An Odyssey of the Soul: Shelley’S Alastor 9780231878142

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
I. Introduction
II. Allegory
III. Imagery
IV. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Vita

Citation preview

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

AN ODYSSEY OF THE SOUL SHELLEY'S ALASTOR

AN O D Y S S E Y OF THE SOUL Shelley 'j

las tor

BY H A R O L D

L E R O Y

ASSOCIATE

PROTESSOR

MIAMI

H O F F M A N 0Γ

ENGLISH

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL THE REQUIREMENTS

FULFILLMENT

OF

FOR T H E DEGREE

OF

DOCTOR OF P H I L O S O P H Y , I N T H E OF

Ν ew

PHILOSOPHY,

York

C O L U M B I A

IN

U M V 1 R 8 I T Y

COLUMBIA

FACULTY

UNIVERSITY

Μ-cm-

U N I V E R S I T Y

xxxiii

P R E S S

COPYRIGHT COLUMBIA

1933

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Published 1933

PRINTED I N T H E UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORCE BANTA P U B L I S H I N G COMPANY, M E N A S H A ,

WISCONSIN

TO MY FATHER AND THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

. . . he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. —Adonais

PREFACE Shelley is so often thought of as a dreamer given to hanging glittering cobwebs on the horns of the moon (to appropriate an engaging figure from Arthur Symons) that the attempt which I have made in this book to show consistency in his first beautiful long poem may seem presumptuous. But all too often in our reading of poetry we impose our own limitations on the matter before us and the poet becomes obscure or capricious because our minds are lacking in certain associations which his mind possessed. To revive the main ideas and impressions which had either conscious or unconscious force for Shelley when he wrote "Alastor" is to remove in large part this disability of our vision. Accordingly, I have tried to assemble from Shelley's reading and observation of nature what seem to me the essential materials which went to the making of the poem. That I have achieved completeness in this undertaking I do not for a moment profess. The philosophical conceptions which attracted Shelley most when he wrote can be traced with some approach to exactness; but when we turn from the theme to the intricate imagery of the poem, we become aware that there is much which eludes our grasp. The reading which Shelley had done before writing "Alastor" baffles by its very quantity, and most of the impressions of nature which influenced him at that time are lost except as presented in the poem. A good many of the materials included here as pertinent to the imagery

Vlll

PREFACE

are little more than reminders of conventions common to poetry in all ages, conventions which illustration could not possibly exhaust. If enough has been gathered together to suggest the nature of the forces which guided Shelley's imagination and to show the intimate relation of the more fundamental images to the theme, the purpose of this book will have been achieved. Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, who has read both the manuscript and the proof, has from the beginning given me generous encouragement and valuable suggestions in the preparation of this book. I wish also to thank Professors Ernest Hunter Wright, Henry Wells, and Η. N. Fairchild for suggestive comments on the manuscript. Mr. Edgar W. King, Librarian of Miami University, has been tireless in procuring for me books not to be had in the college library. To the kindness of Dr. Frank Lowry Clark, Professor of Greek in Miami University, I owe the renderings from the Septuagint which appear in the chapter entitled "Imagery." The list of obligations would not be complete without the grateful mention of much practical assistance from my wife and her gracious sharing of the difficulties encountered during the progress of the work. H. L. H. OXFORD, O H I O

November 27, 1932

C O N T E N T S

I . INTRODUCTION

I I . ALLEGORY

I I I . IMAGERY

1

9

59

I V . CONCLUSION

126

NOTES

135

BIBLIOGRAPHY

159

INDEX

165

C H A P T E R

I

INTRODUCTION In 1815 Shelley wrote "Alastor," the first of those long poems in which his imagination seemed to play freely and more or less capriciously with the beauty of natural objects. Three years earlier there had been some indication of this power in "Queen Mab," but the chains of didacticism had been heavy about its wings. In "Alastor" liberation came, but not without suggestions of a mind confused by the wealth of its sensuous garnerings. Crowded with a host of images, the delicacy and variety of which evinced a new genius in poetry, and animated by a spirit which etherealized whatever it touched, the poem seemed far from simple in spite of the explanatory remarks contained in the Preface. Although Professor Dowden long ago penetrated to Shelley's general intention, that intention has usually been viewed as having little organic relation with the swiftly moving images of the poem. Dowden believed that "Alastor" was written in a mood of self-detachment. "In its inmost sense," he wrote, "the poem is a pleading in behalf of human love." He believed also that "the mood which it expresses is one of sanity.'" He saw the poem as Shelley's judgment on an over-idealistic tendency in himself. Before the publication of Dowden's work John Addington Symonds, influenced no doubt by his own knowledge of Platonism and by the presence of that theme in Shel-

2

I N T R O D U C T I O N

ley's later works, had identified the idea of love and beauty expressed in " A l a s t o r " with that of the Symposium? B u t Shelley had in mind ideal loveliness of another kind, a loveliness which trails no clouds of glory from an existence prior to this earthly life. Symonds expressed another judgment which has often been repeated. He thought the poem contained a "somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment." 3 Apparently he did not sufficiently bear in mind the fact that Shelley considered it allegorical. Even after the publication of Dowden's biography, so astute a critic as Mr. Arthur Clutton-Brock could pen a discussion of " A l a s t o r " which reveals how far he was from comprehending the synthesis of ideas and images which Shelley had made. He admits, though rather grudgingly, the validity of the theme but thinks that the poet "shows but little art in the management of it," that he "almost loses it in description, much of it irrelevant." 4 This attitude has recently been given detailed expression by a scholar to whose researches in the romantic revival of the eighteenth century students of English literature are much indebted. In a paper entitled "Shelley's 'Alastor' " 5 Professor Havens has worked out the inconsistencies which he believes exist between the Preface and the poem. He concludes that the poem was begun without the author's having any definite purpose in mind and that the title and Preface, instead of bearing any explanatory relation to it, merely give expression to trains of thought induced by certain of its aspects. He is disturbed because, after mathematically calculating the amount of space devoted in the poem to some of its ideas, he finds that they lack proportional representation 6 in the Preface or fail to

I N T R O D U C T I O N

3

appear there at all, and vice versa, because certain statements of the Preface have no counterparts in the poem. These are criticisms which require to be answered in any attempt to vindicate Shelley. If the poem is to be properly appreciated, we must not abandon the attempt to discover minute connections between it and the Preface, for the Preface makes us aware that a meaning was intended. The idea that Shelley was a poet no more responsible than an imaginative child has been so exaggerated7 that we are sometimes inclined to forget his well-developed logical faculty, which shows itself in much closely reasoned prose. The act of creation brings into play the faculties of a poet's nature in a fairly comprehensive fashion, and it would therefore seem that when Shelley turned from the writing of prose to the writing of poetry, his ability to think ought not to have fallen into abeyance. That the poem had a meaning for at least one intelligent contemporary of his is altogether probable. Peacock, who supplied the title, does not speak of it as obscure.8 Since "Alastor" is the story of the inner life of a poet, and since Shelley's heroes generally exhibit characteristics which belonged in some measure, at least, to their creator, a glance at the situation in Shelley's life which so impressed Professor Dowden should contribute to an understanding of the poem. The writing of poetry is a selective process in which a fundamental emotion, generated usually by personal experience, draws to itself appropriate ideas and images from a store of materials in the poet's mind. In 1815, after having torn himself loose from an increasingly uncongenial union, Shelley had at last found intellectual companionship and satisfying love in Mary

4

INTRODUCTION

Godwin. In "Alastor," as we shall see, Shelley pictures an idealized character representing a nympholeptic tendency which existed in himself. Let us remember, however, that although he had already tried to make an angel out of Miss Hitchener, there was really very little resemblance between his relations with her and his relations with Mary. The dedicatory stanzas to "Laon and Cythna" are a beautiful illustration of a balance, for once in Shelley's love experience, of the ideal and the real. The predicament of the lover who can never hope to escape from an ideal of love impossible of realization is there, but it is there in retrospect. And it is noteworthy that, although Shelley says that Mary is the fulfilment of all the passionate idealism of his youth, he does not say so in the frenziedly passionate manner of "Epipsychidion," but with a quiet sense of the reality of a home which contains "two gentle babes" and which affords companionship with one from whom his heart never wanders. These stanzas were written two years later than "Alastor," that is at a time when, if Shelley had been wholly dominated by his nympholeptic tendency, his passion for Mary would very likely have been ended. In 1815 his delight in her love must have been even greater than in 1817. He had found in another individual the ideas and the qualities to which he was himself most attached. Intellectually, he and Mary had been sired by the same philosopher. If "Alastor" expresses "a mood of sanity," the reason is to be found in this compatibility. For a period of a few years at least Shelley sought less keenly than before for "the likeness of what is eternal." 9 When he wrote the poem, he was able to view this tendency of his nature with some detachment. The remark may seem to imply that I wish to consider "Alastor" as a

INTRODUCTION

5

Freudian document, but such is not my intention. I merely wish to establish a fact which illuminates Shelley's purpose. The realization of satisfying love was not the only change which had overtaken Shelley in 1815. Early in that year an eminent physician had pronounced him dying of consumption.10 Before the poem was written, all this was altered. The trip up the Thames in a wherry had done him so much good that Charles Clairmont could write, "We have all felt the good effects of this jaunt, but in Shelley the change is quite remarkable; he has now the ruddy, healthy complexion of the autumn upon his countenance, and he is twice as fat as he used to be."11 Shelley himself wrote to Hogg saying, "The exercise and dissipation of mind attached to such an expedition have produced so favourable an effect on my health, that my habitual dejection and irritability have almost deserted me, and I can devote six hours in the day to study without difficulty."12 This improvement in health very probably set the idea of death in relief in Shelley's mind so that it had, for purposes of artistic creation, the effect of emotion recollected in tranquillity. At any rate, in the poem death has an important place, for it serves to accentuate the allegorical significance of a life distinguished by genius and yet rendered futile by a passion incapable of finding an answer in human love. "Alastor," unlike "Queen Mab," is not an argument for a system of thought nor is it an exposition of one. It is only indirectly didactic. Yet certain philosphical conceptions with which its author had become acquainted are of con-

6

I N T R O D U C T I O N

siderable importance because they helped to form the character of the poet-hero and to determine the course of his actions. At one time, as Mrs. Shelley tells u s , " Shelley had been in doubt whether he should devote himself to poetry or to metaphysics. By the time "Alastor" was composed, he had already done a surprising amount of philosophical reading. At the University he had read Plato, and it is conceivable that he had then, or a little later, dipped into the neo-Platonists as well; but it was not until he wrote "Laon and Cythna" that he began assimilating his imagery to the Platonic idealism. He had also read Lucretius, Bacon, and Spinoza. As late as 1815 he was preeminently a child of eighteenth-century thought. Rosseau and Voltaire and the French perfectibilitarians, and, among English philosophers, Hume, Berkeley, Godwin, and Locke, had done the most to determine the bent of his mind. In at least one book, Sir William Drummond's Academical Questionsthe conflict between materialism and Berkeleyan idealism had been made real to him. Read in the light of this conflict, the poem becomes much more intelligible than it would otherwise be. The statement may seem to imply the presence of complex thought in the poem, but in reality "Alastor" develops an idea quite single in shape. Moreover, it develops that idea as logically as one need expect in a poem which preserves the author's ecstatic delight in the manifold beauty of ocean, mountain, and wilderness. Difficulties of interpretation have arisen, not from complexity of thought, but from complexity of imagery. Fewer images would have made the central idea more apparent, but the meaning of the poem would not have been exactly what it

I N T R O D U C T I O N

7

now is since the crowding images are themselves in the nature of subtle refinements upon the idea. I do not mean that the inclusion of every image can be justified (some concession ought reasonably to be made, no doubt, to Shelley's enthusiasm for natural beauty), but I do mean that the groups or clusters into which the images naturally fall can be logically related to the theme; in other words, that the poem is both an intelligible and an intelligent composition. To demonstrate its consistency is the first task of this book. Since the chief glory of "Alastor" is senuous beauty, our second task will be to consider the imagery of the poem more particularly. What was it which brought into being this amazing array of images, some bizarre and nearly all of them invested with a haunting ethereality? What objects which Shelley had looked upon and what impressions gathered from his reading determined this beautiful and complicated pattern? What associations helped to bind the images to the theme? "Suspended in the dripping well of his imagination," wrote Francis Thompson of Shelley, "the commonest objects became encrusted with imagery." 1 * The remark, amended to include ideas as well as objects, succinctly indicates the processes of the "deep well of cerebration," 16 or unconscious mind, the workings of which, as far as another great romantic poet is concerned, have been unfolded with inimitable subtlety, learning, and precision by Professor Lowes in The Road to Xanadu. It is unnecessary to repeat what that author has said for all time of the ways of the unconscious, and it would be presumptuous to attempt to do for Shelley's mental processes what

8

I N T R O D U C T I O N

only he could do with consummate skill. I shall be content, therefore, to assemble, from works which Shelley read and from his observation of nature, those impressions which seem to point most certainly to the imagery of the poem. After these materials have been considered, we may at the very end of the book, be able to glimpse by means of a brief retrospective view that disintegration and subsequent fusion of impressions into new entities which went on in the poet's unconscious mind prior to the writing of the poem. At the same time we may be able also to see something of the selective magnetism which that act of consciousness exercised upon a mass of potential materials.

