truth of Payne Knight's observation, that "the same kind of marriage, which usually ends a comedy, as usually begins a tragedy."* MEMOIRS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.-PArt 2.† [Reprinted from Fraser's Magazine for January, 1860.] MR. Y Gwir yn erbyn y Byd. The Truth against the World. Bardic Maxim. R. HOGG'S third and fourth volumes not having appeared, and the materials with which Sir Percy and Lady Shelley had supplied him having been resumed by them, and so much of them as it was thought desirable to publish having been edited by Lady Shelley, with a connecting thread of narrative, I shall assume that I am now in possession of all the external information likely to be available towards the completion of my memoir; and I shall proceed to complete it accordingly, subject to the contingent addition of a postscript, if any subsequent publication should render it necessary. Lady Shelley says in her preface: We saw the book (Mr. Hogg's) for the first time when it was given to the world. It was impossible to imagine beforehand that from such materials a book could have been produced which has astonished and shocked those who have the greatest right to form an opinion on the character of Shelley; and it was with the most painful feelings of dismay that we perused what we could only look upon as a fan *No person in his senses was ever led into enterprises of dangerous importance by the romantic desire of imitating the fictions of a drama. If the conduct of any persons is influenced by the examples exhibited in such fictions, it is that of young ladies in the affairs of love and marriage: but I believe that such influence is much more rare than severe moralists are inclined to suppose; since there were plenty of elopements and stolen matches before comedies or plays of any kind were known. If, however, there are any romantic minds which feel this influence, they may draw an awful lesson concerning its consequences from the same source, namely, that the same kind of marriage, which usually ends a comedy, as usually begins a tragedy.— Principles of Taste, Book III. c. 2, sec. 17. + Part 1 appeared in "Fraser's Magazine" for June, 1858. + Shelley Memorials. From Authentic Sources. Edited by Lady Shelley. London: Smith and Elder. 1859. tastic caricature, going forth to the public with my apparent sanction -for it was dedicated to myself. Our feelings of duty to the memory of Shelley left us no other alternative than to withdraw the materials which we had originally entrusted to his early friend, and which we could not but consider had been strangely misused; and to take upon ourselves the task of laying them before the public, connected only by as slight a thread of narrative as would suffice to make them intelligible to the reader. I am very sorry, in the outset of this notice, to be under the necessity of dissenting from Lady Shelley respecting the facts of the separation of Shelley and Harriet. Captain Medwin represented this separation to have taken place by mutual consent. Mr. Leigh Hunt and Mr. Middleton adopted this statement; and in every notice I have seen of it in print it has been received as an established truth. Lady Shelley says: Towards the close of 1813, estrangements, which for some time ha been slowly growing between Mr. and Mrs. Shelley, came to a crisi Separation ensued, and Mrs. Shelley returned to her father's hous Here she gave birth to her second child-a scn, who died in 1826. The occurrences of this painful epoch in Shelley's life, and of t causes which led to them, I am spared from relating. In Ma Shelley's own words-"This is not the time to relate the truth; I should reject any colouring of the truth. No account of these eve has ever been given at all approaching reality in their details, eit as regards himself or others; nor shall I further allude to them to remark that the errors of action committed by a man as noble generous as Shelley, may, as far as he only is concerned, be fearl avowed by those who loved him, in the firm conviction that, they judged impartially, his character would stand in faire brighter light than that of any contemporary." Of those remaining who were intimate with Shelley at this each has given us a different version of this sad event, colour his own views or personal feelings. Evidently Shelley confid none of these friends. We, who bear his name, and are of his f have in our possession papers written by his own hand, which in years may make the story of his life complete; and which fo living, except Shelley's own children, have ever perused. One mistake, which has gone forth to the world, we feel ou called upon positively to contradict. Harriet's death has sometimes been ascribed to Shelley. entirely false. There was no immediate connection whatever her tragic end and any conduct on the part of her husban true, however, that it was a permanent source of the deepe to him; for never during all his after-life did the dark sha which had fallen on his gentle and sensitive nature from t sought grave of the companion of his early youth. A This passage ends the sixth chapter. The seventh begins thus To the family of Godwin, Shelley had, from the period of his self-introduction at Keswick, been an object of interest; and the acquaintanceship which had sprung up between them during the poet's occasional visits to London had grown into a cordial friendship. It was in the society and sympathy of the Godwins that Shelley sought and found some relief in his present sorrow. He was still extremely young. His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts of genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on Godwin's daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear Shelley spoken of as something rare and strange. To her, as they met one eventful day in St. Pancras' churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe, in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past-how he had suffered, how he had been misled; and how, if supported by her love, he hoped in future years to enrol his name with the wise and good who had done battle for their fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly she placed her hand in his, and linked her fortune with his own; and most truthfully, as the remaining portion of these Memorials will prove, was the pledge of both redeemed. : I ascribe it to inexperience of authorship, that the sequence of words does not, in these passages, coincide with the sequence of facts for in the order of words the present sorrow would appear to be the death of Harriet. This however occurred two years and a half after the separation, and the union of his fate with Mary Godwin was simultaneous with it. Respecting this separation, whatever degree of confidence Shelley may have placed in his several friends, there are some facts which speak for themselves, and admit of no misunderstanding. The Scotch marriage had taken place in August, 1811. In a letter which he wrote to a female friend sixteen months later (Dec. 10, 1812), he had said :— How is Harriet a fine lady? You indirectly accuse her in your letter of this offence-to me the most unpardonable of all. The ease and simplicity of her habits, the unassuming plainness of her address, the uncalculated connexion of her thought and speech, have ever formed in my eyes her greatest charms: and none of these are compatible with fashionable life, or the attempted assumption of its vulgar and noisy éclat. You have a prejudice to contend with in making me a convert to this last opinion of yours, which, so long as I have a living and daily witness to its futility before me, I fear will be insurmountable.-Memorials, p. 44. Thus there had been no estrangement to the end of 1812. My own memory sufficiently attests that there was none in 1813. From Bracknell, in the autumn of 1813, Shelley went to the Cumberland lakes; then to Edinburgh. In Edinburgh he became acquainted with a young Brazilian named Baptista, who had gone there to study medicine by his father's desire, and not from any vocation to the science, which he cordially abominated, as being all hypothesis, without the fraction of a basis of certainty to rest on. They corresponded after Shelley left Edinburgh, and subsequently renewed their intimacy in London. He was a frank, warm-hearted, very gentlemanly young man. He was a great enthusiast, and sympathized earnestly in all Shelley's views, even to the adoption of vegetable diet. He made some progress in a translation of Queen Mab into Portuguese. He showed me a sonnet, which he intended to prefix to his translation. It began and ended Sublime Shelley, cantor di verdade! Surja Queen Mab a restaurar o mundo. I have forgotten the intermediate lines. But he died early, of a disease of the lungs. The climate did not suit him, and he exposed himself to it incautiously. Shelley returned to London shortly before Christmas, then took a furnished house for two or three months at Windsor, visiting London occasionally. In March, 1814, he married Harriet a second time, according to the following certificate :— MARRIAGES IN MARCH 1814. 164. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Harriet Shelley (formerly Harriet Westbrook, Spinster, a Minor), both of this Parish, were remarried in this Church by Licence (the parties having been ali eady married to each other according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of Scotland), in order to obviate all doubts that have arisen, or shall or may arise, touching or concerning the validity of the aforesaid Marriage (by and with the consent of John Westbrook, the natural and lawful father of the said Minor), this Twenty-fourth day of March, in the Year 1814. By me, This Marriage was solemnized between us EDWARD WILLIAMS, Curate. In the presence of {JOHN WESTBROOK, STANLEY. The above is a true extract from the Register Book of Marriages belonging to the Parish of Saint George, Hanover-square; extracted thence this eleventh day of April, 1859.-By me, H. WEIGHTMAN, Curate. It is therefore, not correct to say that "estrangements which had been slowly growing came to a crisis towards the close of 1813." The date of the above certificate is conclusive on the point. The second marriage could not have taken place under such circumstances. Divorce would have been better for both parties, and the dissolution of the first marriage could have been easily obtained in Scotland. There was no estrangement, no shadow of a thought of separation, till Shelley became acquainted, not long after the second marriage, with the lady who was subsequently his second wife. The separation did not take place by mutual consent. I cannot think that Shelley ever so represented it. He never did so to me and the account which Harriet herself gave me of the entire proceeding was decidedly contradictory of any such supposition. He might well have said, after first seeing Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, "Ut vidi! ut perii!" Nothing that I ever read in tale or history could present a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, uncontrollable passion, than that under which I found him labouring when, at his request, I went up from the country to call on him in London. Between his old feelings towards Harriet, from whom he was not then separated, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind "suffering, like a little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection." His eyes were bloodshot, his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, and said: "I never part from this." He added: "I am always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles : In a letter to Mr. Trelawny, dated June 18th, 1822, Shelley says:-" You of course enter into society at Leghorn. Should you meet with any scientific person capable of preparing the Prussic Acid, or Essential Oil of Bitter Almonds, I should regard it as a great kindness if you could procure me a small quantity. It requires the greatest caution in preparation, and ought to be highly concentrated. I would give any price for this medicine. You remember we talked of it the other night, and we both expressed a wish to possess it. My wish was serious, and sprung from the desire of avoiding needless. 27 VOL. III. |