Selected Poems and Prose

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  1  the European mythology: PBS here uses ‘mythology’ to mean ‘the study of myth’ rather than the myths themselves.

  2  The Manichaean philosophy: A system of belief, founded by Mani, a Persian religious teacher and writer of the third century AD, which held that the cosmos is governed by a good and an evil divinity of equal power in perpetual struggle.

  3  Chaldaean … captivity: The Chaldean (Neo-Babylonian) civilization flourished in Mesopotamia (comprising parts of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria) during the sixth century BC. The Jewish people were exiled in Babylonia from 587 to 538 BC. Chaldeans were known for their study of astrology and the occult sciences.

  4  […]: We omit some sentences in which PBS considers the authorship of the biblical Book of Job.

  5  […]: We omit a brief discussion of ancient Greek ideas about ‘the author or superintendent of the world’.

  6  the Platonic scheme: The idea that the imperfection of the material world compared to the realm of ideal forms is a consequence of the defective matter from which the world is fashioned.

  7  the reversion … little: Reversion is the legal process by which an estate or title is inherited after the death of its owner (‘incumbent’); PBS quips that such a prospective inheritance is worth little when the incumbent will never die.

  8  alledged design: Declared purpose; an allusion to Milton, Paradise Lost I. 213–20, which explains that God has ‘Left him [Satan] at large to his own dark designs, / That with reiterated crimes he might / Heap on himself damnation … Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance’.

  9  […]: We omit a brief discussion of ‘the laws of epic truth’.

  10 […]: Some sentences are omitted in which PBS speculates about Milton’s religious opinions.

  11 one more superstition: Christianity itself.

  12 Dante and Tasso: Two Italian poets who wrote extensively on religion and love: Dante Alighieri (c.1265–1321) in his Vita Nuova (1295), Convivio (1304–7) and Divina Commedia (1308–20); and Torquato Tasso (1544–95) in his Gerusalemme liberata (1581) and Rime (1567–93).

  13 diocesans: The clergy or people of a diocese.

  14 coquetting: Trifling.

  15 ‘local … name’: PBS quotes from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream V.i.14–17: ‘And as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen / Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name.’

  16 to scout: ‘To mock at, deride’ (OED).

  17 torments of … ever: In Mark 9:44 and 9:46, the damned are condemned to Hell, ‘Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched’.

  18 […]: A passage is omitted in which PBS expands on the means by which questions about the Devil can lead to ‘disbelief’.

  19 Διάβολος: Greek, Diabolos: ‘slanderer’, ‘false accuser’.

  20 […]: We omit a brief discussion of the role of the Devil in the Book of Job.

  21 delators: Paid informers.

  22 […]: A partly cancelled and unresolved sentence is omitted here.

  23 irritate: Excite, stimulate.

  24 Tiberius, or Bonaparte or Lord Castlereagh: Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (42 Bc–AD 37) was the third Roman emperor; Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) was First Consul and then Emperor of France; Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh (1769–1822), was foreign secretary and Leader of the House of Commons, and associated with the brutal repression of dissent in both Britain and Ireland. See The Mask of Anarchy, ll. 5–6, and headnote to ‘To S[idmouth] and C[astlereagh]’.

  25 anatomising … alive: Vivisecting, i.e. dissecting a living animal.

  26 […]: A number of paragraphs are omitted here in which PBS considers the extent of the Devil’s ‘sphere of operation’ in the light of the immense universe being revealed by new astronomical instruments. PBS wonders whether the Devil is to be understood, by Christians, as having dominion over a potential ‘multitude’ of other worlds whose putative ‘inhabitants’ he is also responsible for tempting, and whether, if so, the Devil performs this function in person or through agents, i.e. whether the Devil partakes of the omnipresence of God.

  27 A droll story … were drowned: In Mark 5:1–20, Matthew 8:28–34 and Luke 8:26–39.

  28 Gadarean Ichthyophagists: ‘Fish eaters of Gadara’, site of the events here described. The fish was an early Christian symbol.