C H A P T E R

II

A L L E G O R Y "Alastor," Shelley tells us, "may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind." In this the first statement of the Preface the nature of the poem is suggested. If the Preface is found to be considerably "briefer and clearer" 1 than the poem (the phrase is one which Professor Havens uses in comparing the two), the fact is no novelty, especially in connection with those "dark conceits" of allegory of which Spenser speaks. T h a t poet's letter to Sir Walter Raleigh is considerably "briefer and clearer" than " T h e Faerie Queene." 2 T o understand the poem one must grapple with much which is not in the letter, and this is entirely reasonable, for poetry is matter of detail, line upon line if not precept upon precept, and its chief excuse for being is that it cannot satisfactorily be reduced to prose. W e should, however, beware of attaching to the word "allegorical" too precise a significance. Shelley does not say that the poem is an allegory, and his use of the adjective allows for a less strictly defined intention than the use of the noun would have done. T h e allegory of "Alastor," if for convenience we agree to call it that, is obviously not the allegory with which we are familiar in " T h e Faerie Queene," in "Pilgrim's Progress," or in " T h e Divine Comedy." In all of these there is an element of moral conflict and development not found in Shelley's

ΙΟ

A L L E G O R Y

poem. " A l a s t o r " merely represents an unfortunate tendency of the mind. Y e t it retains a suggestion of the methods of allegory in that the desires of the mind are externalized and given symbolical representation rather than merely analyzed and described and in that the inevitable consequences of these desires are set before us. In this process of representation Shelley depends very largely on natural objects and airy phantoms, permitting them to occupy the place preempted in such a poem as " T h e Faerie Queene," for example, by concrete human figures. In the earlier poem nature symbols were of secondary importance, but in " A l a s t o r " their range is so extended that they oftentimes appear to have no roots in the accepted symbolism of poetry. Thus the line between symbolical representation and natural background is at best somewhat vague. Failure to appreciate these differences has increased the difficulty of interpreting the poem. W e can hardly come into sympathetic understanding of Shelley's intention or appreciate the way in which it has been realized if we expect of the poem something which that intention did not include. B u t if we are content to study both Preface and poem as we find them, we shall see that the two are consistent and that Shelley did all that he set out to do. With these considerations in mind, there can be no particular harm in using the word "allegory" as the most convenient means of indicating the metaphorical representation of a mental state and of the effects which follow from it. The poet about whom Shelley writes in " A l a s t o r " is, like nearly all of his heroes, a child of nature and of phi-

ALLEGORY

II

losophy. On this point the Preface and the poem are in perfect agreement. In the words of the Preface He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. In the poem, in harmony with these statements, the poet pursues "Nature's most secret steps," 3 through the wild scenery of volcanic mountains, bituminous lakes, labyrinthine caverns, and lonesome valleys. He visits the ruins of antique cities, those "memorials of the world's youth," 4 for these are included in "the magnificence and beauty of the external world," and pores upon them until he penetrates to The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. Line 1281 It is distinctly said of him, moreover, that Every sight And sound from the vast earth and circumambient air, Sent to his heart its choicest impulses, Lines 68-70 and that The fountains of divine philosophy Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past In truth or fable consecrates, he felt And knew. Lines 71-75

12

ALLEGORY

The manner of the poet's education as revealed in both Preface and poem agrees with Locke's theory of knowledge. The wording of the Preface—"the magnificence and beauty of the universe sinks into the frame of his conceptions"—is a hauntingly suggestive epitome of the account, in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, of how sensations become the origin of both simple and complex ideas, "sink," as it were, into the mind. Not a word in Preface or poem indicates the presence in the poet-hero of those innate ideas of Plato the existence of which Locke set out to disprove.8 The mind of the poet is formed from without. It could not have been otherwise formed, for in 1815 Shelley believed firmly in the psychology of sensation. We have only to read the "Speculations on Metaphysics," assigned by Mrs. Shelley to the year 1815, and the essay "On Life," written in all probability about the same time,6 to discover that the clues to both preface and poem lie in the psychology of sensation and in a system of philosophy founded upon it. "It is an axiom in mental philosophy," declares Shelley's little essay on "The Mind," which is a part of the "Speculations," "that we can think of nothing which we have not perceived": . . . When I say that we can think of nothing, I mean, we can imagine nothing, we can remember nothing, we can reason of nothing, we can foresee nothing. The most astonishing combinations of poetry, the subtlest deductions of logic and mathematics, are no other than combinations which the intellect makes of sensations according to its laws. 7

This is a simplification of what Locke had labored throughout his long but intensely human work to estab-

A L L E G O R Y

13

lish. I t reads like a d e l i b e r a t e p a r a p h r a s e of these w o r d s of the philosopher h i m s e l f : . . . All those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here: in all that great extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation. 8 I n this r e s o u n d i n g p a s s a g e lies t h e g e r m not o n l y of the e d u c a t i o n of S h e l l e y ' s p o e t b u t a l s o of t h a t c r e a t i o n of his o w n mind, his vision of the v e i l e d m a i d e n . T o recognize the p s y c h o l o g y of L o c k e in t h e p o e m a n d in the P r e f a c e is a l s o to a d m i t c o n n e c t i o n s w i t h

other

t h i n k e r s of the e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y w h o b u i l t u p o n his t h e o r y of k n o w l e d g e a n d w h o s e w o r k s w e r e k n o w n S h e l l e y . T h e most i m p o r t a n t a m o n g these w e r e

to

Bishop

B e r k e l e y a n d Sir W i l l i a m D r u m m o n d . I n t h e e s s a y " O n L i f e " S h e l l e y d e c l a r e d t h a t in D r u m m o n d ' s Questions

Academical

"perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement

of the intellectual s y s t e m " 8 w a s to b e f o u n d . N e v e r t h e l e s s , I d o not b e l i e v e that D r u m m o n d ' s e c c e n t r i c d e f e n s e of the B e r k e l e y a n idealism c a n b e t a k e n as a f a i r g a u g e of Shell e y ' s u n d e r s t a n d i n g of t h a t s y s t e m , f o r D r u m m o n d never c o m p l e t e d his w o r k , a n d in the one v o l u m e

published10

he never g o t to a f u l l e x p l a n a t i o n of his p h i l o s o p h y . I n this first

v o l u m e , a s s u m i n g t h e p o i n t of v i e w of an e x t r e m e

sensationalist, he p a s s e d in r e v i e w , f o r p u r p o s e s of r e f u t a tion, m u c h m a t e r i a l t a k e n f r o m o t h e r p h i l o s o p h e r s than B e r k e l e y . Since it b r o u g h t into f o c u s a v a r i e t y of philosophical opinions, t h e b o o k w a s p r o b a b l y v a l u a b l e t o Shell e y a n d e s p e c i a l l y p l e a s i n g to h i m . O r it m a y b e

that

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ALLEGORY

Drummond's recognition of feeling as the chief determinant of men's actions was relished by Shelley because he himself was breaking away from a Godwinian dependence on pure reason. Whatever the explanation of Shelley's praise may be, there is much in "Alastor" that cannot very satisfactorily be explained without reference to Berkeley himself. 11 We ought, therefore, to attempt some definition of that philosopher's major conceptions. Berkeley believed in the existence and in the reality of the external universe, but he held that neither this existence, nor this reality, consists in matter, either corporeally or abstractly considered. 12 "Whatever we see, feel, hear or anywise conceive or understand, remains as secure as ever, and is as real as ever," he wrote in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.13 But there was no reality apart from spirit. The universe exists, but it derives its reality only from being perceived, and spirit alone perceives. 14 It is imperfectly perceived by finite minds; it is perfectly perceived by God, the infinite mind. 15 Again, it is the medium through which infinite spirit addresses finite spirits. 16 There are, therefore, three degrees of reality: the lowest degree, things, which exist only in perception; the highest degree, God; and the middle degree, the minds of men." As we learn from the essay "On Life," this system had the effect of greatly accentuating the mystery of the universe for Shelley. H e says that "the popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early conducted" him "to materialism." 18 H e

ALLEGORY

15

goes on to express his dissatisfaction with the "seducing system" of the materialists and adds: man is a being 0f high aspirations, "looking both before and after," whose "thoughts wander through eternity," disclaiming alliance with transience and decay; incapable of imagining to himself annihilation; existing but in the future and the past; being not what he is but what he has been and shall be. Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution.19 We should note in passing, for we shall need the information later, that although Shelley considers the mind free to roam through the universe and incapable of picturing an end to its existence, he does not say that there is no end. The enigma of existence was not solved for him by the Berkeleyan idealism. The system had merely intensified his awareness of that enigma, as the following passage from the same essay indicates: What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are bom, and our birth is unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being! Rightly used they make evident our ignorance to ourselves, and this is much. For what are we? Whence do we come? And whither do we go? Is birth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What is birth and death?20 Neither a thorough-going Berkeleyan nor a thoroughgoing Platonist would ask these questions. Both would be convinced of the existence of God and of the immortality

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of the soul. 21 Berkeley and D r u m m o n d were theists, and consequently attached to the doctrine of immortality. For Berkeley God was the supreme and final cause, omnipotent and omnipresent in its efficiency. H e had, says Professor Johnston, "no s y m p a t h y with efforts to extrude God f r o m the universe by allowing him the doubtful privilege of being a 'remote original cause.' " 2 2 Yet Shelley in the essay " O n L i f e " looks for just such a cause, saying, It is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind. 23 Although D r u m m o n d ' s affirmation of the existence of God is much more feeble and less closely articulated with Christianity t h a n Berkeley's, it had called forth Shelley's condemnation in the notes to "Queen M a b . " Writing of the atheism which he believed consistent with the Newtonian system, Shelley had said: Sir W. [Sir William Drummond] seems to consider the atheism to which it leads, as a sufficient presumption of the system of gravitation 24 : but surely it is more consistent with the good faith of philosophy to admit a deduction from facts than an hypothesis incapable of proof, although it might militate with the obstinate preconceptions of the mob. Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have been more suited to the modesty of the sceptic and the toleration of the philosopher.25 In 1815 when Shelley wrote the essay " O n L i f e " he was still out of s y m p a t h y with Christian theism. Although he emphatically says in the essay that he "is unable to r e f u s e assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert

ALLEGORY

that nothing can exist but as it is perceived,"26 he has no conclusive opinion as to the survival of the soul. Evidently, then, his approval of Berkeley and Drummond was not unqualified. The most that the Berkeleyan idealism had done for him was to soften the dogmatic quality of his atheism and vastly to enliven his sense of the mystery of being. In the essay "On Life" he thinks that the view of existence as infinitely mysterious has been the result of "the most refined abstractions of logic," and that such logic "strips, as it were, the painted curtain from the scene of things."27 All the accepted persuasions of men, he declares, struggle against the conviction "that the solid universe of external things is 'such stuff as dreams are made of,' "28 but they must ultimately be convinced that it is. Life, in a word, is "unfathomable."29 Now in "Alastor" the action takes place against the background of a universe thus replete with mystery and unsatisfactorily explained. At the opening of the poem Shelley addresses the "Mother of this unfathomable world,"30 whom we may take to be the "life," or "existence," of the essay. She has never unveiled to him her "inmost sanctuary."31 He knows nothing at all of her true nature, although he has employed various means of challenging her. At the same time, he feels himself a brother to "earth, air, and ocean,"32 the "natural piety"33 which he expresses revealing the influence of that vague pantheism which was so common among the romantics and which he probably owed, not only to Wordsworth and Coleridge and other poets, but also to his reading of Spinoza.34 But whether viewed pantheistically

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or f r o m the standpoint of Berkeleyan idealism, the external universe is for him nothing b u t a "phantasmal scene." 3 5 T h i s striking phrase occurs at the end of the poem and offers us the poetic equivalent of Berkeley's conception t h a t matter exists only as perceived. It is a phantom because it lies beyond the knowledge of the mind, because the mind can know nothing but ideas. T h e connection of this point of view with the mind of the poet in the poem would seem to be clear. Berkeley himself had expressed admiration for the order of nature, and, in at least one passage, had used the words "magnificence" and "beauty" 3 6 that occur in Shelley's Preface to declare its direct connection with a God infinitely wise and good. D r u m m o n d had put Berkeley's notion of the origin of men's ideas in striking form when he wrote that there were innumerable differences, not only between the objects, and the classes of objects, which excite our attention, but between the modes, the relations, and the degrees, in which they present themselves to the understanding. Hence proceed all those varieties in the state of the soul, which occasion the happiness or misery of human existence. Our minds are either tranquil or troubled, either joyful or sorrowful, according to the nature of our sensations.37 I n the preface the same ideas appear when Shelley writes of the p o e t : The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed.

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19

In the poem these ideas are carried out in the poet's wide acquaintance with nature, with the relics of earlier civilizations, and with the noblest creations of man's thought. They are carried out also in his happiness. Before he dreamed of the veiled maiden, "he held his way" in "joy and exultation," 38 a condition inevitably produced by the quality of the sensations which had formed his mind.

The change in the poet's condition is thus described in the Preface: The period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. If we carefully consider the language of this passage, we see that its real meaning is that the poet has first united in himself "speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures" and that he then projects them into an imaginary "Being whom he loves." Since he himself is poet, philosopher, and lover all in one, this being must likewise unite

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"all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful," which these three severally can depict. Let us see how the poem presents this idea. It shows the poet as at first too much absorbed in nature and philosophy to be aware of love and, consequently, as indifferent to the attentions of the Arab maiden, who looked but dared not speak her affection.39 The poet wandered on through the aerial mountains until he reached a deep glen in the Vale of Cashmire. Then the need for love first awoke in him, and the veiled maiden appeared to him in his sleep: Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, And lofty hopes of divine liberty, Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, Herself a poet. Lines 153-61

She was, in short, his idealized intelligence, or inner self, in the form of a woman. The folly of seeking the "prototype" of such a conception is at once apparent. A search of this kind can only end in that "disappointment" by which the Preface declares the young poet was "blasted." Why it is that the poet thus fell in love with his own nature is a question that we must defer for a little. What we are at present interested in is the relation of his vision to Locke's psychology. " T h e dreams of sleeping men," Locke had said, "are

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. . . all made up of the waking man's ideas; though for the most part oddly put together."40 The dream of Shelley's poet exactly answers to this conception. It is oddly put together because it combines his consciousness of his own nature with the impressions his mind has gathered through the senses of the external form of woman. That form is made most alluring to him in his dream of the veiled maiden. He sees Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare, Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. Lines 176-80

This is not the idea of love which Plato expounded in the Symposium through the words of Diotima to Socrates. The veiled maiden is, as Mrs. Campbell has said, "much too earthly and realistic: she who should have been but a symbol of the soul's desire steps out of the land of imagery like some scantily dressed beauty of a society ball."41 But she is, nevertheless, the symbol of the desire of Shelley's poet, even though, unlike Asia and Emilia later on, she has no distinct affiliation with the Platonic archetypes. Emilia in the "Epipsychidion" is scarcely an earthly woman; she radiates an intense "diffusion" "of light and motion," the "flowing outlines" of which are "continuously prolonged" Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world.42

Asia in "Prometheus Unbound" is from the first the symbol of an abstraction. But the veiled maiden is appre-

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hended in the dream as an individual and not as a universal abstraction. Her pure mind is the exact reflection of the pure mind of the poet to whom she appears, and her sensuous nature is the offspring of his own amorous desire. Unalleviated by Platonic associations, she not only illustrates Locke's theory of the formation of sublime conceptions and of dreams, but also, as we shall presently see, a tendency of Shelley's own nature. It may be asked at this point why the poet abandoned that contemplation of the universe and of knowledge which made him so happy. Shelley needed no evidence beyond experience of the appetite for love. Yet it is possible that even here he was aided by the philosophers without being aware of the fact. Locke's ideas of desire and the quest for happiness in relation to man's disturbing preference for the less to the greater good may have some relation to the behavior of the poet. Locke quaintly declares that "the ungovernable passion of a man violently in love" is "a topping uneasiness" 43 which is sufficient to keep the will intent on the object of desire so long as that uneasiness lasts. In this way man is often diverted from that highest good which is the object of his desires when right judgment sways him. Now that is exactly what happened to Shelley's poet, for the Preface tells us that so long as his "desires" pointed to the infinity and extent of the universe and of knowledge he was "joyous, and tranquil, and selfpossessed." These "desires" were overcome by the most powerful of all human feelings, amorous desire. And the poem, by making this desire end in futility and in annihilation of the self, allegorizes the dangers of solitude.

