PBS received his friend Peacock’s essay at Pisa in January 1821. It ‘excited [his] polemical faculties so violently’ (Letters II, p. 258) that he determined to make a response, which he began in February and sent to Ollier on 20 March for publication in the second number of the Literary Miscellany, which never appeared. Nor was a second or third part of the Defence, which he planned to add to the first, ever written (Letters II, pp. 258, 275). MWS eventually included it, without its references to Peacock’s essay, in 1840 (ELTF). Our text is based on the press copy transcribed by MWS and corrected by PBS, now Bodleian MS Shelley e. 6, which was sent to Ollier, though some features have been adopted from PBS’s draft and his intermediate fair copy (see BSM IV (Part Two), VII, XX and XXII).
Wide-ranging and closely argued, the Defence draws largely upon the European critical tradition reaching back to Plato and Aristotle, on the Renaissance reinterpretation of that tradition in Sir Philip Sidney’s The Defence of Poesy (1595), and on the empirical philosophy of John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. PBS considers poetry historically as well as from perspectives offered by contemporary science, ethics and psychology. He engages with recent writing on the nature and uses of poetry such as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802) and Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817). And he displays the eloquent partisanship of an enthusiastic reader and practitioner of the art he is defending.
The relation to Peacock’s ‘Four Ages’ is explored in H. F. B. Brett-Smith’s edition, Peacock’s Four Ages of Poetry, Shelley’s Defence of Poetry, Browning’s Essay on Shelley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1921; hereafter Brett-Smith), and in Jean Hall, ‘The Divine and the Dispassionate Selves: Shelley’s Defence and Peacock’s The Four Ages of Poetry’, KSJ 41 (1992), pp. 139–63. General studies of the Defence include: M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 125–32; Kenneth Neill Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 188–215; David Duff, ‘Shelley and the “Great Poem”’, in his Romanticism and the Uses of Genre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 191–200; Paul Hamilton, ‘Poetics’, in The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Michael O’Neill and Anthony Howe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 177–92; and Earl Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), pp. 204–20.
1 A Defence of Poetry: PBS originally wrote on the press copy sent to Ollier: ‘A Defence of Poetry. or Remarks suggested by an Essay entitled “The four ages of Poetry Part I.”’.
2 τò ποιειν … τò λογiζειν: The Greek words (to poiein, to logizein) signify respectively ‘making’ and ‘reasoning’.
3 connate: Born at the same time.
4 Aeolian lyre: A wind-harp; see Alastor, l. 42 and note.
5 antitype: Here, the word appears to carry the sense ‘the original of what is represented’, but see note to ll. 13–26 in the Prologue to Peter Bell the Third and note 7 to ‘On Love’.
6 pencil: A fine paintbrush.
7 mimetic: Imitative.
8 Lord Bacon … world: PBS supplies a reference to Francis Bacon’s De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (Of the Dignity and Advancement of Learning; 1623), Book 3, chapter 1, in which Bacon affirms that similar observations made by different arts and sciences, some of which he has noted, are not mere figures of speech but real correspondences: ‘clearly the same footsteps or signs of nature impressed upon different matters or subjects’ (The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath, 15 vols (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), V, pp. 256–7, VIII, pp. 474–5).
9 the chaos of a cyclic poem: The unsystematized matter which has yet to be formed into a poem or series of poems based upon a cycle of myths. See here and the Dedication before Peter Bell the Third.
10 copiousness of lexicography: The ample linguistic resources provided by dictionaries.
11 institutors … civil society: The earliest poets were ‘not only historians but theologians, moralists, and legislators’ (‘The Four Ages of Poetry’, Brett-Smith, p. 5).
12 Janus: The Roman god of entrances and beginnings who was represented with two faces looking in opposite directions.
13 prophets: ‘Among the Romans a poet was called vates, which is as much as a diviner, foreseer, or prophet’: Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy, in Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones, ‘The Oxford Authors’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 214.
14 germs: Seeds.
15 curse of Babel: In Genesis 11:1–9, God punishes the overweening ambition of the inhabitants of Babel by introducing heterogeneous languages among them and scattering them over the earth.