  29 I should … consumers: PBS was no doubt aware of the Jewish prohibition on the eating of pork.

  30 […]: A passage is omitted in which PBS considers the subject of possession by demons, and the supposed location of Hell.

  31 […]: A passage is omitted in which PBS considers the origins of the name Lucifer, meaning ‘the light bearer’.

  32 antient Gods of the Woods: The fauns and satyrs of Greek myth, of whom Pan (mentioned later) was the leader.

  33 by its sight: By the sight of it.

  34 Aesculapius and Apollo: Gods associated in Greek mythology with medicine and healing.

  35 the Serpent … hieroglyph of eternity: PBS refers to the ouroboros: the image of a serpent devouring its own tail, the earliest appearance of which is in ancient Egyptian funerary texts.

  36 propitiation: Atonement, expiation; i.e. for the sin of Adam and Eve which devolved upon humankind. PBS’s draft ends here.

  From A Philosophical View of Reform

  PBS began work on A Philosophical View of Reform (PVR) towards the end of 1819, perhaps around 6 November, when he wrote to Maria Gisborne that he had ‘deserted the odorous gardens of literature to journey across the great sandy desert of politics’ (Letters II, p. 150). Composition seems to have continued until at least late December, and perhaps into 1820. Our extracts are taken from PBS’s unfinished and in places rather rough draft (as transcribed in SC VI), which survives in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library; a transcript by MWS is now Bodleian MS Shelley adds. d. 6 (see BSM XXII). PBS sought to have the essay published in 1820, so as to address the crisis in English political life that followed the ‘Peterloo Massacre’ of August 1819 (see The Mask of Anarchy), recommending it to his publisher Charles Ollier, in a letter of 15 December 1819, as ‘an instructive and readable book, appealing from the passions to the reason of men’ (Letters II, p. 164); and in a letter of 26 May 1820 to Leigh Hunt as ‘boldly but temperately written—& I think readable—It is intended for a kind of standard book for the philosophical reformers’ (Letters II, p. 201). MWS considered publishing PVR after PBS’s death but it was not published until 1920. PBS did, however, recycle some material from PVR in A Defence of Poetry, including his assertion that ‘poets … are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’.

  Summaries are provided in the notes for significant editorial omissions.

  1  two recent wars: Presumably the American War of Independence (1775–83), and the French Revolutionary (1792–1802) and Napoleonic Wars (1803–15).

  2  The Republics … its enemy: The northern Italian city states whose alliance as the Lombard League defeated the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1176, thereby ensuring their freedom. The Medici were one of the leading families in the Republic of Florence (part of the Lombard League), whose power kept the authority of the popes in check. In his characterization of the Medici, it is possible that PBS meant ‘polished tyrants’ to replace rather than augment ‘flattered traitors’.

  3  Raphael and Michelangelo: Raphael (1483–1520) and Michelangelo (1475–1564) were two of the leading artists of the Italian Renaissance.

  4  nursling of this Republic: Giovanni Boccaccio (c.1313–75), whose writings were a major source of and influence on the work of Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343–1400).

  5  […]: Three paragraphs are omitted in which PBS discusses the spread of liberty and religious reform across Europe, culminating in the English Renaissance and the beginning of the Enlightenment (‘This new epoch’ of the following paragraph). Cp. similar histories in
‘Ode to Liberty’ and Hellas.

  6  Lord Bacon … Montaigne: Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Baruch Spinoza (1632–77), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) and Michel de Montaigne (1533–92): founding thinkers of the European Enlightenment, who promoted humanist ideals, rational enquiry and empirical method.

  7  Locke: John Locke (1632–1704), another Enlightenment thinker of central importance: a defining figure of British empiricism and classical liberalism.

  8  Europe: Followed in PBS’s draft by: ‘Philosophy went forth into the enchanted forest of the daemons of worldly power, as the pioneer of the overgrowth of ages.’ PBS excluded this sentence, part of which is incorporated into his essay ‘On Life’, which is drafted in the same notebook.