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T h e conception of feeling as the motive force which directs the will is emphasized b y Sir William D r u m m o n d in his Academical Questions. D r u m m o n d explains that the will has no power to raise ideas in the mind, that the will is, indeed, "modified desire." 4 4 H e says, moreover, that "there can be no desire about that, which is no object of perception," and t h a t " t h e idea, about which we will, must be previously distinguished by us."4® H e points out with special emphasis what probably caught Shelley's eye, that it is difficult to conceive how volition can influence the fancy of the poet. 46 H e then goes on to explain how sensations and ideas succeed to one another in their ascendency over the mind: Now as a moral agent does that, to which he is impelled by the more powerful motive; so an intelligent and sensible being is always attentive to the more distinct idea, and to the stronger sensation. No man 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; and because the mind cannot but give its attention to the strongest sensations and clearest ideas, which offer themselves to its contemplation ; and as we thus perceive certain ideas and sensations without our choice; so we constantly attend to them, and their dependent trains, until some new leading sensations, or ideas attract our notice. . . . The ideas . . . of each separate train may not improperly be compared to a number of moving bodies, which communicate motion to each other in consequence of one original impulse, and which continue to proceed in a diminished ratio of velocity, always according to their own momentum, to the force of the first impetus which they have received, and to the resistance which they meet with in their course, until the

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reaction of some opposing obstacle finally impedes their motion.47 T h e notion of an emotional force which wears itself out a n d is finally replaced by another is exemplified in the poem, not only by the fact that the ardor of the poet's search for the veiled maiden supersedes the "desires" that point to infinite objects, but also, that this ardor in turn exhausts itself after a time and is succeeded by another sensation, that of the languor of approaching death, and by ideas naturally associated therewith. T h i s fact seems to indicate the working of that law of necessity which so occupied the attention of eighteenth-century philosophers, as it was thought to regulate h u m a n behavior. In D r u m mond the most powerful force in determining the actions of men is feeling. T h e will is helpless in the clutch of the more powerful sensation. In Godwin, whose chapters on necessity in Political Justice constituted an important formulation of the idea for Shelley, much the same situation is presented. Yet Godwin creates a somewhat different impression by laying considerable stress on the judgment. T h e mind judges with respect to impressions, motives, and propositions as they are brought into comparison with each other, the impression, motive, or proposition which has the greatest tendency to preference being the one which ultimately prevails. Godwin further depends on the judgment to explain departures f r o m the expected conduct of men, as we see in the following passage: The character of any man is the result of a long series of impressions communicated to his mind and modifying it in a certain manner so as to enable us, from a number of these modifications and impressions being given, to predict his conduct.

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Hence arise his temper and habits, respecting which we reasonably conclude that they will not be abruptly superseded and reversed, and that, if they ever be reversed, it will not be accidentally, but in consequence of some strong reason persuading or some extraordinary event modifying his mind. 48 In this account of necessity reason has its place in effecting radical changes in human action; whereas in Sir William Drummond's account it has, apparently, no place whatever. Yet Drummond, faced with the necessity of admitting that moral chaos, rather than progress, would result from this state of affairs, takes refuge in the possibility of apprehending through feeling the objects of which reason approves: Moral writers have in vain declaimed upon the government of the passions, where they have failed to show, that it is only one sentiment, which can subdue another in the human breast. If you wish to make men virtuous, endeavour to inspire in them the love of virtue. Show them the beauty of order, and the fairness of things. Seek to elevate the mind to the contemplation of divine perfection, in which alone is assembled whatever is excellent in intellectual nature. Represent vice as indignant virtue will always represent it, as hideous, loathsome, and deformed. But do not hope that your precepts can avail you, if you forget, that will cannot be changed, while sentiment remains unaltered. There is no power by which men can create or destroy their feelings. Sensation alone overcomes sensation. 49 T h e compromise is one which we know Shelley himself employed later on. It is given clear expression in the prefaces to "Laon and Cythna" and "Prometheus Unbound." In the earlier preface Shelley says that he wrote

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the poem with "the view of kindling within the bosoms" of his readers, " a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence, nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever totally extinguish among mankind." 60 And in the later preface he declares his purpose "hithert o " to have been "simply to familiarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence" because he is "aware that until the mind can love, admire, and trust, and hope and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness." 61 It is futile, perhaps, to discuss the point further. Clearly, Shelley's poet could not act otherwise than he did act; and equally clearly, his action is made a matter of instruction to "actual men," whether or not the means by which they are to avoid falling into the same error be conceived of as the exercise of the reason or as the exercise of the feelings about things sanctioned by reason.

W e have still to consider the impassioned narcism which gives the desire of Shelley's poet its individual color. T h e brief prose fragment "On L o v e " is wholly devoted to the exposition of this particular kind of passion. Like the essays entitled " T h e Mind," it was written, very probably, in the same year as the poem. It begins with the statement of its author's inability to fathom the internal constitution of other men. Misled by the external resemblance be-

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tween himself and them, he has often thought "to appeal to something in common" and to unburden his "inmost soul"; but on such occasions he has found his language misunderstood. "With a spirit," he continues, "ill fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy, and have found only repulse and disappointment." Then begins that analysis of love which signifies so much when associated with "Alastor": I t is that powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with everything which exists. . . . We dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise, the ideal prototype of every thing excellent and lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man . . . a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness; a soul within our own soul that describes a circle around its proper Paradise, which pain and sorrow and evil dare not overleap. 52 T h e statements of the Preface which describe how the poet's vision of the veiled maiden came into being are much more explicitly given here. The idea, that not only

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the intellect and imagination, but " t h e functions of sense" as well, "have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other h u m a n beings," loses its irritating abstractness in the concrete particulars of the words, "if we feel, we would t h a t another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood." It was thus that the poet in "Alastor" desired the veiled maiden and that she in t u r n responded to his desire. He saw by the warm light of their own life Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare, Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet Her panting bosom: . . . she drew back awhile, Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, With frantic gesture and short breathless cry Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. Lines 175-87 T h e glowing limbs, the lips parted with ardor, the beamy eyes of the maiden—all are b u t the poet's imaginings of a beloved woman's equivalent response to his own desire. One more aspect of the vision should be considered at this point. According to the P r e f a c e the "magnificence and beauty of the external world" have helped to produce

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the vision, and in the poem the time of its appearance coincides with the poet's exultant wanderings amid natural scenes. Moreover, not only is the maiden's voice like the voice of the poet's own soul, but its music is like "woven sounds of streams and breezes." The vision, then, combines the lure of a beloved woman, whose soul is the same as the lover's, with all the responsiveness to be found by that soul in external nature. This identification of the self with nature forms a part of the narcism described in the essay "On Love": . . . In solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and y e t they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. 5 3

I do not know whether Shelley had come across the saying of Plotinus that "the soul beholds itself in the mirror of matter,"®4 but if he had, it may have had some connection with the essay "On Love" and with the poem even though the neo-Platonist was thinking of the soul in another situation. More than likely the essay merely expresses an idea which was the result of Shelley's experience or a logical deduction from the pantheism of his romantic forebears, in whose works the affinity existing between the soul and nature is so common as to need no

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ALLEGORY

illustration. But in the essay the effect of nature's response to the soul is compared to the effect of music, and in the poem the dream maiden sang to the poet in a voice like "the woven sounds of streams and breezes," and as she burst into wild numbers, her fair hands Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp Strange symphony. Lines 165-67

It may be worth while to consider at least one source from which this connection with music may have come to Shelley. We should recall, first, that in "Alastor" the soul of the poet has been formed, in large part, by intercourse with natural objects. When the maiden sings to him to the accompaniment of her harp, his own soul is singing to itself. But the song is not properly his; it is the gift of something that uses the beauty of the external world as the means of addressing his soul. The idea of the soul as a harp or lyre played upon in this way is expressed several times in the poem so that its inclusion in Shelley's conception of the veiled maiden can hardly be accidental. In the address to the "Mother of this unfathomable world" at the opening of the poem, Shelley attributes his own song, the poem itself, to the ideas which this "Great Parent" is to set in motion in his mind; and in doing so he uses the image of the wind-swept lyre: serenely now And moveless as a long-forgotten lyre Suspended in the solitary dome Of some mysterious and deserted fane,

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I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain May modulate with murmurs of the air, And motions of the forests and the sea, And voice of living beings, and woven hymns Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. Lines 41-49 Near the end of the poem, too, he speaks of the poet's "wondrous frame" as A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings The breath of heaven did wander. Lines 667-68 With the Platonists, the soul has listened to divine harmony before descending to earth, and may remember that music after her descent,®5 but it would be difficult to prove that, in 1815, Shelley was aware of their remarks on the subject, and, besides, the conception is not precisely the one which he holds in "Alastor." The idea which Coleridge had expressed in "The Eolian H a r p " he could hardly have missed. Coleridge had written of a simple "lute, placed lengthwise in the clasping casement" and caressed by the "desultory breeze." The "sweet upbraiding" which it poured out reminded him of "some coy maid half yielding to her lover." 56 The thought suggests the maid of the vision in "Alastor," who yields to the poet's embraces. And there is more in the poem which connects rather closely with the essay "On Love" and with "Alastor," for Coleridge speaks of the warbling breeze and of "the mute still air" as "Music slumbering on her instrument." 57 The thoughts and fancies that traversed his "indolent and passive brain" were

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As wild and various as the random gales That swell and flutter on this subject lute! 58 A n d he adds, And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the soul of each and God of all? 69 W h a t e v e r be the elements that went to the m a k i n g of these passages, they are not out of h a r m o n y w i t h the B e r k e l e y a n system.

In them Shelley found the image of

the h a r p and its music already associated with the soul in natural objects and with the soul in man, which passively receives ideas f r o m the infinite mind. T h e s e conceptions seem to h a v e contributed to the nature and the behavior of the d r e a m maiden w h o answers to the requirements of the poet's inmost self. T h e search for an ideal mate is familiar enough in the poetry of the romantics, but in Shelley it acquires the specialized f o r m of narcism. His lovers are usually like " o n e person split in two." 6 0 T h e same ideals, the same ardor of desire, and much the same kind of

physical

b e a u t y are characteristic of both. It is difficult to account for this extension of a single type to both sexes, except on the ground provided b y Shelley himself when he said that he never dealt in "flesh and blood." 6 1 W i t h him, to use his own words again, " b e a u t i f u l idealisms of moral excellence" came b e f o r e e v e r y t h i n g else. Committed to a single ideal of character (and also, we should remember, to the equal-

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ity of the sexes 8 2 ) he made his lovers as nearly alike as they well could be. T h a t this practice had some foundation in the implications of Berkeley's system is not altogether improbable. In his Principles that philosopher says: . . . It is plain that we cannot know the existence of other spirits otherwise than by their operations, or the ideas by them excited in us. I perceive several motions, changes, and combinations of ideas that inform me there are certain particular agents, like myself, which accompany them and concur in their production. Hence, the knowledge I have of other spirits is not immediate, as is the knowledge of my ideas; but depending on the intervention of ideas by me referred to agents or spirits distinct from myself, as effects or concomitant signs.63 A little later in the same essay Berkeley renders this conception clearer by declaring: when we see the colour, size, figure, and motions of a man, we perceive only certain sensations or ideas excited in our minds; and these being exhibited to our view in sundry distinct collections, serve to mark out unto us the existence of finite and created spirits like ourselves. Hence it is plain we do not see a man—if by man is meant that which lives, moves, perceives, and thinks as we do—but only such a collection of ideas as directs us to think there is a distinct principle of thought and motion, like to ourselves, accompanying and represented by it. 64 These passages may be considered as making the distance between one individual and another too great to be overcome, though this was not Berkeley's intention.6® T h e Preface to "Alastor" indicates very clearly this oppressive isolation by declaring the fate of those who, like the poet in the poem, have been awakened through solitude " t o too

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exquisite a perception" of the "influences" emanating from some mysterious "Power" in the universe. Such individuals perish through the intensity and passion of their search after the communities of "human sympathy" "when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt." That is, they try to find a mate who answers to a wholly ideal conception, and they are of course doomed to disappointment. In the poem the solipsistic implications of Berkeley's theory and this declaration of the Preface are consistently carried out. Shelley's poet is unable to separate his idea of a beloved woman from his consciousness of himself except in the matter of physical form, the idea of which rests, as indicated by the passage quoted above, on the only directly perceivable qualities that belong to human beings. But we must never forget that Shelley's poet is not a real man, but a symbol of "one of the most interesting situations of the human mind," and of one only. Shelley himself had been in that situation, we may well believe, but in the autumn of 1815 he felt himself less ruled by it. He had found a mind that sufficiently answered to his own and yet retained, as he must inevitably have perceived, its own individuality. He was doubtless happy in the consciousness of that individuality as well as in the similarity of convictions and tastes between himself and Mary. From this new vantage-ground he could view his earlier nympholeptic experiences with a cool sense of detachment that expressed itself in a warning to men not to allow themselves to be diverted from the salutary sympathy that belongs to human ties. "Those who love not their fellow-beings, live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their

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old age a miserable grave," he wrote in the Preface, pointing a moral which he implied rather than stated in the poem. Having established the harmonious relation of the poet's vision to the compressed statements of the Preface, we must examine the subsequent actions of the poet to see whether or not they accord with the Preface and whether or not they compose consistent allegory. Here we at once come into conflict with the remarks of Professor Havens, who thinks that Shelley became so absorbed in the "attractiveness" of the poet's character, "the pathos of his fate, and the beauty of his surroundings" that the theme which he had set out to treat slipped unheeded from his hands. 66 T h a t theme is love of self, of the soul within the soul. This love does not fade away, it remains with the poet to the end of his life. T h e statement of Professor Havens can be accounted for by his failure to understand that the veiled maiden is not the only symbol of this love, that she is, indeed, entirely supplanted later on by a different symbol of it. In his critique he says: . . . T h e results of the dream are neither what might have been anticipated nor what the preface describes. For the young solitary, awakening to a world from which the beauty and joy have departed . . . wonders if he may not regain the ecstasy of companionship with his beloved through death. T h a t

is, he is

tempted to suicide. 67

These statements derive from a misunderstanding of the passage which describes the poet's thoughts the morning

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after his vision. L e t us break it into fragments in order that the turn which the thought takes in it m a y not escape us. I t opens thus: He eagerly pursues Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade; He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas! Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined Thus treacherously? Lost, lost for ever lost, In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, Ο Sleep? Lines 205-13 So far all is clear. A f t e r the poet's awakening, his conscious mind takes up the quest of the dream. H i s

first

thought is that it is lost beyond recovery in the desert of sleep. T h e n , because sleep and death are habitually associated, fancy prompts him to ask whether or not death is capable of conducting to the realms of sleep. Professor H a v e n s assumes that the mere fact that the poet asks this question implies his conviction that death does lead to sleep's domain. Instead of reading carefully the lines that immediately follow he further assumes that the poet merely repeats this question in slightly different form. A s a matter of fact in the ensuing lines the poet instantly repudiates the suggestion contained in his question. H e says, Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds, And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake, Lead only to a black and watery depth, While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,

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Where every shade which the foul grave exhales Hides its dead eye from the detested day, Conduct, Ο Sleep, to thy delightful realms? Lines 213-19

Although the grammatical construction of this passage is somewhat complicated, the meaning is clear. The poet is reasoning by analogy, and this is what he says: how is it possible that the dark charnel can conduct to the delightful realms of sleep where my radiant vision dwells, when it is easily observable that the bright reflection of clouds and mountains leads only to unlighted depths in the lake? In other words, if that which is bright and beautiful can deceive, that which is dark and loathesome is much more likely to do so.68 In order to make obvious the turn in the poet's speculations Shelley added: This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart, T h e insatiate hope which it awakened, stung His brain even like despair. Lines 220-22

The doubt is the doubt of death's ability to conduct to the vision. But the poet is not absolutely certain that death may not, in spite of his analogy to the contrary, lead him to the vision, and this very uncertainty breeds a hope which is so bound up with despair that it "stings" his brain. There is surely nothing incomprehensible about uncertainty as the parent of both hope and despair. I t is an experience to which every one of us can attest. In the poet's mind the despair occasioned by his reasoning is stronger

