on one’s respect did not rest on accidents of wealth or blood. He describes his friend General Beaupis, who inoculated him with enthusiasm for the cause of the Revolution. InThe Revolt of IslamShelley describes Dr. Lind, who taught him to curse the king. Hatred of absolute rule, where the will of one is law for all, was becoming stronger in Wordsworth every day. After the Septembermassacres and the imprisonment of the king he returned to Paris.
And ranged with ardor heretofore unfeltThe spacious city.[180]
He was about to cast in his lot with the Revolutionists when he was forced to return to England. The excesses of the Revolution, however, deprived him of some of the hopes that he placed in it. At that time his “day thoughts†were most melancholy. When news came of the fall of Robespierre his hopes began to revive. The earth will now march firmly towards righteousness and peace.
Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!For mighty were the auxiliars which then stoodUpon our side, us who were strong in love;Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,But to be young was very Heaven.[181]
In Canto V ofThe Revolt of IslamShelley describes how oppressors and oppressed are persuaded to forego revenge. Love has conquered and a new era of peace and happiness is about to begin.
To hear, to see, to live, was on that mornLethean joy.
Although Shelley does not dwell on details as Wordsworth does, still there is a striking similarity between the spirit of parts ofThe Excursionand that of many of Shelley’s poems. An extract fromThe Revolt of Islamwill help to verify this.
Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when firstThe clouds that wrapt me from this world did pass.I do remember well the hour which burstMy spirit’s sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,And wept, I know not why; until there roseFrom the near schoolroom voices that, alas!Were but one echo from a world of woes,The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.And then I clasped my hands and looked around—But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,Which poured their drops upon the sunny ground—So without shame I spoke: “I will be wise,And just, and free, and mild, if in me liesSuch power, for I grow weary to beholdThe selfish and the strong still tyrannizeWithout reproach or check.
Wordsworth’s joy, however, was short-lived. In 1796 Napoleon started on a campaign of conquest and this completely shattered Wordsworth’s faith in the Revolution. When he saw that the French were changing a war of self-defense into one of subjugation, losing sight of all which they themselves had struggled for, he became “vexed with anger and sore with disappointment.†About the year 1793 he fell under the influence of Godwin, and it is to his doctrines that he now turned for solace. Godwin, as we have seen, makes reason the sole guide and rule of conduct. Custom, law, and every kind of authority are inimical to the well-being of humanity. Wordsworth then at this time began dragging all precepts, creeds, etc., “like culprits to the bar of reason, now believing, now disbelieving,â€
till, demanding formal proofAnd seeking it in everything, I lostAll feeling of conviction, and, in fine,Sick, wearied out with contrarieties,Yielded up all moral questions in despair.[182]
He had sounded radicalism to its lowest depths and found it wanting.
I droopedDeeming our blessed reason of the least useWhere wanted most.
InThe PreludeWordsworth records how he had in youth moments of supreme inspiration, and had taken vows binding himself to the service of the spirit he felt in nature.
To the brimMy heart was full, I made no vows but vowsWere made for me; bond unknown to meWas given, that I should be, else sinning greatlyA dedicated spirit.
So with Shelley inAlastor:
Mother of this unfathomable world!Favor my solemn song! for I have lovedThee ever and thee only.
The sense of life and the sense of mystery are seen inAlastorand these are due to the influence of Wordsworth.
During all this time Wordsworth wrote very little poetry embodying his radical sentiments. The only important work of this kind which appeared is his drama,The Borderers. Even this cannot be called a radical word as it marks his rejection of Godwinism. Marmaduke loves Idonea, Herbert’s daughter, and is told that she is about to be sacrificed by her father to the lust of a neighboring noble. Oswald, the Godwinian, persuades Marmaduke, by dint of reasoning, to disregard the musty command of tyrants, to obey the only law “that sense submits to recognize,†and kill blind Herbert. This Marmaduke does, but later on finds out his mistake and tells Idonea towards the end that
Proof after proof was pressed upon me; guiltMade evident, as seemed, by blacker guilt,Whose impious folds enwrapped even thee.[183]
He realizes that he has committed a crime; that it is the height of folly to ignore instinct and tradition, and so he wanders over waste and wild
till anger is appeasedIn heaven, and mercy gives me leave to die.