  9  Hartley, Berkeley and Hume: David Hartley (1705–57) developed an associationist theory of the operations of the mind, George Berkeley (1685–1753) was the leading British proponent of idealist philosophy and David Hume (1711–76) practised a rigorously sceptical strain of empirical argument. For PBS, their systematic reasoning established the limits of human knowledge, so undermining the pretensions of theology to possess transcendent truth by faith.

  10 A crowd of writers in France: In a cancelled version of this passage, PBS mentions the French philosopher Montesquieu (1689–1755), and the English philosophers Algernon Sidney (see next note) and James Harrington (1611–77). In the revised version, PBS probably intends, in addition to Montesquieu, French critical and materialist thinkers such as Voltaire (1694–1778) and Holbach (1723–89), whose work he also examines in ‘On Life’.

  11 Swift … Bentham: The political satirist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745); Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751), Tory politician, sceptical essayist, journalist, political philosopher and controversialist; Algernon Sidney (1622–83), republican soldier, politician and political writer; Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), novelist, essayist and political philosopher, author of The Social Contract (1762), a major figure of the French Enlightenment; William Godwin (1756–1836), novelist, essayist and political philosopher, author of An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793); and Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), legal reformer, moral philosopher, political theorist, best known for elaborating the principle of utility, for which see note 13 below.

  12 inartificial: Based on authority rather than evidence and reason.

  13 the principle of Utility: The foundation of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian ethics in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), and one of the fundamentals of William Godwin’s political thought. The principle might be paraphrased: ‘In any given situation, the right action is that which promotes the happiness of the greatest number of people.’ See also note 11 above.

  14 […]: A passage is omitted in which PBS discusses ‘the system of government’ and the political situation in America.

  15 […]: A lengthy passage is omitted in which PBS reflects further on the history of political liberty in Europe and its colonies.

  16 The literature … new birth: Cp. this paragraph with PBS’s similar assessment in his Preface to Prometheus Unbound and in A Defence of Poetry, where he reworked much of this passage.

  17 low-thoughted: Mean, small-minded.

  18 […]: We have omitted a sentence which PBS appears to have intended as a note rather than as part of the main text: ‘In this sense, Religion may be called Poetry, though distorted from the beautiful simplicity of its truth—Coleridge has said that every poet was religious; the converse, that every religious man must be a poet was more true—.’

  19 […]: A passage is omitted in which PBS considers the reign of William III and Mary II of England (see next note) ‘as a compromise between liberty and despotism’.

  20 the epoch adverted to: The reign of William and Mary, which began in 1689; after Mary’s death in 1694, William continued on the throne until 1702.

  21 […]: We omit PBS’s account of the role of public credit (i.e. of a national debt) in government policy. Together with other reformers, and notably William Cobbett in his Paper Against Gold (1815), PBS considered that the necessity of paying the interest on the huge national debt (greatly increased to fund the American and Napoleonic wars) to the well-off who invested in government funds entailed a depreciating currency and increased regressive taxation – thus perpetuating an unequal distribution of national wealth and resulting in widespread and unjust hardship for the majority of people, who were obliged to work longer hours for less reward in order indirectly to service the debt.

  22 they: The ‘modern rulers of England’.

  23 excisemen: Tax collectors, specifically of duty on manufactured goods.

  24 stock jobbers: Traders in stocks and shares; stock brokers.

  25 pelting: Petty, worthless.

  26 the substantial merchant: PBS may have intended the following as a note to this sentence: ‘As usual the first persons deceived are those who are the instruments of the fraud, and the merchant and the country gentleman may be excused for believing that their existence is connected with the permanence of the best practicable forms of social order.’

  27 antitype: Example, instance of the type.

  28 idealisms: Creations of the imagination.

  29 […]: A passage is omitted in which PBS contrasts the privileged lives of the aristocracy with the ‘miseries’ of the general population.