16 measure: Appropriate metre.
17 Cicero: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), Roman statesman, orator, philosopher and essayist.
18 periods: A series of sentences composing a group.
19 Lord Bacon was a poet: PBS provides references to two of Bacon’s essays, ‘Filum Labyrinthi’ (The Thread of the Labyrinth; before c.1607), which considers inductive reasoning, and the essay ‘Of Death’ (1612), which counsels against fear of dying.
20 eternal music: See note 24 below.
21 epitomes … moths of just history: The metaphor is Bacon’s in The Advancement of Learning (1605), Book 2: ‘As for the corruptions and moths of history, which are Epitomes, the use of them deserveth to be banished’. ‘Epitomes’ are summaries.
22 Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy: Herodotus (c.490–c.425 BC) was the first Greek historian properly so called; he later came to be regarded as the ‘father of history’. Plutarch, Greek biographer, historian, moralist and philosopher (c. AD 46–c.120), was best known for his Parallel Lives of eminent Greek and Roman public figures. Titus Livius (59 Bc–AD 17), known as ‘Livy’ in English, was a Roman historian, author of a history of Rome from its beginnings to his own time in 142 books, of which about a quarter survive.
23 Achilles, Hector and Ulysses: Heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
24 planetary music … mortal ears: The so-called ‘music of the spheres’, harmonious sounds supposed to be produced by the motion of the planets in their orbits and, in Christian tradition, inaudible to human ears since the Fall.
25 Elysian: Delightful, heavenly. Elysium in Classical myth was the dwelling place of virtuous souls after death.
26 The great secret … not our own: PBS develops more amply his theory of love in ‘On Love’.
27 intervals and interstices: Gaps and crevices.
28 imperfections: In ‘A Discourse on the manners of the Antient Greeks relative to the subject of Love’ (1818) PBS refers to the shortcomings of ancient Greek political institutions as well as to personal slavery and the inferior position of women (Prose, pp. 218, 220).
29 the century … Socrates: The fifth century BC.
30 constant conjunction of events: PBS adopted this principle from David Hume: ‘Hume has shewn … that the only idea which we can form of causation is
31 idealisms: Imaginative representations.
32 actor’s face … mask: Actors in ancient Greek tragedy wore masks.
33 trilogies: Three plays of Sophocles – Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus – treat myths to do with the city of Thebes and Athens but were not written as a trilogy. Aeschylus’ ‘Oresteian’ trilogy consists of Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers and The Eumenides.
34 Calderón … Autos: PBS greatly admired the plays of the Spaniard Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681); he translated part of one, El Mágico Prodigioso (The Mighty Magician; 1637). An auto sacramental is a short allegorical drama on a religious theme.
35 rigidly-defined … distorted superstition: PBS’s estimate of Calderón’s r
eligious dogmatism.
36 the knight … necromancers and pagans: PBS had written to Peacock on 15 February 1821 that he wished to ‘break a lance with you, within the lists of a magazine’ (Letters II, p. 261). Continuing the same idiom, he here imagines himself and Peacock as jousting knights, his own shield bearing the title of a great tragedy by Sophocles or Aeschylus or Shakespeare. In Tasso’s romance Gerusalemme liberata (1581) XVI.29–31, the knight Rinaldo is freed from thraldom to the enchantress Armida with the help of a polished shield in which his true situation is reflected. In Spenser’s Faerie Queene I.vii.33–4, Prince Arthur’s diamond shield is described as being brighter than the sun; it dazzles his foes, a giant and a dragon (I.viii.19–20). Here ‘Paladins’ are knights errant; ‘necromancers’ are wizards who communicate with the dead.
37 Addison’s Cato: A tragedy (1713) by Joseph Addison (1672–1719), based on the death of the Roman statesman of the title.
38 Machiavelli: Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Florentine historian and political theorist, author of The Prince (1532).
39 bucolic writers: The Greek poets Theocritus (first half of the third century BC), Bion (end of the second century BC) and Moschus (mid second century BC) are principally intended. PBS translated from the latter two. See Poems I, p. 450, II, pp. 348–9, 695–700.