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than the hope awakened by his uncertainty as to the absolute truth of that reasoning. I t should be clear that, contrary to what Professor Havens says, sceptical speculation about the nature of death is not to be construed as temptation to suicide. Under the circumstances temptation to suicide would imply faith in death and not doubt of it. Had the poet at this time considered death the certain means of regaining the vision, he would not have despaired. There is additional proof of this interpretation in the fact that later on, when he does resolve to try the great mystery, he is not dejected but exultant. And he is so because he has then exhausted every other possibility of reunion with the vision. From the passage about Death and Sleep Professor Havens passes to the lines in which the poet contrasts his isolation with the companionship awaiting a swan that is flying home to its mate. He rightly interprets the swan passage as the prelude to the poet's resolution to die. The mistake lies in extending its significance to the passage which we have just been considering and in misinterpreting at the same time what lies between the two. After doubting the efficacy of death to restore the vision, the poet does not immediately set out to encounter "that mighty Shadow," which later on he does seek on the treacherous ocean. Instead, he does exactly what the Preface indicates: he seeks among the haunts of men a "prototype" of his vision. It is not correct to say of him, as Professor Havens does, that he spends his time not in looking for her prototype but in trying to stifle the pain of separation and in deciding whether or

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not death may be the doorway to reunion. Had he really sought her human counterpart, he must have associated with his fellowmen, which he does not do.69

No less than seventeen lines70 of the poem are devoted to the poet's association with human beings. He is designated as the "visitant" of the cottagers, a word which in all probability was meant to imply purpose. At any rate among the human beings whom he encountered there were maidens in plenty: youthful maidens, taught By nature, would interpret half the woe That wasted him, would call him with false names Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path Of his departure from their father's door. Lines 266-71

It is true that Shelley does not present their names, one after another, like those of so many unsuccessful entrants in a beauty contest with the reasons for their not winning the prize duly appended. There was no need to do so, for they all had one deficiency, a deficiency clearly indicated: they did not correspond to the vision which the poet's inner self had created. Instructed by nature they interpreted half his woe, which was doubtless the desire for companionship, but the love which they offered was to him emptiness, and their terms of endearment were false when compared with the requisitions which his inner self made upon them. All this, it must be remembered, intervenes between the fanciful speculation of the poet as to the possibility of reaching his vision through death and the passage about

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4°

the swan. W e have first, distrust of death, then disappointing association with human beings, and now in the swan passage dissatisfaction with nature. T h e love impulse compels the poet to compare his isolation with the comfortable mating that goes on among wild creatures. I f the swan has a "sweet mate," why should he, with a spirit "more vast," with a sensuous " f r a m e more attuned to beauty," waste these powers on a world which no longer echoes his thoughts? 71 In the fragment " O n L o v e " nature is capable of reflecting the lover's inmost self, but the same piece declares, no doubt under some compulsion from Wordsworth's "Intimations," that this sympathy can be lost. When this loss occurs, the lover is but the "husk" of his former self, a "living sepulchre." 72 I n the poem, since the hero's inmost self has been wedded to the form of woman in a vision, nature can no longer embody it satisfactorily. Immediately after the comparison of himself with the swan the tormenting wonder as to the result of death returned to the mind of the poet: A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. Lines 290-95 T h e suspicion that death might prove as deceptive as sleep, which never since the night of the vision had befriended him, took so vivid a form in his mind that a " f a i r fiend" seemed to speak to him:

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41

Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around. There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight Or sound but in his own deep mind. Lines 296-98

This rejection of a supernatural neo-Platonic agent in favor of a psychological process points once more to the implications of the Berkeleyan system and to certain remarks of Drummond's about self-delusion which I shall relegate to the notes." With the poet, self was to be the nemesis of self. His own desire, at once attracted by death and distrusting it, was the paradoxical "fair fiend" that was to destroy him. The avenging genius, άλαστωρ; was within him. 74 It was that "Spirit of Solitude," to use the subtitle of the poem, which was inseparable from his incurable idealization of self. I t had made him a solitary even among men, and that, and that alone, is why Shelley wrote of him early in the poem He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude. 75 Line 60

For a moment he was almost aware of this tragedy of his own nature. But Shelley could not allow him to break through to self-detachment, for were he to do so, the allegory would collapse. The next instant he was again intent on his desire. A little shallop near the sea-shore caught his eye, and A restless impulse urged him to embark And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy caverns of the populous deep. Lines 304-7

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For the first time in the poem, the poet resolved to try his only remaining and therefore "desperate hope."

T h e exultation which he experienced after his embarkation is not to be attributed to Shelley's delight in the natural scenery he is describing, it is not to be considered as having been improperly transferred from the author to the poet in the poem. There was no reason why the poet should not rejoice. H e had tried all other avenues of approach to the vision and had entered at last upon what seemed the only possible means of reunion. H e therefore sat "calm and rejoicing" when the storm overtook his frail craft, for the spirits of wave and wind seemed to him ministers Appointed to conduct him to the light Of those beloved eyes. Lines 330-32

The ocean, however, was not in the least accommodating: his boat ran safely with the storm. A t midnight the cliffs of Caucasus appeared, and the poet cried out in joy as a cavern yawned before him to engulf the rushing sea, for death seemed certain. But neither the underground channel nor the enormous whirlpool formed by the water from the channel when it emerged into a cone-like valley among the mountains, a whirlpool that carried the boat to their summits, served to hurl the poet to the death he desired. T h e poet does not die until he has traversed the mazes of a mountain wilderness. These long and brilliant descriptions are linked very delicately, but also very firmly, to the idea which Shelley

A L L E G O R Y

43

all the while has been holding before the reader: namely, the wanderer's self-centered seclusion and his passion for the vision, that is, for his idealized self. Before we address ourselves to the task of discovering these links, there may be some point in observing that there is nothing particularly inappropriate in Shelley's having taken the poet to the inmost fastnesses of nature's solitude for the death-scene, since that individual had all his life been a frequenter of just such scenes as these. There is not only fitness but poetic justice in the fact that he who has preferred nature and his own dreams to ordinary human love should end his life in the lap of earth's now ineffectual tenderness.

Let us return now to the point in the poet's journey where his boat left the whirlpool and began the descent of a quiet brook near the summit of the mountain. Over the margins of the brook leaned yellow flowers, and these, as they For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes, Reflected in the crystal calm, Lines 407-8 are the first of those delicate links between the nature descriptions and the idea of the poem which I have already mentioned. It was no accident, surely, that the flowers were yellow or that their eyes were directed always upon their own beauty, for one whose name long ago became synonymous with self-admiration determined both their color and their posture when he was changed from a love-sick youth into

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ALLEGORY

a flower on the margin of a pool. The poet in Shelley's poem is merely another Narcissus given a new and more elaborate myth. Indeed, had not allegorical intention been uppermost in Shelley's mind, had his artistic purpose taken a slightly different direction, the title of "Alastor" might well have been "Narcissus, or The Spirit of Solitude." Shelley's meaning was larger than the Narcissus story, but the story is at the center of the poem nevertheless. It looks at the reader from time to time out of the embowering masses of imagery as shyly and as sweetly as Echo must have looked from her thick woodland haunts at the youth who repelled her advances. He, every reader of Ovid will recall, became conscious before his death of the peculiar malady of which he was the victim, voicing his torment in the cry: iste ego sum: sensi, nec me mea fallit imago; uror amore mei: flammas moveoque feroque.76 ( " I am he! I have felt it, my image no longer deceives me. With love of myself I burn. I both kindle the flames and endure them.") And at once death became desirable: nec mihi mors gravis est posituro morte dolores.77 ("Death is not burdensome to me, who with death shall surrender my sorrows.") The love of self and the desire for death, then, are symbolized by the yellow flowers, and more also, for, as I have already suggested, Shelley's meaning passes beyond the bounds of the classic story. Here, as in those other fleeting connections with the myth which appear from now on to the end of the poem, Shelley's strict adherence to his theme bends the elements of the myth to his own uses with a winsome compulsion that gives them a new significance. His immediate concern

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ALLEGORY

has two objects: the poet's determination to die, as the only remaining means of recapturing his vision, and his inability to find, any longer, lasting satisfaction in nature. We are told, therefore, that his longing as he gazed at the flowers T o deck with their bright hues his withered hair, Line 413

faded under the stress of the more powerful impulse that possessed him: But on his heart its solitude returned, And he forebore. N o t the strong impulse hid In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame H a d yet performed its ministry: it hung U p o n his life, as lightning in a cloud Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods Of night close over it. Lines 414-20

Into these lines it is likely that still another element of the Narcissus myth has found its way. The withered hair and wasted frame of the poet remind us of the emaciation which the flames of desire work on the body of the Greek youth, who is so far wasted before his death that scarcely his body remains (nec corpus remanet),78 Even before the poet embarked on the ocean in search of death, the intensity of his anguish over the departure of the dream had so reduced his vital energy that his limbs were lean; his scattered hair Sered b y the autumn of strange suffering Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand H u n g like dead bone within its withered skin. 7 9 Lines 248-51

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By introducing this change in the poet's body (he had before been "a lovely youth" 80 with eyes like "soft orbs" of "fire," 81 a "sweet voice," 82 and a form more graceful than that of the wild antelope 83 ), Shelley indicates those evil effects of complete immersion in self which in the Preface he gathers into this terse sentence: "Blasted by his disappointment he descends to an untimely grave." With the departure of the vision the poet had lost not only his physical strength but his power to find in nature a satisfying response to the soul within his soul. This loss he had experienced on the morning succeeding his dream, for at that point Shelley says, Whither have fled The hues of heaven that canopied his bower Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep, The mystery and the majesty of Earth, The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven. Lines 196-202

It is no wonder, then, that the yellow flowers could neither divert nor console him. Here a link with the essay "On Love" is illuminating. There we read: So soon as this . . . power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was. 84

Since the "strong impulse" toward death still hung over him, the poet, while passing through the dark forest that filled the mountain valley,

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47

sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank, Her cradle, and his sepulchre. Lines 429-30

The dark forest contained "one darkest glen," sweet with the odors of musk-rose and jasmine that invited "to some more lovely mystery." 85 Here it was always twilight, even at noon. Here too, there was a well that imaged woven boughs and specks of sky and, at night, stars and painted birds and gorgeous insects. And here the poet had a second vision. He thought of the forest as "Nature's dearest haunt" because in a similar setting he had beheld the veiled maiden—in the "loneliest dell" of the Vale of Cashmire, where, as in this second glen, there was a rivulet, and where "odorous plants" were thickly entwined. 86 The glen thus affords an important connection with the poet's inveterate "self-seclusion." Before introducing the second vision, Shelley was careful to suggest its identity and the form which it is to assume by means of a passage describing the Narcissus-like action of the poet as he bent over the well to look at his own reflection: His eyes beheld Their own wan light through the reflected lines Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth Of that still fountain; as the human heart Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, Sees its own treacherous likeness there. Lines 469-74

The "treacherous likeness" of the self beyond the grave! The suggestion illuminates with the effect of a lightning

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flash the vision which appeared when the poet raised his eyes from the well: A Spirit seemed To stand beside him—clothed in no bright robes Of shadowy silver or enshrining light, Borrowed from aught the visible world affords Of grace, or majesty, or mystery; — But undulating woods, and silent well, And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming, Held commune with him, as if he and it Were all that was,—only . . . when his regard Was raised by intense pensiveness, . . . two eyes, Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, And seemed with their serene and azure smiles To beckon him. Evidently the poet is a more faithful adherent of the philosophy of Berkeley and D r u m m o n d than Shelley himself, for the incorporeal image is his own soul signaling from a life that he has created for it beyond the grave. It is the inmost self which was present in the first vision, but the carnal charms of the veiled maiden can no longer appropriately represent it. M e n , unless they be Mohammedans, do not, in the words of the Preface, make "requisitions" on "the functions of sense" in other beings when they think of personal survival beyond the grave. T h e y think of mind and spirit alone. T h a t is why the second vision is without bodily suggestion except for that contained in the two starry eyes. These could not well be dispensed with, for poetic imagery is addressed to men's perceptions, which in turn depend on the physical world. Something had to be retained from our ideas of the in-

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dividual if the vision was not to be wholly unintelligible. It is true that eyes are mortal substance, but it is equally true that men everywhere consider them indicative of the inner self. In the poet's vision they beam and beckon because they express the delusive invitation of personal immortality, the false lure of the soul's hope of survival. That the disembodied soul of this second vision should speak through the woods, the well, the rivulet, and the gloom of evening is not surprising if we recall how, in the essay on Love, Nature answers to the soul's desire. Both the veiled maiden and the Spirit by the well use this language of the soul, an ideal language distilled from natural objects. 87 And now the full purpose of Shelley's earlier indication of the poet's physical weakness and of the diminished ardor of his spirit would seem to be clear. Not only does the poet's emaciation give visible embodiment to the blasting effects of his self-contemplation, but it explains why the second vision is different from the first. The vision of the veiled maiden came to the poet when he was in the full flush of physical desire. It therefore answered to the requisitions of his physical nature as well as to those of his intellect. Before the time of the second vision physical desire had departed along with the vigor which supported it. The form in which his idealized self appears to him need no longer be that of woman. Yet he is as much in love with his own soul as before. The difference is that now it is not amorous satisfaction which interests him but his own immortality. Sickness suppresses the amorous desires of the body and it concentrates the desires of the mind on the treacherous hope of survival after death. That Shelley meant just this seems probable from cer-

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t a i n r e m a r k s in t h e " E s s a y on a F u t u r e S t a t e . " I n pres e n t i n g t h e position of t h e materialistic philosopher with r e g a r d to d e a t h , Shelley w r o t e : . . . He observes the mental powers increase and jade with those oj the body, and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory changes oj our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and the intellectual principle; drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness or idiocy may utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the body, so does it sink into decrepitude. 88 I n writing this p a s s a g e Shelley was merely e l a b o r a t i n g L o c k e ' s s t a t e m e n t of t h e p r o b a b l e influences of the b o d y o n t h e retention of ideas b y the mind. I n the Essay L o c k e had remarked: We oftentimes find a disease quite strip the mind of all its ideas, and the flames oj a jever in a few days calcine those images to dust and confusion, which seemed to be as lasting as if graved in marble. 89 T h e " f e v e r " a n d the " f l a m e , " t h o u g h not necessarily recalled f r o m L o c k e , a r e b o t h in the poem. A f t e r t h e poet h a d seen the second vision, a new desire possessed h i m — t h e wish to join t h a t vision: As one Roused by some joyous madness from the couch Of jever, he did move; yet, not like him Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame Of his frail exultation shall be spent, He must descend. Lines 517-22

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51

Thus the second vision is, by the law of necessity, the inevitable consequence of the first. It represents the conclusion of that "topping desire" which L o c k e had said diverts men from the highest good. T h e poet who was at first occupied with the magnificence and beauty of the universe has sunk to the level of a contemptible and miserly hoarding of his own identity. T h e stimulus which made Shelley consider the question of immortality, and with it the evil effects of solitude, did not come wholly from his own poor health. It came also, very probably, from Wordsworth's "Excursion," published the year before. As Professor A. C. Bradley has remarked, the theme of " A l a s t o r " was partially anticipated by the earlier poem.90 He says: The Excursion

is concerned in part with the danger of inactive

and unsympathetic solitude; and this, treated of course in Shelley's own w a y , is the s u b j e c t of Alastor,

which also contains

phrases reminiscent of W o r d s w o r t h ' s poem. Its preface too reminds one of the Elegiac

Stanzas

on a Picture

oj Peele

Castle;

of the main idea, and of the lines, Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone, Housed in a dream, at distance from the K i n d .