Although the radicalism of his early years does not reveal itself to any great extent in his poetry of that time, still it is responsible for his largest work,The Excursion. This poem is an attempt to reconstruct a new theory of life out of the ruins of the French Revolution. According to Wordsworth, the poet is a teacher. “I wish,†he says, “to be considered as a teacher or as nothing.†Shelley says that “poets are the unacknowleged legislators of the world.â€[184]HisRevolt of Islamand other poems attempt to inculcate “a liberal and comprehensive morality.†What particularly distinguishesWordsworth and Shelley from preceding poets is that they moralize and draw lessons from their own experiences. The two principal characters inThe Excursion—the Solitary and the Wanderer—represent Wordsworth the radical and Wordsworth the conservative. The Wanderer, who has had a long experience of men and things, derives from nature moral reflections of various kinds. In his walks he meets the Solitary, a gloomy, morose sceptic. This man tells about his desire to find peace and contentment; his delight in nature; and the happiness of his wedded life. The death of his wife and children filled him with despair. He then begins to question the ways of God to men and exclaims
Then my soulTurned inward—to examine of what stuffTimes fetters are composed; and life was putTo inquisition, long and profitless![185]
He is aroused from these abstractions by the report that the dread Bastile has fallen; and from the wreck he sees a golden palace rise
The appointed seat of equitable lawThe mild paternal sway... from the blind mist issuingI beheldGlory, beyond all glory ever seen.
InQueen MabShelley has a somewhat similar phrase:
Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear.
He thus becomes interested once more in life; and joins in the chorus of Liberty singing in every grove.
War shall ceaseDid ye not hear that conquest is abjured?Bring garlands, bring forth choicest flowers, to deckThe tree of Liberty.[186]
Society then became his bride and “airy hopes†his children. Although no Gallic blood flows in his veins, still not less than Gallic zeal burns among “the sapless twigs of his exhausted heart.†He is in entire sympathy with the plans and aspirations of the revolutionists, and he feels that a progeny ofgolden years is about to descend and bless mankind. All the hopes of the Solitary, though, are blasted. He is disgusted with the way in which the revolution is progressing and sets sail for America, where he expects to find freedom from the restraints of tyranny. Shelley writes about America as follows:
There is a people mighty in its youth.A land beyond the oceans of the westWhere, though with rudest rites, Freedom and TruthAre worshipped.[187]
The Solitary’s expectations are not fulfilled, and so he returns, despondent, to his own country. He is in this frame of mind when he meets the Wanderer, who tells him that the only adequate support for the calamities of life is belief in Providence. Victory, the Wanderer says, is sure if we strive to yield entire submission to the law of conscience. He compares the force of gravity, which constrains the stars in their motions, to the principle of duty in the life of man. In Act IV ofPrometheus UnboundShelley compares the force of gravity to the impulse of love. There is no cause for despair, and “the loss of confidence in social man.†The beginning of the revolution had raised man’s hopes unwarrantably high. As there was no cause then for such exalted confidence, so there is none now for fixed despair.
The two extremes are equally disownedBy reason.
One should have patience and courage. It is folly to expect the accomplishment in one day of “what all the slowly moving years of time have left undone.†In the preface toThe Revolt of IslamShelley writes: “But such a degree of unmingled good was expected (from the revolution) as it was impossible to realize.... Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under the calamities of a social state according to the provisions of which one man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for want of bread? Can he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become liberal-minded? This is the consequence of the habits of a state of society to be produced by resolute perseverance and indefatigable hope, andlong-suffering and long-believing courage, and the systematic efforts of generations of men of intellect and virtue.†The Wanderer exhorts the Solitary to engage in bodily exercise and to study nature. He contrasts the dignity of the imagination with the presumptuous littleness of certain modern philosophers. At this point the Solitary remarks that it is impossible for some to rise again; that the mind is not free. It is as vain to ask a man to resolve as bid a creature fly “whose very sorrow is that time hath shorn his natural wings.†The Wanderer replies that the ways of restoration are manifold
fashioned to the stepsOf all infirmity, and tending allTo the same point, attainable by allPeace in ourselves and union with our God.
The Wanderer calls upon the skies and hills to testify to the existence of God. Wordsworth the Wanderer finds an answer for Wordsworth the Solitary in Nature. He sees that there is a Living Spirit in Nature; a spirit which animates all things, from “the meanest flower that blows†to the glorious birth of sunshine; a spirit which pervades matter and gives to each its distinctive life and being. He sees God in everything.