40 Astraea: In Ovid’s Metamorphoses I.149–50, Astraea, the maiden goddess of justice, was the last of the immortals to leave the earth, after the violent and bloody age of iron had succeeded to those of gold, silver and bronze. She was identified with the constellation Virgo.
41 sacred links … life of all: PBS has borrowed an analogy from the Ion of Plato, which he translated (Notopoulos, pp. 462–85) and in which Socrates explains to Ion (a rhapsode or public reciter of verses) that the divine influence of poetry resembles a magnetic force that passes from the inspiring Muse through the poet and the performer of poetry to each member of the audience, binding one to the other like links in a chain (pp. 472–3).
42 Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius and Accius: Early Roman poets (third to first century BC) in a range of genres and styles, including drama, epic, didactic poetry and satire. Fragments only of their poems and plays survive.
43 Camillus … Cannae: PBS recalls four examples of conspicuous civic virtue in the public life of ancient Rome. Marcus Furius Camillus was a general and statesman of the early fourth century BC renowned for probity; he returned from exile (unmerited, according to tradition) to defeat the Gauls who had captured Rome in 390 BC, becoming known as the second founder of the city. See Ode to Liberty, ll. 97–8. Captured by the Carthaginians during the First Punic War around the middle of the third century BC, Marcus Atilius Regulus was sent to Rome to negotiate peace, promising to return should his mission fail. He advised the Romans to continue the war and, true to his word, returned to Carthage, where he died in captivity, after, it was said, being tortured (Horace, Odes III.v). When the victorious Gauls entered Rome in 390 BC, the Roman patricians, who were about to be slaughtered, awaited them with such lofty demeanour and dignified composure, seated in formal dress before their magnificent houses, that the Gauls gazed on them as if they were statues (Livy, History of Rome V.xli). After the heavy defeat inflicted on the Roman army at Cannae in 216 BC by the Carthaginians under Hannibal, some of Rome’s allies switched their allegiance; the Roman Republic refused to do so, eventually overcoming Carthage in 202.
44 quia carent vate sacro: ‘Because they lack a sacred poet’ (Horace, Odes IV.ix.28).
45 rhapsodist: A performer of poetry in ancient Greece. See note 41 above.
46 Moses, Job … Jesus and his disciples: PBS considers at greater length the effect of the poetry of the Old Testament on the mind of Jesus in ‘On Christianity’ (Prose Works I, pp. 249–50).
47 the three forms … faculties of mind: Brett-Smith (here) cites Plato’s Timaeus, where the ‘faculties of mind’ are divided into three, which have been implanted in human beings from creation. An immortal soul that partakes of the divine is located in the skull and governs the mortal soul, which is subdivided into a higher mortal soul in the breast, source of the nobler passions such as courage and ambition, and in the abdomen a lower mortal soul, seat of the physical appetites (69–72). In Plato’s Phaedrus the three divisions of the soul are likened to a charioteer and the two unruly horses that he guides (253d–255).
48 Light … rouze: Shakespeare, Macbeth III.ii.51–4.
49 Celtic: Here used to designate tribes from lands to the north of Rome, such as the Gauls; more generally, peoples to the north of ancient Greece and Rome.
50 Plato in his Republic: Plato has Socrates set out ideas on a just society as co-operative community in the Republic 369 ff. In ‘On Christianity’, PBS considers that the legal scheme of the Republic promoted equality (Prose Works I, p. 263).
51 Timaeus and Pythagoras: Timaeus of Locris is a principal character in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus, where he is said to be an eminent Pythagorean philosopher. Pythagoras (c.570–c.495 BC) lived chiefly in the Greek colony of Crotona in southern Italy, where he established a religious and philosophical community governed by strict ethical principles and dedicated to the investigation of nature. Pythagoreans were notable for their contributions to the sciences of mathematics and music.
52 exoteric … esoteric: Respectively, ‘available to all’ and ‘restricted to the initiated’. Jesus preached to all what the ancient philosophers taught only to a small number.