  30 A writer … excess of population: Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), whose Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) offered a significant challenge to progressive accounts of the perfectibility of human society by arguing that, as the number of humans increased more rapidly than the means of subsistence, factors such as disease, famine, poverty and war were necessary to check the growth of population. William Godwin responded to Malthus in his Of Population (1820).

  31 the mark of Cain: In Genesis 4:14–15, Cain, who is condemned to be ‘a fugitive and a vagabond’ after murdering his brother Abel, is marked by God with a sign lest he be slain by those whom he encounters.

  32 [is]: PBS’s draft reads ‘being’.

  33 as they please: In PBS’s draft, this sentence is followed by another which he seems to have intended as a note rather than part of the main text: ‘The rights of all men are intrinsically and originally equal and they forgo the assertion of all of them only that they may the more securely enjoy a portion.’

  34 sinecures: Salaried positions demanding little work and yielding profit or bestowing status on the office-holder.

  35 tithes: Taxes (traditionally one-tenth of income) paid to the Church.

  36 liberticide: The destruction (literally ‘killing’) of liberty. Cp. ‘England in 1819’.

  37 must be paid: Followed in PBS’s draft by an incomplete sentence, set off from the main text: ‘This sum cannot have amounted to less than two thousand millions; it would be a curious problem in political economy to calculate the precise degree of comfort and of ornament …’

  38 […]: A passage is omitted in which PBS assesses the advantages and disadvantages of repaying the national debt.

  39 of Hampden, of Lor[  ]: John Hampden (c.1594–1643), one of the most active and influential of the English parliamentarians who challenged the authority of Charles I. There is a gap after ‘Lor’ in PBS’s draft and MWS’s transcript; editors have suggested ‘Lor[d Bacon]’.

  40 then: The MS breaks off here.

  41 […]: A lengthy passage is omitted in which PBS reflects on the process by which a gradual reform of Parliament might be achieved and the dangers of revolutionary violence (‘the last resort of resistance’) should it be denied.

  42 Robespierre to Louis 18: Maximilien Robespierre (1758–94), one of the principal figures of the French Revolution, urged the execution of Louis XVI and oversaw much of the Reign of Terror in his role as head of the Committee of Public Safety. Louis XVIII (1755–1824) became King of France in 1814 when the Bourbon dynasty was re
stored after the first abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte.

  43 […]: PBS’s draft continues for two further paragraphs, which consider the possibility and the nature of future political change.

  A Defence of Poetry

  The first and only number of Ollier’s Literary Miscellany, a magazine launched in 1820 by PBS’s publisher, Charles Ollier, included an essay by T. L. Peacock entitled ‘The Four Ages of Poetry’. In this wittily mischievous piece, Peacock ridicules trends among contemporary poets that he regarded as affected and backward-looking by proposing a grand scheme according to which the character of poetry alters through time in response to historical circumstances, in four stages. In the iron age ‘rude bards celebrate in rough numbers the exploits of ruder chiefs’; the succeeding golden age sees poetry attain its perfection, only to decline thereafter through a silver age of ‘civilized life’ and cultivated verse, which encompasses comic and satiric forms, to finish in an age of brass where it takes ‘a retrograde stride to the barbarisms and crude traditions of the age of iron’ in an attempt ‘to return to nature and revive the age of gold’. Such a pattern, Peacock argues, can be discerned in the poetry of ancient Greece and Rome as well as in that of modern Europe. In England, the age of the medieval romance preceded the golden age of Shakespeare and Milton and was followed by a silver age typified by the polished style of Dryden, Pope, Gray and Collins, finally issuing in the present age of brass in which Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey mimic primitive bards by taking as subject the actions of outlaws, country folk and remote figures of history and legend. These examples, Peacock maintains, illustrate the law that poetry progressively falls away from its earliest role of civilizing and instructing to become at last a mere vehicle of amusement, with no claim to advance either knowledge or well-being, these having become the province of practical sciences such as mathematics, chemistry, history and political economy.