To every form of being is assignedAnactive principle...... from link to linkIt circulates the soul of all the worlds.[188]
Shelley, in a letter to Hogg, January 3, 1812, speaks about “the soul of the Universe, the intelligent and necessarily beneficentactuating principle.â€
Wordsworth’s treatment of nature is original in this that nature is no longer viewed as a garden or laboratory where man’s processes are carried on, but she is recognized as being over and above him and penetrating his whole life by impulses that emanate from her. Wordsworth spiritualizes nature. He views her phenomena as so many “varying manifestations of one life sacred, great, and all-pervading. “This life of nature is felt more when man is alone with her and hence the love of solitude which marks the Wordsworthian habit ofmind.â€[189]Other characteristics of Wordsworth besides the love for Nature’s seclusion are “the reverence which sees in her a revelation of infinity and the recognition in her of a mysterious and poetic life.†These are also characteristics of Shelley. His love of solitude is inspired by the desire to know nature in her inmost heart; “he has the same feeling for infinite expanse and the same perception of an underlying life.†He also insists, like Wordsworth, on “the education of nature.â€
In the preface toAlastor, Shelley says that the subject of the poem represents a youth “led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe.... The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted.†In the introductory stanzas, Shelley asks this great parent, Nature, to inspire him that his “strain may modulate with murmurs of the air.†He tells us, too, “that every sight and sound from the vast earth and ambient air sent to his heart its choicest blessings.†Wordsworth says, inLines on Tintern Abbey, that
Nature never did betrayThe heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,Through all the years of this our life to leadFrom joy to joy; for she can so informThe mind that is within us, so impressWith quietness and beauty, and so feedWith lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor allThe dreary intercourse of daily life,Shall e’er prevail against us or disturbOur cheerful faith, that all which we beholdIs full of blessings.
In the Prelude, Wordsworth speaks of the influence of nature as follows:
Wisdom and spirit of the universe!That soul that art the eternity of thought.That givest to forms and images a breathAnd everlasting motion, not in vainBy day or star-light thus from my first dawnOf childhood didst thou intertwine for meThe passions that build up our human soul.
This and theIntimations of Immortalityremind us of the following passage inQueen Mab:
Soul of the Universe! eternal springOf life and death, of happiness and woe,Of all that chequers the phantasmal sceneThat floats before our eyes in wavering light,Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,Whose chains and massy wallsWe feel, but cannot see.
Wordsworth goes into the woods and hears a thousand notes all making sweet music, all in harmony. Furthermore, he feels that all living things, flowers and animals, are possessed of conscious life.
And ’tis my faith that every flowerEnjoys the air it breathes.(Lines written in early spring.)
Nature is throbbing not only with life but with the spirit of love, a spirit that knits the whole world of living things together.
Love, now a universal birth,From heart to heart is stealing,From earth to man, from man to earth.(To my sister.)
The same thought runs through many of Shelley’s poems. InThe Sensitive Plantthe flowers live, love, and die.
none ever trembled and panted with blissIn the garden, the field, or the wilderness,Like a doe in the noontide, with love’s sweet want,As the companionless sensitive plant.
The beauty and loveliness of nature will do us more good “than all the sages can.†They will inspire us as nothing else will.
Dr. Ackermann draws attention to the kindness of Wordsworth and Shelley for animals, and notes the similarity between the two following passages.[190]Thus Wordsworth inThe Excursion, II, 41-47:
Birds and beastsAnd the mute fish that glances in the streamAnd harmless reptile coiling in the sun... he loved them all:Their rights acknowledging he felt for all.
And Shelley inAlastor, 13-15:
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beastI consciously have injured, but still lovedAnd cherished these my kindred.
Wordsworth concludesThe Excursionand Shelley theAlastorwith the desire for death.
With the name of Wordsworth, the name of that greater genius, Coleridge, will always be linked. Although they were life-long friends still no two could be more unlike in character and temperament. Wordsworth was moody and determined. He, like Shelley, worked out his plans unmindful of the opinion of others. Neglect and ridicule did not trouble him in the least. He was an excellent type ofmens sana in corpore sano. Coleridge, on the other hand, was without ambition and steadiness of purpose. He drifted on through life in a listless manner, “sometimes committing a golden thought to the blank leaf of a book, or to a private letter, but generally content with oral communication.â€[191]At an early age he had accomplished great things and it was felt that these were but “the morning giving promise of a glorious day.†He was scarcely thirty when he won distinction as a poet, journalist, lecturer, theologian, critic and philosopher. The “glorious day,†however, never matured. Sickness and opium were the clouds that obscured the brightness of his genius. His married life was not a happy one. As in the case of Shelley, jealousy and irritation on the part of the wife, and disenchantment on the part of the husband made home-life intolerable.