Professor Bradley might have added that it was not only the discussion of solitude in " T h e Excursion" which helped in the creation of " A l a s t o r " but the discussion of immortality as well. In Wordsworth's poem the long arguments of the Wanderer and the Pastor are repeatedly directed against the Solitary's deeply rooted scepticism. It may be worth our while, therefore, to observe a little more particularly in what ways " T h e Excursion" served

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Shelley as a point of departure. T h e fourth book, especially, contained suggestions for both the content and the imagery of "Alastor." E a r l y in the book the Wanderer in advising the Solitary against cynicism wonders why a man so liberally surrounded by the solaces of nature should go desperately astray And nurse 'the dreadful appetite of death?' 91 Wordsworth's Solitary and Shelley's poet are quite different characters. T h e one is a profound cynic, and the other a high-minded soul who believes in immortality and only fails of being perfect through incapacity for human love. T h e words, then, do no more than suggest the poet's action in searching for death, but that much, at least, they do. Later on, the Wanderer announces the retribution which Solitude metes out to one who, disregarding the claims of the soul, seeks a refuge in the cynicism of Voltaire: He, who by wilful disesteem of life And proud insensibility to hope Affronts the eye of Solitude, shall learn That her mild nature can be terrible; That neither she nor Silence lack the power To avenge their own insulted majesties.92 Even if we grant that the Solitary and the poet affront Solitude each in his own way, we cannot fail to recognize in these lines the central theme of "Alastor," the idea of Solitude as an avenging genius. T h e fact explains, perhaps, how the title of the poem could come from Peacock. Shelley did not start from the classical conception of the

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άλαστωρ as an evil spirit, but from Wordsworth's Solitude, and it was not until Peacock supplied the Greek word that Shelley saw how admirably it fitted the idea he had already worked out.®3 Our discussion of the second vision and its implications has delayed the story of the poet's journey. After he had seen the Spirit by the well, Obedient to the light That shone within his soul, Lines 492-93 (an indication that the fire of his spirit is not yet dead and that he is still preoccupied with his particular kind of passion), he followed the rivulet through the winding dell. When his "frail exultation" shall have failed, Shelley remarks, he must descend to the grave. As he neared death, the landscape altered to suggest the severity of his fate. The luxuriance of the forest was replaced by a "rugged slope," where gnarled pines clutched the "unwilling soil," and huge rocks rose. Black gulfs and yawning caves echoed to the multitudinous voices of the stream. Then the mountain broke off abruptly, seeming "to overhang the world." The stream, now a river, fell into this "immeasurable void"94 as if it were the very symbol of life swallowed up in death, which is, very likely, what it was intended to be, for the poet had already apostrophised it as the symbol of his existence.95 But the "gray precipice" and the "solemn pine" and the torrent 96 "were not all." Even here a tranquil nook, embowered with ivy and those "children of the autumnal

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whirlwind," leaves whose brightness "rivals the pride of summer," seem to smile Even in the lap of horror. Lines 577-78

When the poet reached this recess he knew that he need search for death no further. In the description of the "wild haunt" as the death place of the poet, Shelley mingles suggestions in harmony with the metamorphosis of Narcissus in the Greek myth. He commits the "grace and beauty of the poet's body" and the "majesty" of his being to this "wild haunt" of the wind, the "music" of his voice to the storm. The colors of his "varying cheek," of his "snowy breast," and of his "dark and drooping eyes" will live again when they have been drawn up from mold and decaying leaves into "rainbow flowers and branching moss." 97 Such a transformation is most fitting for one who, though he was for a little while a truant, has returned to nature's breast. Perhaps Shelley was thinking at this point of the similar metamorphosis which Laertes hoped would overtake Ophelia's beauty: Lay her i' the earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh M a y violets spring! 9 8

It would not be surprising, either, if the idea had been helped into being by a passage in a long dialogue which Drummond put into his Academical Questions in an attempt to reduce the philosophy of Spinoza to an absurdity. Spinoza would have been a good deal surprised at this redaction of his system, could he have seen it, but that is

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not the point. His advocate declares that "when bodies suffer dissolution, their constituent particles must be mutually repelled, and must enter into new combinations." 89 The statement is a part of Hylus' argument that the moral nature is not to be separated from the physical nature and that consequently when death comes there is no further existence for the soul. The whole of this passage must have been of considerable interest to Shelley. Hylus emphasizes another point, in connection with the doctrine of necessity, which may have had something to do with the behavior of Shelley's poet. He says that all individual beings endeavour to continue in their present state of existence, as long as the means are suitable to that end; for no being resigns its present existence, unless, when compelled to do so, by the mode of its being becoming unsuitable to its state.100 The application would seem to be clear: the poet has no reason to continue "the mode of his being," for that mode has brought him only disappointment and sickness. Άλαστωρ, the avenging genius, the "Spirit of Solitude" within the soul, is about to claim its own. The punishment for that "self-centered seclusion" which the preface declares is administered "by the furies of an irresistible passion" is soon to be consummated. A little before the poet's soul fled the mansion of the body, he resigned it To images of the majestic past, That paused within his passive being now, Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe Through some dim latticed chamber. . . Hope and despair,

56

ALLEGORY T h e torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear Marred his repose, the influxes of sense, And his own being unalloyed by pain, Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed T h e stream of thought, till he lay breathing there At peace and faintly smiling. Lines 629-32, 639-45

The phrase "the influxes of sense" calls us back insistently to the sensation psychology, for these influxes are no other than perceptions. The passivity that accompanies the act of dying requires that they should now appear in consciousness through memory alone. Since according to Locke ideas derive not only from perceptions but also from the operations of the mind upon them, 101 Shelley says that not only "the influxes of sense" but the poet's "own being" "calmly fed the stream of thought." With the reversion of the poet's mind to the beauty his senses had garnered before the desire for human love came to torment him, the peace in which he had then dwelt, a peace dependent, as Preface and poem both indicate, on his observation of the magnificence and beauty of the universe, inevitably returned and he lay "faintly smiling." Professor Havens is concerned because he did not think about the maiden, but it was not proper that he should, for, as we have seen, the bodily desire which made requisitions on other human beings had completely vanished. As the great moon disappeared behind a mountain peak, his body was left with no sense, no motion, no divinity, Line 666

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an "empty husk" indeed. The loss of so surpassing a spirit is lamented in lines that cry out for the prolonged existence conferred by God upon the Wandering Jew, whose story Shelley had in boyhood embodied in verse, and for the secret of the elixir of life, which his knowledge of the attempts of the alchemists and his familiarity with the theme of Godwin's St. Leonw2 suggested; but this dream of prolonged animation is not, he says, the true law Of this so lovely world. Lines 685-86 The cruelty of men continues, the life of nature persists, but the poet has fled never to return. We have seen that when Shelley wrote the essay "On Life," he had no answer to the question: what becomes of the soul after death? Early in 1815 when he felt himself about to die, he may have answered that question sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, or have left it as he did in the essay. But at least once he emphatically denied that there was any such thing as personal immortality. The ramifications of thought in the essay "On a Future State" we need not follow: they all lead to the conclusion that for the survival of life and thought "individually considered after death" there is no shadow of proof, that nothing but "our desire to be for ever as we are . . . is . . . the secret persuasion which has given birth to the opinions of a future state." 103 The idea is in harmony with that of the most pronouncedly atheistic writer whom Shelley had read, the Baron D'Holbach, whose book Le Systime de la nature

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he had much admired. 104 But, when we turn to the poem, we do not find an absolute denial of life after death. At first the "treacherous likeness" which the soul sees across the grave sounds conclusive. But is it? Shelley may merely have meant that the likeness is incapable of being proved to exist and hence that those who, like his poet, have faith in it can never justify that faith. This interpretation would seem to harmonize more closely with the uncertainty expressed in the essay "On Life" and with the sense of the mystery of being which animates the opening of the poem than with the dogmatic atheism of the essay "On a Future State." The truth is that Shelley does not commit himself on the subject. The poet is gone and sorrow is expressed that so surprassing a spirit should be lost. The last words come on a note of gloomy pensiveness as if there were no hope, but perhaps it is merely that men can never find release from the insoluble mystery: Art and eloquence, And all the shews o' the world are frail and vain T o weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. It is a woe "too deep for tears," when all Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; But pale despair and cold tranquility, Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. Lines 710-20

C H A P T E R

I I I

IMAGERY When Shelley wrote "Alastor," he was deep in the poetry of Wordsworth. As early as "Queen Mab" he had committed himself to belief in a deity coextensive with the universe, partly because he had read Spinoza,1 but more, very probably, because in Wordsworth he had seen this conception invested with greater imaginative splendor than in any other author. Even "The Excursion," though not strictly pantheistic, contains unforgettable passages celebrating a unifying presence in nature.2 In "Alastor" the peculiar power by which the elder poet evoked from a variety of natural objects their individual properties and, at the same time, informed them with a common spirit is reproduced with astonishing virtuosity, but it is so bound up with Shelley's own individuality that it escapes slavish imitation. The ardent spirit of the younger poet has transformed Wordsworth's pantheism from a quiet faith into a passion which knocks importunately at the doors of nature's mysteries, for he was altogether deficient in the faculty of steady contemplation, which is Wordsworth's most distinguishing characteristic. In the latter half of the poem, especially, there is a haunting melancholy quite foreign to Wordsworth.3 That, perhaps, is why the master's voice, unmistakably present at the opening of the poem in the style of its invocations and even in specific words and phrases,* fades thereafter

6o

IMAGERY

to reappear only occasionally. And that, most certainly, is why, in his prayer to the "Mother of this unfathomable world," he exhibits for her approval with a childlike naivete not only those legitimate credentials of his regard, his love of earth, air, and ocean, and his sentimental kindness to animals, but also those seemingly irrelevant ones, his boyhood traffickings with charnels, coffins, ghosts, alchemy, and magic. He would surprise the unity of being by any means so ever, and this multiple approach to the mysteries of the universe gives "Alastor" its peculiar significance as a nature poem. Filled with a multitude of impressions from the external world, from books, and from his own experience of life, it passes far beyond the bounds of Wordsworthian influence and memorializes the manifold excitement by which his spirit could be swept. That the form into which most of these impressions were crowded was the imaginary voyage was no accident, for that literary device had served as one of the chosen vehicles of the romantic spirit during its struggle for renewed ascendency over the literature of England. Shelley had seen it embellished with oriental trappings in two of Southey's epics and in Miss Owenson's delightful tale The Missionary, subdued in manner though not in matter to a Crusoe-like matter-of-factness in Robert Paltock's The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, freighted with elegant sensibility in the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, and fired with the synthetic colors of romantic realism in "The Ancient Mariner." In certain lesser works also, though not fully developed, it had seemed implicit, especially in what might be called the "peripatetic" poems of the eighteenth century, those pieces chiefly of Miltonic inspiration, in

IMAGERY

6l

most of which the poet himself, rather than an objectively created character, becomes virtually a wanderer as he passes natural scenes in review before his fancy. Recollections of all these works and of many others were as essential to the making of "Alastor" as memories of Wordsworth's poetry of nature.

In the discussion which follows no attempt has been made to do for "Alastor" what has been so superbly done by Professor Lowes for "The Ancient Mariner" and for "Kubla Khan." In The Road to Xanadu the process by which the magical language of those two poems grew together, in large part from a host of images locked in words dispersed throughout Coleridge's reading, has been unfolded with a convincing minuteness of detail which is as valuable to the psychologist interested in the creative processes of the mind as to the student of literature. Coleridge, it would seem, had not only an extraordinary power of retaining images due to sense impressions but also of objectifying those which he found represented on the printed page and which very often he had not encountered in his own experience of nature. Between the Shelley of the poems later than "Queen M a b " and, I shall not say Coleridge, but the Coleridge of "The Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan," there was in this respect a considerable difference. No reader of the letters of Shelley can be unaware of the fact that the imagery of the poems depends perhaps more on his own recollections of natural beauty than on impressions gathered from books. What he saw, for instance, in the Alps in 1816 lives in the letters

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to Peacock in language both eloquent and accurate. It is equally clear that these impressions recurred in his poetry to the end of his life and that to them he owed his finest effects in description. Unfortunately we possess but fragmentary evidence of the constant stream of impressions which entered his mind from boyhood onward; hence the difficulty of dealing with imagery which combines recollections of reading with influences at once so powerful and so obscure. These influences were obviously important in the creation of "Alastor." In the absence of prose descriptions relative to the journey of 1814 from the pen of Shelley, the poem assumes, in part at least, the character of a memorial of his observations. The task of separating what he drew from nature from what he drew from books is at times extremely difficult, because there are no letters that correspond to those of 1816. The only record of the journey is Mary's History of a Six Weeks' Tour. That Shelley's hand was in this journal is very likely, for it was he who prepared it for the press. In the main, however, it is the record of Mary's impressions rather than of his own. In view of these facts the chief purpose of this discussion is to reveal the larger patterns upon which the ornate language of the poem is disposed, rather than to account for all the details of the sensuous overlay which that language presents; yet whenever materials are at hand for an explanation of these details, they too will be considered. In what might be called the fore-scene of "Alastor," those wanderings in which Shelley's poet indulged before

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he determined to seek death on the ocean, reminiscences of Volney, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and other authors have been recognized by students of the poem. 8 Since these are not essential to the allegory and since they have been conveniently indicated in Mr. Locock's edition of the poems, I shall not rehearse them here. The most interesting part of the poem is that which follows the poet's dream of the veiled maiden. But before we consider the quest upon which the poet embarks, we ought to say something more of the maiden herself. The poet dreams of the maiden in the Vale of Cashmire. The fact is important, for it leads us by the law of association to the figure which was her chief prototype. The vision is luminously vague rather than vivid, and it no doubt owes much to literary descriptions difficult to identify, but in the main it seems to follow fairly consistently one original which had greatly excited Shelley. Sometime in June, 1811, Shelley read Miss Owenson's romance The Missionary, which he called "a divine thing." 6 As his letters indicate, he lived for days afterward under the spell of the story, an experience not to be wondered at, for even today the book is a moving lyric in prose of nature and of love. At a time when Shelley was inclined to make poetry the servant of propaganda, the heroine, Luxima, stirred him to creative aspirations of a different nature, similar, indeed, to those "ethereal combinations of the fancy" 7 which were later on to compose the texture of his poetry. He wrote to Hogg: . . . Luxima, the Indian is an angel. What a pity that we cannot incorporate these creations of the fancy; the very thoughts of

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them thrill the soul! Since I have read this book, I have read no other. But I have thought strangely! 8 And he immediately adds two pieces of "maddened stuff" in verse obviously inspired by Miss Owenson's sentimental tale. Shelley's enthusiasm for Luxima is easily understood. Throughout the story the reader's sympathies are with this beautiful creature, who, like some brilliant flower of the forest that must wither when it leaves its native soil, is uprooted by the well-intentioned but ruthless zeal of the high-minded Catholic priest f r o m Spain. His success in winning her to Christanity is not due to the superiority of his religion over the religion of Brahma, of which she is a priestess, but to her inability to conquer her love for him. T h e persistence of this fatal devotion invests her with an atmosphere of pathos. In beauty, in enthusiasm, in close affiliation with nature, brought about not merely through the mysteries of her religion but also through the author's constant representation of her beauty by means of natural objects, and in the intensity of the love with which she responds to the passion of the missionary, she is close indeed to the veiled maiden. Early in the novel Luxima is an arresting figure to the missionary, who sees her first in the open air in the act of performing the rites of a Brahmanic priestess: The trees, thick and umbrageous, were wedded in their towering branches, above his head, and knitted in their spreading roots, beneath his feet. The sound of a cascade became his sole guide through the leafy labyrinth. He at last reached the pile of rocks whence the torrent flowed, pouring its tributary flood into a broad river, formed of the confluence of the Behat and