53 ‘Galeotto … scrisse’: ‘Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it’ (Dante, Inferno V.137). In Inferno V.118–42, Francesca recounts how she and her lover Paolo first kissed while reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, who were brought together by Galeotto (Galahad), so that the book and its author performed the office of go-between for them that Galeotto had for the knight and the queen.
54 trouveurs … Petrarch: The trouveurs, or trouvères, were medieval poets of northern France known chiefly for epic and narrative poetry; the troubadours of southern France developed love lyrics especially. It is evidently these latter to whom PBS refers. Francesco Petrarca (1304–74), ‘Petrarch’ in English, was the author of the Canzoniere, a series of love poems which profoundly influenced later European literature. PBS admired the ‘tender & solemn enthusiasm’ (Letters II, p. 20) of Petrarch, whom he celebrates in ‘Lines Written among the Euganean Hills, October, 1818’, ll. 200–205 (p. 158), and whose Trionfi he takes as model in The Triumph of Life.
55 Vita Nuova: Dante’s account (1295) in verse and prose of his youthful love for Beatrice which marked the beginning of his ‘new life’.
56 Beatrice in Paradise … modern poetry: In the Paradiso Beatrice is Dante’s companion and guide as they ascend through the heavens to the Divine presence.
57 ‘Divine Drama’: Dante’s Divina Commedia.
58 Love, which found a worthy poet in Plato: Notably in the Symposium, which consists of a series of speeches on the nature of, and in praise of, love; and in the Phaedrus.
59 Ariosto … Rousseau: Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), author of the verse romance Orlando Furioso (1516–32), which includes a variety of amorous episodes. For Tasso see note 12 to the extract from ‘On the Devil, and Devils’ and for Calderón see note 34 above. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see note 11 to ‘From A Philosophical View of Reform’), the only writer of prose in PBS’s list, is included for his novel Julie; ou, La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), which PBS described as a work of ‘sublimest genius’ in summer 1816 when visiting the Swiss locations where some episodes of the novel are laid (Letters II, p. 485). PBS introduces Rousseau as guide in The Triumph of Life.
60 trophies: Tokens (enemy arms or armour) set up on a field of battle to mark a victory, in honour of the god who had brought it about.
61 Riphaeus … justissimus unus: In Virgil’s Aeneid II.426–7, the slain warrior Riphaeus is called ‘one most just [justissimus unus] and zealous for the right among the Trojans’. Dante
imagines him among the just in Paradise, departing from strict Christian doctrine in thus rewarding a pagan who lived before Christ (Paradiso XX.67–72).
62 Milton’s poem: The commentary on Paradise Lost that PBS develops here is anticipated, in greater detail and in bolder terms, in ‘On the Devil, and Devils’, and also in the Preface to Prometheus Unbound.
63 alledged design: Declared purpose; see Paradise Lost I.213–20.
64 modern mythology: The narratives deriving from the Bible and other sources of the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
65 Lucretius … sensible world: The Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus (98–c.55 BC) was the author of the scientific and philosophical poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which proposes a materialist metaphysics, in which all natural phenomena are accounted for as combinations of atoms moving in space, and recommends an ethical system aiming to liberate humans from fear of the gods and of punishment after death. PBS judged him to be ‘wise and lofty-minded’ in the Preface to Laon and Cythna (1817) but here suggests that his attachment to the material limits the appeal of his philosophy. He is ‘limed’ – trapped, as with the sticky substance ‘birdlime’ – in the ‘sensible world’, i.e. the world as perceived by the senses.
66 mock-birds: Birds that imitate the calls of other birds.
67 Apollonius Rhodius … Claudian: The list comprises ancient authors of epics generally regarded as lesser achievements than those of Homer and Virgil. In Greek: the Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius (c.295–215 BC), the Posthomerica by Quintus Smyrnaeus (late fourth century AD), the Dionysiaca by Nonnus (fifth century AD); in Latin: the Pharsalia by Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, AD 39–65), the Thebiad by Publius Papinius Statius (c. AD 45–96), The Rape of Proserpine by Claudian (Claudius Claudianus, late fourth–early fifth century AD).
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