One of the earliest manifestations of Coleridge’s radicalism is hisOde on the Destruction of the Bastile, written in 1789. In it he rejoices at the overthrow of tyranny and the success of Freedom. Liberty with all her attendant virtues will now be the portion of all.
Yes! Liberty the soul of life shall reign,Shall throb in every pulse, shall flow thro’ every vein!
He hopes that she will extend her influence wider and wider until every land shall boast “one independent soul.†In hisOde to Francehe writes:
With what deep worship I have still adoredThe spirit of divinest Liberty.
Shelley may have had this in mind when he wrote inAlastor
And lofty hopes of divine libertyThoughts the most dear to him.
Coleridge’s most important radical work, which Lamb considered to be more than worthy of Milton, isReligious Musings. Shelley’sQueen Mabbears so strong a resemblance to it that theReligious Musingshas been called Coleridge’sQueen Mab. In the first part he lashes his countrymen for joining the coalition against France under pretence of defending religion. Further on he gives his views on society, its origin and progress. It is to private property that we must attribute all the sore ills that desolate our mortal life. Unlike many radicals, however, Coleridge can see the good in an institution as well as the evil. Thus he holds that the rivalry resulting from our present economic condition has stimulated thought and action
From avarice thus, from luxury and war,Sprang heavenly science; and from science freedom.
The innumerable multitude of wrongs, continues Coleridge, by man on man inflicted, cry to heaven for vengeance. Even now (1796) the storm begins which will cast to earth the rich, the great, and all the mighty men of the world. This will be followed by a period of sunshine, when Love will return and peace and happiness be the portion of all.
As when a shepherd on a vernal mornThrough some thick fog creeps timorous with slow foot,Darkling with earnest eyes he traces outThe immediate road, all else of fairest kindHid or deformed. But lo! the bursting Sun!Touched by the enchantment of that sudden beamStraight the black vapor melteth, and in globesOf dewy glitter gems each plant and tree:On every leaf, on every blade it hangs;And wide around the landscape streams with glory!
So we will fly into the sun of love, impartially view creation, and love it all. We will then see that God diffused through society makes it one whole; that every victorious murder is ablind suicide; that no one injures and is not uninjured. This change will be brought about by a return to pure Faith and meek Piety. He differs from Shelley in this, that he does not look for reformation through the overturning of thrones and churches. The existing frame-work of society is all right; it needs only to be freed from some of its barnacles.
The first stanza of Coleridge’sLovereminds one of the following passage from Shelley’sPrometheus Unbound(Act IV, 406):
His will, with all mean passions, bad delightsAnd selfish cares, its trembling satellites,A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helmLove rules.
Coleridge’s stanza runs as follows:
All thoughts, all passions, all delightsWhatever stirs this mortal frameAll are but ministers of LoveAnd feed his sacred flame.[192]
Shelley’s sonnet to Ianthe is little more than a transposition of Coleridge’s sonnet to his son. Shelley says:
I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake:Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled cheek,Thy tender frame, so eloquently weak,Love in the sternest heart of hate might wake;But more when o’er thy fitful slumber bendingThy mother folds thee to her wakeful heart,Whilst love and pity, in her glances blending,All that thy passive eyes can feel impart:More, when some feeble lineaments of her,Who bore thy weight beneath her spotless bosom,As with deep love I read thy face, recur,—More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blossom;Dearest when most thy tender traits expressThe image of thy mother’s loveliness.[193]
Coleridge’s runs as follows:
Charles! my slow heart was only sad when firstI scanned that face of feeble infancy:For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burstAll I had been, and all my child might be!But when I saw it on its mother’s arm,And hanging at her bosom (she the whileBent o’er its features with a tearful smile),Then I was thrilled and melted, and most warmImpressed a father’s kiss; and all beguiledOf dark remembrance and presageful fear.I seemed to see an angel’s form appear—’Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!So for the mother’s sake the child was dearAnd dearer was the mother for the child.
Coleridge and Shelley made a universal application of a few metaphysical principles acquired in their early years; and on them ground their political and religious views. Poetry, metaphysics, morals and politics mixed themselves forever in their imagination.[194]