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a branch of the Indus: the spot, therefore, was sacred; and a shrine, erected on the banks of the river, opposite to the rising sun, already reflected the first ray of the effulgent orb, as it rose in all its majesty from behind the snowy points of the mountains of Thibet. Before the altar, and near the consecrated shine, appeared a human form, if form it might be called, which stood so bright and so ethereal in its look, that it seemed but a transient incorporation of the brilliant mist of morning; so light and so aspiring in its attitude, that it appeared already ascending from the earth it scarcely touched to mingle with its kindred air. The resplendent locks of the seeming sprite were enwreathed with beams. . . . A drapery of snow shone round a form perfect in grace and symmetry.9 T h e presence in this passage of the torrent may help to account for the fact that the voice of the veiled maiden was like "woven sounds of streams and breezes." 1 0 We should not, of course, forget Wordsworth's Lucy, into whose face had passed "beauty born of murmuring sound." 1 1 In "Alastor" the same beauty has found its way into still another physical characteristic. Elsewhere, as in the passage quoted, Miss Owenson repeatedly suggests the ethereality of Luxima by describing her in terms of the beauty of nature. As she disappeared in the gloom of the forest, she was "like the ray which darts its sunny lustre through the dark vapours gathered by evening in the brow of night." 1 2 On other occasions "she came darting forward like an evening iris; no less brilliant in hue, no less rapid in descent,'" 3 or was perceived by the missionary "like a vapour which the sunbeam lights, floating amidst the dark shadows of the surrounding trees." 1 4

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This insistence upon elusive beauty endows Luxima with the qualities of a vision. It was thus that the missionary often thought of her. Seeing her in a moonlight cave worshipping at the shrine of Camdeo, he "thought that he beheld . . . a vision brighter than his holiest trance had e'er been blessed with." 15 He was so haunted by her beauty that at night he often had "illusive visions" 16 of her, though in the daytime he would have trembled to approach her. In the poem the veiled maiden came as a "vision" on the sleep of the poet. Eloquence, both of speech and of body, was another of Luxima's characteristics which, it would seem, contributed to the charms of the veiled maiden. In the romance the Indian is moved to impassioned speech on the subject dearest to her, her religion. Then the native genius of her ardent character betrayed itself; . . . she poured on his listening ear, that tender strain of feeling, or impassioned eloquence, which, brightened with all the sublimity of the Eastern style, was characterized by all that fluent softness, and spirited delicacy, which belongs to woman.17 In the poem the maiden spoke thoughts most dear to the poet in a tone which held "his inmost sense suspended." And when she broke into "wild numbers," it was in a voice "subdued by its own pathos." 18 Very likely the maiden owes something of her extraordinary animation to the beautiful Indian. Her impassioned songs having reached a climax of sound, the poet turned And saw by the warm light of their own life Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,

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Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips Outstretched and pale, and quivering eagerly. Lines 174-80 H e r limbs show through her thin veil much as did those of Luxima, whose " t r a n s p a r e n t drapery flowed in loose folds," 1 9 and of whom it is remarked after she has put on the dress of an outcast, t h a t "no transparent drapery shadowed, with folds of snow, the outlines of her perfect form." 2 0 T h e " d a r k locks" of the maiden recall Luxima's "long, dark tresses." 21 H e r expressive eyes, described as "beamy and bending," are akin to those of Luxima and her lover. When the missionary was about to be torn f r o m his companion by the officers of the Inquisition, his "whole soul seemed to diffuse itself through his eyes over her countenance and figure." 2 2 And in the "smiles" of sadness which the dying Luxima turned on her lover "beamed the ardor of a soul whose warm, tender and imperishable feelings were still triumphant over even pain and death." 2 3 T h e effects on the poet of his passion for the veiled maiden seem to have been largely inspired b y the violent effects on the missionary of unjustifiably jealous love: He could not comprehend the nature of those frightful sensations which quivered through his frame—that deadly sickness of the soul with which the most dreadful of all human passions first seizes on its victim. His mind's fever infected his whole frame—his head raged—his heart beat strongly; and all the vital motions seemed hurried on as if their harmony had been suddenly destroyed by some fearful visitation of divine wrath. He threw himself on the dewy earth, and felt something like a

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horrible enjoyment in giving himself up, without reservation, to pangs of love betrayed. . . , 2 i

In the poem this convulsive and overmastering passion is represented thus: His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet Her panting bosom. . . . Lines 181-84

That Shelley was indebted to other descriptions of feminine beauty it would be fairly easy, but at the same time not very profitable, to demonstrate. In Gothic fiction especially he had encountered ethereal grace, flowing draperies, and an animation of body depending on the strength of vital spirits or on purity of soul," but the portraits which his memory commanded from these sources paled beside the grace, the ardor, and the devotion of the "divine Luxima," whose association with the scene of the poet's vision was so strong in his mind as to bring her into the poem. The shock of beholding the maiden fade into darkness woke the poet from his trance. 26 Then, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, he wondered whether death would lead him to the delightful realms of sleep where he might rejoin her. All day he held silent conference with his soul. With the return of night his passion led him forth, and he wandered until dawn, driven By the bright shadow of that lovely dream. Lines 232-33

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He visited the habitations of men and received the ministrations of sympathetic maidens, who felt something of his woe. At last he came upon A little shallop floating near the shore Line 299

of the ocean, and a restless impulse urged him to embark in search of death. Except by its fortuitous presence, this boat bears but little resemblance to the glorified craft of Shelley's later poems.27 Instead, It had been long abandoned, for its sides Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints Swayed with the undulations of the tide. Lines 301-3

In its dilapidation it exactly fits the poet's desire for death, for it seems to insure the certainty of his quest. Such was the association in which Shelley found it when he read these lines in Southey's "Joan of Arc" years before: An age-worn bark receives the Maid, impell'd By powers unseen; then did the moon display Where thro' the crazy vessel's yawning side Rush'd in the muddy wave. 28

The leaky boat in which Joan embarked landed her in a region reeking with the worst horrors of "Monk" Lewis's charnels,29 where blue flames played among the ruined tombs of an abbey, where Despair himself was clad in a shroud, and where he compelled Joan to look upon the "ghastly grinning"30 of unfleshed corpses while he urged her to end her life. There is much more in the same journey which likewise depends on the idea of death. Under

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the tutelage of her dead lover, who unites the offices of both Virgil and Beatrice, the heroine made the tour of Hades and passed with great relief to a domestic heaven a la Greta Hall and the English Lakes. A fantastic excursion, on the whole, in which reminiscences of Virgil, Dante, Tasso, and Spenser 31 are so stained with the inky terror of Gothic romance as to constitute an unpleasant but unforgettable mixture. I n Shelley's brief career literary conceptions had a curious way of coming to life, and Joan's leaky boat was one of them. In M a r y ' s journal we r e a d : at Loffenburgh . . . we engaged a small canoe to carry us to Mumph. I give these boats this Indian appellation, as they were of the rudest construction—long, narrow, and flat-bottomed; they consisted merely of straight pieces of deal board, unpainted, and nailed together with so little care, that the water constantly poured in at the crevices, and the boat perpetually required emptying. The river was rapid, and sped swiftly, breaking as it passed on innumerable rocks just covered by the water: it was a sight of some dread to see our frail boat winding among the eddies of the rocks, which it was death to touch.32 As the last sentence indicates, whether the boat in "Alast o r " is Joan's craft, or the canoe on the Rhine, or both, the association with death is equally inescapable. Still another association is important, for the poet's boat is not only the means of his search for death and the vision but also a sign of his spiritual isolation. He is, we must remember, the soul that errs through self-seclusion. T h e reader will recall that in " T h e Excursion" Shelley had read of another Solitary, upon whose deficiencies most of that lengthy work is focused. At one point this charac-

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ter anticipates the exhortations of moralists who would advise him to turn to friendship as a cure for morbid solitude by saying of himself: but perhaps he sits alone On stormy waters, tossed in a little boat That holds but him, and can contain no more.33 T h e image so exactly suits the situation of Shelley's poet that we can scarcely doubt its power of suggestion. T h e connection becomes still more interesting when we observe that only fifty lines earlier in the same book the Wanderer has uttered that warning which reads like a forecast of the theme of "Alastor," and which it may be well to repeat here: He, who by wilful disesteem of life And proud insensibility to hope, Affronts the eye of Solitude, shall learn That her mild nature can be terrible; That neither she nor Silence lack the power To avenge their own insulted majesty. 34 Very likely the little boat had from the first a close connection with the theme occupying Shelley's mind.

In Joan's voyage the passage over the sea to the kingdom of Despair is quite simple, but in "Alastor" the leaky c r a f t is not far from shore before it is beset by a violent storm which is presented in considerable detail. In spite of much imagery which seems peculiarly Shelleyan, the storm conforms in certain respects to a pattern which countless poets have followed. 35 Odysseus and Aeneas

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could hardly have failed to come into Shelley's mind when he sent his poet out on the ocean. It may be well, then to look at certain time-honored conventions even though they seem only broadly suggestive and do not illuminate the more delicate lines of the description. The familiar classical image, brought near the beginning of the passage into novel junction with the rising waves in the lines—• Higher and higher still Their fierce necks writhing beneath the tempest's scourge Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp, 36 Lines 323-25

prepares us for connections with Homer, Virgil, and Ovid, all of whom Shelley had read in boyhood. When we read of the fearful war Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven, Lines 326-28

or again, of the multitudinous streams Of ocean's mountainous waste Lines 341-42

rushing "to mutual war" and thundering in tumult, the classical descriptions of storms do not seem hopelessly remote. In his wrath against Odysseus, Poseidon roused all blasts of all manner of winds. . . . Together the East Winds and the South Winds dashed, and the fierce-blowing West Wind and the North Wind, born in bright heaven, rolling before him a mighty wave. 87

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In the same poem Hermes rode upon "the multitudinous waves," 38 and Zeus, in opposing the designs of Telemachus "poured upon him the blasts of shrill winds, and the waves were swollen to huge size, like unto mountains." 39 Virgil in describing a storm that overtook Aeneas repeated the likeness of waves to mountains in his metaphor, aquae mons and the conception appears again in Shelley's "mountainous waste." In Ovid's story of that engaging lover of antiquity, King Ceyx, which so caught the imagination of Geoffrey Chaucer that he gave it a place in "The Book of the Duchess," 41 the storm is described not only with vividness but with pathos. The association with love which this story had in Shelley's mind makes its connection with the voyage of Shelley's poet seem probable. In Ovid's spirited description the water of the ocean whitens (albescere coepit) with the swollen waves (tumidis fluctibus).li In "Alastor" the boat speeds over "the white ridges of the chafed sea." 43 The Latin poet's lines, so explicit in their emphasis on warfare, aspera crescit hiems, omnique e parte feroces bella gerunt

venti fretaque

indignantia

miscent.4*

(the rough storm increases, from every side the winds wage war and confound the angry waves) may have contributed to Shelley's battle of the elements. It is even possible that the poet's boat was partly determined by the sinking boat of Ceyx, which gave way under the stress of the storm so that the water poured through its yawning chinks. 45 Shelley had not only these recollections of classical

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poetry to draw upon but also a fund of direct impressions no less serviceable. He had crossed the Channel in a small boat one stormy night in 1814, and, as we shall presently see, the ocean scene in "Alastor" owes some of its features to this experience. Let us look first at still another experience of the journey to Switzerland which had to do with a violent conflict of wind and wave. While Shelley and Mary were spending the whole of the 24th of August on the shore of Lake Lucerne, A furious vent

d'ltalie

(southwind) tore up the lake, making

immense waves, and carrying the water in a whirlwind high in the air, when it fell like h e a v y rain into the lake. T h e waves broke with a tremendous noise on the rocky shores. This conflict continued during the whole day, but it became calmer towards the evening. 4 6

In all probability this scene found its way into "Alastor," for at the very beginning of the boat's progress A whirlwind swept it on, With fierce gusts and precipitating force, Lines 320-21

and a little later the poet found himself riding under "domes of sheeted spray," 47 thrown by the waves into the air. Yet the description may also carry some recollection of the "tyrannous" wind which "swept" the Ancient Mariner's vessel "south along," 48 or of that which drove the craft of Peter Wilkins, in a fantastic tale known to Shelley,49 helplessly before it. The most bizarre effect of the ocean voyage in the poem is that which Shelley secures by contrasting the dark violence of the sea with the sunset and then with the

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0

starry sky.® T h e moon did not rise until midnight, its appearance coinciding with that of the cliffs of Caucasus, but when it did appear, it, too, looked down on the turbulence of the waves.®1 The idea of this contrast between sky and sea may have come to Shelley from personal experience. When in 1814 he and Mary were in such haste to put the Channel between them and Godwin, they did not wait for the packet which was to leave the day after their arrival at Dover, but hired a small boat and crossed the same evening. The crossing was so rough that Mary was sea-sick all the way, and as a result she slept almost the whole of the night. T h a t is why the account of this part of the trip in the Six Weeks' Tour is so distressingly scanty. It is hard to believe that Shelley slept during so exciting an experience, but the journal gives only the faintest notion of the impressions which he must have gathered from the thunder-storm; however, it enables us to see that in writing this portion of "Alastor" he was drawing, in part at least, on vivid first-hand impressions. "The evening was most beautiful," begins the account in the journal,®2 and in the poem there is at the opening of the voyage the almost prosy statement, "The day was fair and sunny." 53 The journal continues: there was but little wind, and the sails flapped in the flagging breeze: the moon rose, and night came on, and with the night a slow, heavy swell, and a fresh breeze, which soon produced a sea so violent as to toss the boat very much. . . . The wind was contrary and violent; if we could not reach Calais, the sailors proposed making for Boulogne. They promised only two hours' sail from shore, yet hour after hour passed and we were still far distant, when the moon sunk in the red and stormy horizon,

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and the fast-flashing lightning became pale in the breaking day. We were proceeding slowly against the wind, when suddenly a thunder-squall struck the sail, and the waves rushed into the boat: even the sailors acknowledged that our situation was perilous; but they succeeded in reefing the sail;—the wind was now changed, and we drove before the gale directly to Calais. As we entered the harbour I awoke from a comfortless sleep, and saw the sun rise broad, red, and cloudless over the pier.84 From the above account it is clear that the moon shone while the rising wind stirred up a violent sea and that the moon and the lightning were both visible at the same time. E v e n though the moon set before the thunder-squall broke, there had been sufficient contrast between sea and s k y to give Shelley all the hints he needed for his description. W e may hazard the guess that a few stars were in sight along with the moon, but we should also recall the s k y under which Coleridge's Mariner sailed at night 58 and such scenes in classical poetry as that in the Aeneid in which the voyagers, mounting on the arched billows, saw three times the showered spray and the dripping stars— ter spumam elisam et rorantia vidimus astra.56

A multitude of impressions, some of them from the classics, may have combined to bring into the poem the cliffs of Caucasus and the cavern that yawns at their base. In the classical voyages such cliffs and caverns are of frequent occurrence, and earlier in the romantic period these hoary conceptions had gained a renewed hold on literature through the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe. 5 ' But nowhere in

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these descriptions is a cavern traversed by means of a boat. Ackermann believes that the scene in "Alastor" was suggested by one in Southey's "Thalaba."48 In that poem the hero's journey over the ocean, a journey which has some connection with that of Shelley's poet, though chiefly in relation to the general idea, ends at the mouth of a cavern which the boat can enter only at high tide. The hero leaves the boat a little way beyond the entrance and proceeds first on foot and then in a car to the caverns underneath the ocean. In "Alastor" the poet rides entirely through the cavern in his boat. The difference between the two passages is thus very great. Before we consider an adequate explanation of the poet's subterranean progress, let us follow his course a little farther. The stream which carried his boat emerged from the cavern into a deep valley among the mountains, a valley shaped like a cone standing on its point. This valley, at first empty, was filled by the swirling water which poured into it from the ocean, and on the immense whirlpool thus formed, the poet's boat was borne to the very tops of the mountains, where it was stranded momentarily, in imminent danger of being swept back down the abyss. At this moment, when the poet seemed so near to finding the death he was seeking, a wind from the west breathed upon the sail and the boat passed into the slender brook that took its way down the side of the mountain opposite that on which the ghastly whirlpool raged. It would be difficult to conceive of geography more bizarre; yet every link in this chain of conceptions was drawn from some more or less remote point in Shelley's reading, and each had in its original context a direct as-

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sociation with the idea of death, which occupies the mind of Shelley's poet. The cliffs of Caucasus, and the underground channel, and the whirlpool that climbed to the tops of the mountains are not, as they at first seem, merely fantastic images with no excuse for being beyond the unregulated whim of their creator, but potent symbols of the imminence of death. All the accounts, but one, from which these came happen to be, like "Alastor," imaginary voyages. Of these the first is a literary curiosity of the eighteenth century, Robert Paltock's The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins,59 In this tale, obviously inspired by Robinson Crusoe and by Gulliver's Travels, Wilkins is shipwrecked at the south pole. There he marries the beautiful Youwarkee, who belongs to a winged race and who bears him a number of winged children. We know of Shelley's delight in this fiction from Medwin's exclamation, "How much Shelley wished for a winged wife and little winged cherubs of children!" Medwin was writing of Shelley's reading as a boy at Sion House, but we know that the poet's fondness for the book caused him to return to it in 1815, the year in which "Alastor" was written. Unfortunately we have no proof that the second reading preceded composition. 60 Although the cherubs have their part in the glorified children of Shelley's later poems/' 1 the impulse that created "Alastor" did not concern itself with them. In the poet's mind, whether consciously or unconsciously, there dwelt along with the winged children certain cliffs and a cavern and a passage through the cavern by boat, and these, and not the cherubs, came to light in the poem

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through the association they had with a voyage and with death. In view of the closeness of these conceptions to what we have in "Alastor," the passage about the boat and the cavern in "Thalaba" cannot be of primary importance. In the supposed narrative of Wilkins his ship, after having landed at a desert island, was driven to sea by a storm with only himself and one Adams on board, the rest of the crew having gone onto the island for water. T h e ship continued to run "southward by west" for many days before the wind, and by the time it had ceased to blow, the two men were completely ignorant of their whereabouts. They speculated much as to why the ship continued to drive on at the same rate after the wind had subsided, and at last they were thrown into a fever of alarm by the sight of land directly ahead of them: . . . The nearer we approached the land . . . the more speed the ship made, though there was no wind stirring. We had just time to think on this unexpected phenomenon, when we found that what we had taken for land was a rock of extraordinary height, to which, as we advanced nearer, the ship increased its motion, and all our strength could not make her answer her rudder any other way. This put us under the apprehension of being dashed to pieces immediately, and in less than half an hour I verily thought my fears had not been groundless. Poor Adams told me he would try when the ship struck if he could leap upon the rock, and ran to the head for that purpose; but I was so fearful of seeing my danger that I ran under hatches, resolving to sink in the ship. We had no sooner parted but I felt so violent a shock that I verily thought the ship had brought down the whole rock upon her, and been thereby dashed to pieces, so that I never more expected to see the light. 62

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The progress of a ship without ascertainable cause is an exciting circumstance, and the author makes the most of it by postponing his explanation, which is that the polar lodestone acted as a magnet on the cargo of iron in the ship's hold. The situation of Wilkins is similar to that of Shelley's poet. In both poem and tale the boat advances rapidly toward the cliffs, and in both the occupant of the boat anticipates certain death, the one with horror, the other with joy. But there are also obvious differences. In the tale there is no escape from collision although, by what seems a miracle, Wilkins somehow survives. In the poem the poet is saved by the sudden appearance of the cavern. This means of deliverance was provided by a later portion of Wilkins' adventures. Wilkins lived for some time on what remained of the ship, making frequent excursions in a small boat to determine the extent of the rock. On the last of these occasions he sailed for three weeks without discovering any entrance into the land, being always confronted by the same unscalable cliffs. At last his boat was caught in a strong current and "sucked under a low arch." 63 He feared that the boat would be dashed to pieces against jutting crags, but in spite of "the turnings and windings"" he managed to keep it in the middle of the stream, and lighting some oil to provide the means of seeing his course, safely continued his navigation for five weeks, by the end of which time the underground stream had carried him out into a lake surrounded by forests behind which a barrier of rock reared itself in a complete circle.65 The details of Wilkins' prolonged journey through the underground channel are not drawn upon in "Alastor."

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Shelley compresses the whole subterranean course into the simple words, The boat pursued The windings of the cavern, Lines 369-70

a sentence which, though it recalls "the turnings and windings" of which Wilkins tells, is, with an appropriate change of subject, a formula frequently used by Mrs. Radcliffe to describe the progress of her characters through tortuous underground passages.®" In all likelihood the emergence of the stream which Wilkins followed into a valley completely walled in by mountains suggested to Shelley the similar conception in "Alastor." But the lake into which the stream empties in the tale has no exact counterpart in the poem. Instead there is a raging whirlpool which climbs to the summits of the mountains. For the most part an intense silence has reigned among the editors and commentators as to the origin of Shelley's mighty flood.®7 No one seems to have considered that since the poet's boat is deposited on the summit of a mountain, it bears a most striking resemblance to Noah's ark. The only occasion recorded on which the water of the deep climbed to the summits of the mountains is that of the great deluge, when "the fountains of the deep" were broken open. Here the "fountains of the deep" are very literally broken open when the cavern yawns to engulf the water of the ocean and to transport it to a point where it can cover the dry land. Indeed, this water itself becomes a veritable fountain as it boils up to the peaks of the mountains.

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We need not be surprised at the presence in "Alastor" of the deluge and the voyage of the ark, for Shelley was a constant reader of the Bible. Medwin places it next to Greek literature and philosophy among the "admired models" of Shelley. 68 And Hogg tells us that at Oxford a copy of the Septuagint "was his ordinary companion." 0 9 T h e conception of a whirlpool mountain-high did not come to Shelley from the account of Wilkins' adventures, but it is not wholly improbable that he did get some suggestion for this swirling flood from the whirlpool which Wilkins encountered within the underground cavern itself. A little way within the passage his boat fell with incredible violence down a precipice, and suddenly whirled round and round, . . . the water roaring on all sides, and dashing against the rock with a most amazing noise. 70

The presence of the precipice in itself suggests the connection of the whirlpool in "Alastor" with the steep mountain-walls, and the poet's boat, carried by the swirling water, repeats the dizzy course of Wilkins' c r a f t : Seized by the sway of the ascending stream, With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round, Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose. Lines 387-89

But here again Shelley's experience assisted him by approximating the thrills of romance. M a r y records that, during the descent of a portion of the Rhine in a diligence par eau, they were carried along by a dangerously rapid current, "the boatmen neither rowing nor steering" and the boat turning "round and round as it descended." 7 1 As we have seen, The Adventures of Peter Wilkins was

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most important in determining the cliffs and the yawning cavern. We have also noted the possible connection of the mountain-walled valley which encompasses the lake with the cone-like valley among the mountains in "Alastor." In a work of much more literary value than The Adventures Shelley had probably met another lake with a similar setting, a lake exhibiting a singular hypothetical behavior of some consequence to him. To this lake we shall come in a moment, but first we must pause to consider the nature of the work in which it occurs and the appeal which it may have had for Shelley. I have found no direct evidence that Shelley read that fascinating seventeenth-century production, the Telluris Theoria Sacra of Thomas Burnet 72 ; but it was a favorite with the romantics, and from the nature and importance of the deluge in "Alastor," and, indeed, from the likeness of the whole bizarre geography of ocean, cavern, and whirlpool to the essential conceptions of Burnet's work, there seems little reason to doubt that he knew it. Fortunately this conjecture need not rest on internal evidence alone. In the description of the Paradise of Sin in "Thalaba," a poem which Shelley had read and re-read, 73 Southey had "feebly adapted," as he correctly says, a part of Burnet's chapter on mountains. And in the long note which appears on the same pages as the adaptation he had not only praised "the whole chapter" as "written with the eloquence of a Poet" but had buttressed his remarks with a lengthy quotation from Burnet's Latin and with Gibbon's eulogy of that author as one who "blended scripture, history, and tradition into one magnificent system, with a sublimity of imagination scarcely inferior to

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Milton himself." 7 * The Latin extract and the eulogies crowd the text of "Thalaba" into a mere rivulet of print so that they could not have escaped Shelley's notice. The comparison of Burnet with Milton would of itself have been sufficient, no doubt, to send the poet in quest of the Telluris Theoria Sacra. Linked with the combined recommendations of Southey and Gibbon, both of whom he had admired extravagantly, it must have exercised a powerful compulsion. No one who has read Burnet could fail to think of the deluge with a vividness which cannot be acquired from the Bible account alone. That author shows precisely the kind of imagination to capture Shelley's interest. He views the mountains and valleys of the earth, its plains, rivers, and oceans, caverns in the land and under the sea with equal facility, and makes a kind of orchestration in majestic prose of the forms of nature comparable to that which Shelley gives us in poetry. He is at home on the highest heights and loves even better to insinuate his mind into those "Burrows, and Chanels, and Clefts, and Caverns, that never had the comfort of one beam of light since the great fall of the Earth." 7 5 The first two books of his work were written to show how the mountains, valleys, and ocean-beds were formed; how "all those inequalities came in the body or face of the Earth, and those empty Vaults and Caverns in its bowels; which things are no less matter of admiration than the Flood itself." 76 To this end he explains that the ante-diluvian world was a natural paradise, a smooth globe without mountains, seas, or valleys, that the abyss, the "deep" of the account in Genesis, lay beneath the

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crust of the earth, this crust being "the orb of the earth," which according to Proverbs "God stretched out" over the waters, that it was through the drying and cracking of the smooth globe that the fall of the earth occurred, and that the falling fragments caused the water of the abyss to dash upward to the tops of the mountains, which were no other than these same fragments tilted high in air. The conception of the falling earth, of the formation of the mountains, and of the suddenly released abyss is unforgettable in Burnet's description. As a consequence of this ingenious theory Burnet looks on those innumerable fissures in the earth's surface which so intrigued his imagination as proof that the earth is one vast ruin.77 He is possessed by an unappeasable desire to view "the Sea-caves, or those hollow Rocks that lie upon the Sea, where the waves roll in a great way underground." 78 "Those hollow Rocks that lie upon the Sea, where the waves roll in a great way underground"—that is exactly the situation in "Alastor," and there can be little doubt that this passage helped to send the water of the ocean on its way through the cavern. I do not mean to suggest that the ocean in "Alastor" has any relation to Burnet's abyss beneath the crust of the earth. That portion of his theory Shelley did not use. But he did fit the conception of the deluge which swelled to the tops of the mountains from rents in the earth's crust to the ocean as we know it, and, as I have already remarked, by this means the whirlpool itself becomes one of "the fountains of the deep" which in Genesis were "opened." During the course of his descriptions Burnet is at constant pains to refute those who hold that the deluge

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was caused by excessive rainfall. And with this purpose in mind he keeps the tops of the mountains continually before the reader, declaring with a bold sweep of the imagination t h a t the problem requires them to compute " h o w many Oceans of water would be necessary to compose this great Ocean rowling in the Air, without bounds or banks." 7 9 T h e rainfall in which his opponents trust could never have produced this earth-enveloping sea: For let's suppose as they do, that this water fell not through the whole Earth, but in some particular Country, and then made first a great Lake; this Lake when it began to swell would every way discharge itself by any descents or declivities of the ground, and these issues and derivations . . . would continue their course till they arrived at the Sea. . . . We may as well then expect that the Leman-Lake, for instance, out of which the Rhone runs, should swell to the tops of the Alps on the one hand, and the Mountains of Switzerland and Burgundy on the other, and then stop without overflowing the plainer Countries that lie beyond them; as to suppose that this Diluvian Lake should rise to the mountain tops in one place, and not diffuse itself equally in all Countries about, and upon the surface of the Sea.80 H e r e at last is the lake which swells in hypothesis to the tops of the mountains, and it happens to be the lake which, of all lakes, meant the most to Shelley. W e can easily imagine with what a start of surprise a traveler who had just returned from Switzerland would come upon this bizarre conception. But of course we dare not assume t h a t Shelley read Burnet's book between the time of his journey and the time when "Alastor" was written. Even if it was read earlier, the passage was one to associate itself with the liking Shelley later acquired for the lake in Swit-

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zerland and with the interest in the deluge which had come to him f r o m the Bible. I t is time now to t u r n from Burnet's graphic account of the deluge to the Biblical one, and here we must bear in mind t h a t Shelley knew not only the King James Version but the Septuagint as well. This Greek translation of the Old T e s t a m e n t which bears evidence in its title of the legendary Seventy who labored at Pharos at the request of King Ptolemy II, 8 1 frequently varies from the text as we know it in the King James version. According to the Septuagint, there came the flood upon the earth for forty days and forty nights, and the water was made full and lifted up the ark and raised it jrorn the earth. And the water prevailed and was made exceedingly full, and the ark was borne upon the surface of the water. And the water prevailed exceedingly, exceedingly, upon the earth and covered all the lofty mountains which were beneath the heaven. The water was raised fifteen cubits upward, and it covered all the lofty mountains,82 T h e n follows the account of the death of living creatures, after which the story thus proceeds: God remembered Noah and all the animals and all the cattle and all the winged creatures and all the creeping things that were with him in the ark; and God brought a breath upon the water, and the water abated. And the fountains of the abyss were revealed and the cataracts of heaven, and the rain was holden from the sky. And the water continued running from the earth, the water kept on running and ceased after one hundred and fifty days. And the ark sat in the seventh month on the

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twenty-seventh day of the month upon the mountains of Ararat. And the water kept ceasing in its running up till the tenth month, and in the eleventh month on the first day of the month, the heads of the mountains appeared.?3 Certain differences of phrasing between this and the King James version are at once apparent. In the first place the Septuagint gives greater prominence to the "lofty mountains," the King James version reading "high hills" 84 at the first mention of them. The second difference lies in the greater vividness of the description in the Greek of the manner in which after the flood had accomplished its purpose, the water "kept running from the earth." The insistence with which this prolonged running is presented might very easily afford to a mind gifted with a high power of visualization a picture of the water as literally pouring in streams from the summits of the mountains. That this is the picture which Shelley formed for himself seems probable, for in the poem the stream which descends the mountain-side is not an ordinary brook but is actually composed of the water from the abyss which had climbed to the summits of the mountains: Seized by the sway of the ascending stream, Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose, Till on the verge of the extremest curve, Where through an opening oj the rocky bank, The waters overflow, and a smooth spot Of glassy quiet 'mid those battling tides Is left, the boat paused shuddering.—Shall it sink Down the abyss? . . . A wandering stream of wind, Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,

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And, lo! with gentle motion, between banks Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, Beneath a woven grove it sails. 85 Lines 387, 389-95, and 397-401

The water upon which the boat floated from the time of the poet's embarkation to the time when he abandoned it in the forest is the water of the ocean, for this water overflowed the mountain-top through a cleft in the "rocky bank" and thus gave the stream its being. When the poet's boat "paused shuddering" at the summit of the mountain, it imitated the action of the ark as it "sat" on the mountains of Ararat. In the King James version "God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided"; 8 6 in the Septuagint "God brought a breath upon the earth, and the water abated." In "Alastor" recollections of these two passages are entangled in language that seems to imply some unseen agent as the cause of the wind: A wandering stream of wind, Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail. Lines 397-98

When Shelley wrote of the flood that mounted to the tops of the mountains and of the boat as resting there for a moment, he must have considered that both the meaning and the source of his imagery were plain. Doubtless he expected his readers to recognize what religious teaching had implanted in their minds. And, indeed, the association of the deluge with death is most obvious since that event caused the destruction of all but a chosen few of

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mankind. We may say, therefore, that his imagination worked with entire consistency when it linked the cliffs and the subterranean channel, associated in "Peter Wilkins" with the fear of death, with the conception of the great deep as a destroying agency.

After the poet had escaped, much less willingly than Noah, from the deluge, his boat was carried down the "placid stream" 87 edged with those self-admiring flowers, which, as we have seen, very probably owed their being to the Narcissus myth. The idea of the navigation of the small stream had long been familiar to Shelley because of its place in Southey's "Thalaba," and it was one which he was to assimilate later on to neo-Platonic mysticism. 88 The older poet's description must have appealed strongly to one who never succeeded in ridding himself of a naive and childlike delight in any kind of boat. Thalaba descends a "quiet stream" which corresponds to the "placid stream" of "Alastor." In both poems groves and flowers adorn the banks, but in spirit the two passages are vastly different, the bare description of the earlier poet being replaced in "Alastor" by delicately suggestive lines.80 We should not forget that in the creation of such a scene countless visual impressions had a part. Among them not the least important must have been the trip which Shelley made in a wherry to the headwaters of the Thames before writing the poem. In what is, perhaps, the most beautiful portion of the whole poem, the description of the wilderness, image is

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subtly linked to image to suggest a multitude of shapes having an airy setting on the mountain-side. The delicacy of these refinements upon natural objects which Shelley had actually seen or discovered in books is such that I can hope neither to leave it unimpaired in this analysis nor to suggest fully how it came into being. It is possible, however, to see certain fundamental materials in the state of comparative bareness in which they existed before they entered into the alembic of Shelley's mind. And perhaps the contrast thus produced will serve to accentuate the wonder of the change which overtook them there. In the opening lines of this description— The noonday sun Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence A narrow vale embosoms— Lines 420-23

"noonday" and "shade" and "brown magnificence" are haunting reminders of Milton's "Paradise," Imbrowmd

where the unpierced shade the noontide bowers, 80

and they are also close in spirit and in phrasing to Thomson's variation of Milton's lines in "Autumn": the fading many-coloured woods, Shade deepening on shade, the country round Imbrown—a crowded umbrage, dusk, and dun. 91

These fairly obvious connections at once suggest the presence in the scenes that follow of much which was pre-

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pared for by eighteenth-century descriptive poetry, over a large portion of which Milton exercised an important influence. 92 But were we to pursue thick shades, murmuring streams, and caves, precipices and wide prospects, all of which appear in "Alastor," through this, for the most part, uninspired and repetitious poetry, we should not be able to see the forest of Shelley's imagery for the trees. There is further reason for adopting a simpler plan in the fact that the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, the work of a mind steeped in the poetry of her time, represent the height of the reigning interest in retirement and in mountains and epitomize and even enlarge upon the materials of the century's nature poetry. T o give Mrs. Radcliffe this recognition is, after all, merely to admit the force of that Gothic strain in literature which did so much to form Shelley's imagination. 93 Before we proceed to the literary conventions which lie beneath the surface of this part of "Alastor," let us follow for a little distance Shelley's poet as he proceeds on foot beside a second stream through the dense forest: There huge caves Scooped in the dark base of their aery rocks Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever. . . . More dark And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, Expanding its immense and knotty arms, Embraces the light beech. The pyramids Of the tall cedar overarching, frame Most solemn domes within, and far below, Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, The ash and the acacia floating hang Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed

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In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around The gray trunks, and as gamesome infants' eyes, With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles, Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs Uniting their close union; the woven leaves Make net-work of the dark blue light of day, And the night's noontide clearness, mutable As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns Beneath these canopies extend their swells, Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine, A soul-dissolving odour, to invite To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell, Silence and Twilight, here twin-sisters, keep Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades, Like vaporous shapes half seen. Lines 423-25 and 430-57 N o one will doubt that in this exquisite passage Shelley's own observations of forests have an important place, but it is equally clear that all is not nature here. Nowhere is the element of art more apparent than in the imagery which links the stems of parasites with serpents, the serpents in turn with rainbow and with fire, and then with both blossoms and stems in view, compares them to the eye beams of infants that twine themselves about the hearts of fond parents. In a more comprehensive way than these details indicate, the presence of art is felt in the rich sensuousness of this description. The murmuring stream, the gloomy

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caves, the deep dell, and the thick boughs that shadow them with twilight are steeped in the love of retirement which runs so persistently through eighteenth-century poetry. When Thomson wrote in his "Autumn," in one of those frequent passages given to the praise of solitude, Oh! bear me then to vast embowery shades, To twilight groves and visionary vales, To weeping grottoes and prophetic glooms,94 the optative cast of his words expressed what so much of this poetry conveys, the desire to luxuriate in a literary mood, the studiedly pensive and melancholy enjoyment of nature. All too often this kind of poetry jumbles forests, streams, caves, precipices, and plains in a mist of contemplative dreaming, but although the love of retirement is clearly present in Shelley's description of the forest, the method of this description is far from heterogeneous. It leads on from image to image in orderly fashion and leaves in the mind, in spite of the number of details, an integral picture of scenery which for length and continuity is not equalled even in Wordsworth. One aspect of this description in particular insistently proclaims its connection with retirement poetry. This is the deep twilight which reigns under the implicated foliage. A long line of nature poets in the eighteenth century had caught from Milton's " I I Penseroso" the charm of this effect. In that poem Milton had written: And, when the Sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown that Sylvan loves,

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Of pine, or monumental oak. There, in close covert, by some brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from Day's garish eye, While the bee with honeyed thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring, With such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep. And let some strange mysterious dream Wave at his wings, in airy stream Of lively portraiture displayed, Softly on my eyelids laid.96

The "twilight groves," the "brown shadows" of pine and oak, the "close covert" by the brook are all obviously related to Shelley's forest. Important also are the winged dream and the prying daylight from which the covert is a refuge, for in harmony with these latter conceptions, Shelley's Silence and Twilight keep a "noon-day watch" and "sail among the shades" with as much facility as if wings had been explicitly assigned to them. To follow the twilight mood in poetry on its course from "II Penseroso" to "Alastor" is impossible here. It is familiar enough in certain passages of "The Seasons," and in the poetry of Collins, Gray, and the Wartons. It appears too in Beattie's best known poem, "The Minstrel," which is crudely but significantly suggestive of "Alastor" in at least one respect, namely, that its hero is a wandering poet, who, before his career is ended, unites the advantages of philosophy with those of a child of nature. 86

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B u t of more immediate consequence for Shelley, we may believe, was the theme of retirement as it appears in the poetry of Wordsworth and in the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe. In the prose descriptions of the novels and in the lyrics with which they are studded the charm of twilight and the sad musings it inspires in romantic temperaments is a recurrent theme. Mrs. Radcliffe delighted in describing some "obscure recess," not unlike the "deepest glen" of "Alastor," where "interwoven branches excluded the direct rays of the sun, and admitted only a solemn twilight." 97 In one of her poems in which the subject is night, the light of the moon effects a twilight in the valley so that "nameless objects" float dimly before the eye, assuming fantastic shapes at the instance of Fancy. 9 8 In another poem is celebrated some shadowy glen's romantic bower Where wizard forms their mystic charms prepare." while in the prose context we may read what might be the credo of the whole twilight school of poetry, the language of which could scarcely have been lost on Shelley: To a warm imagination, the dubious forms that float half-veiled in darkness, afford a higher delight than the most distinct scenery that the sun can shew. While the fancy thus wanders over landscapes partly of its own creation, a sweet complacency steals upon the mind.100 "Dubious forms that float half-veiled in darkness" aptly characterizes the sailing shapes of Silence and Twilight in "Alastor." Still closer to Shelley's language is the novelist's description of evening in one of her lyrics, where

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it is seen "sailing slow on silent wings" along the glimmering west. 101 Even if Shelley did not read the dull effusions in verse of William Mason, he could not have missed a quotation from one of the Odes which stands at the beginning of the ninth chapter of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and which falls in most happily with the sailing shapes of Silence and Twilight in his poem. In Mason's lines, thro' the west where sinks the crimson day Meek twilight slowly sails,102 is an abstraction (curiously enough, without a capital) which seems to have become one of Shelley's "twin-sisters." The other may owe her being to Wordsworth's "Yew-Trees," a poem that Shelley very probably read in the year in which he wrote "Alastor." 103 This piece contained more than one image that proved suggestive to him. In Wordsworth's poem the four trees of Borrowdale are so closely united as to form "one solemn and capacious grove," each trunk so much a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and Lnveterately convolved104 that their mingling reminds us of the "woven boughs" of Shelley's poem. We shall need to recall these serpentine fibers a little farther on, but for the present we are interested only in the abstractions which gather under the dark roof of branches. There ghostly Shapes May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,

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Wordsworth's Silence is shadowy enough to accord with the abstractions in "Alastor," but it is a seemingly motionless figure in solemn conference with other still shapes. We may believe, therefore, that it did little more than bequeath its name to one of Shelley's abstractions. The winged dream of "II Penseroso," Mrs. Radcliffe's evening "sailing slow on silent wings," her "dubious forms that float half-veiled in darkness," and Mason's sailing twilight, appear to have more to do with the nature of the twinsisters in "Alastor." The "solemn and capacious grove" of Wordsworth's four trees of Borrovvdale, the "gloom profound" of his single Yew-tree, and the mountain flood Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves, 106

all united in a single poem, which was fresh in Shelley's mind, no doubt combined with a hundred similar impressions to produce the scene in "Alastor," of which these objects are important elements. 107 Among these impressions there must have been some from "The Excursion," which Shelley had but recently read, especially of that recess among the mountains where the Solitary dwelt. There the "whispering air" sent inspiration from the shadowy heights, And blind recesses of the cavemed rocks,

and The little rills and waters numberless Inaudible by daylight,

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blent their notes with those of the "loud streams." 1 0 8 But as we have seen, a greater poet than Wordsworth had instructed Shelley in forest scenes so that we ought to call to mind the "umbrageous grots and caves of cool recess" 1 0 9 near the murmuring streams of Milton's Paradise. Grottoes and murmuring streams and shady groves are commonplaces of the poetry of all ages, and it would be foolish to attempt to trace their history from the Greeks to Shelley. Besides, in "Alastor" they seem the natural outgrowth of that love of the wild and the picturesque which is a major characteristic of the English romantics in both poetry and fiction. Even here I must be content to let these connections appear in combination with others in the pages that follow rather than to consider each detail separately. The trees of Shelley's forest escape from the mere enumeration and conventional epithet familiar in the older poets, such as Chaucer and Spenser. Even Milton's magnificent lines about the Insuperable heighth of loftiest shade, Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view,110 do not convey the same impression which Shelley presents. If we ignore the more conventional aspects of his description, that is, the meeting branches of oak and beech and the domes and pinnacles of the cedars, we see that there is an unearthly glamour attaching to these trees, especially in the lines: far below, Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,

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The travelers in Mrs. Radcliffe's novels frequently pass through forests which contain some or all of the trees which Shelley mentions. I do not mean to suggest that the ethereality of the poet's description is wholly explained by Mrs. Radcliffe. It owes its masterly effect to the modification of one natural object by another, and the inspiration which dictated the simile of the suspended clouds is unapproached in the novelist's work. Yet in a cruder way this was what Mrs. Radcliffe had done when she compared "the cheerful green of the beech and the mountain-ash" to a "gleam of light amidst the dark verdure of the forest."111 On another occasion she had, in one magical phrase, at least suggested the ethereality of these trees that float and hang like clouds when she wrote of larches as "floating in a luxuriance of foliage"112 on the edge of a precipice.113 Shelley repeatedly mentions the thickness of the foliage in the forest. First, it is "meeting boughs and implicated leaves," then "wedded boughs," then "woven leaves," and finally "woven boughs." This peculiar insistence is partly explained, no doubt, by the thick shades of the retirement poets and of the Gothic novelists, but the Vale of Cashmire as described by Miss Owenson would seem to have been of more consequence to him. In the novel the abode of the missionary is situated in a glen among the mountains in the Vale of Cashmire. Here, as in "Alastor," there are torrents and caverns114 and a forest with woven branches and, most important of all, parasites. Bits of these descriptions variously combined

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in Shelley's subconscious mind wove themselves together to form the basis of eight of the most beautiful lines of the poem. Early in the book Miss Owenson writes " T h e trees, thick and umbrageous, were wedded in their towering branches," 1 1 5 and she speaks also of "the entangled creepers of the parasite plants" 1 1 6 and of the "network of the parasite plants." 1 1 7 In "Alastor," in harmony with the suggestion of these passages, the parasites twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs Uniting their close union; the woven leaves Make net-work of the dark blue light of day. On the last occasion of any consequence on which the parasites are mentioned in the novel, they are brought into unforgettable conjunction with flowers in a charming description of islands that float on the surface of the river. These islands are formed from trees, shrubs, and fragments of rock torn by the whirlwind from the summits of the surrounding mountains, the parasites helping to bind the debris together. In the words of the novelist, these rude fragments, collected by time and chance, cemented by the river slime, and intermixed by creeping plants and parasite grasses, become small but lovely islets, covered with flowers, sowed by the vagrant winds, and skirted by the leaves and blossoms of the crimson lotos, the water-loving flower of Indian groves.118 On the same page we are told how the tragic pair of lovers stood on the edge of the stream watching "the twining of the harmless green serpent [Shelley has the same phrase earlier in the poem 1 1 9 ], which shining amidst masses of kindred hues, raised gracefully his brilliant crest above

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the edges of the river bank." 1 2 0 And just two pages earlier t h a n the passage about the islands and the parasites Miss Owenson, resorting to one of the favorite devices of the Renaissance sonneteers, had written of the "eye-beams" of one of the lovers as penetrating the soul of the other. 121 I n "Alastor" this idea also, altered to fit the relation of parents to children, which in 1815 must have been much in Shelley's mind owing to his separation from Ianthe and Charles Bysshe, is gathered into the beautiful chain of images, the materials of which we have been gradually assembling here. Dowden speaks of Harriet's delight in the blue eyes of I a n t h e and of Shelley's affection for her, 122 and since in this "gamesome infant's eyes" there was a slight blemish, it is likely that they had a special appeal for her parents, the very deformity itself calling forth a more than ordinary affection. W e should not overlook the fact that, as Dowden notes, " I a n t h e " means "violet blossom." T h u s in Shelley's tender recollection of the child from whom he was separated a link between eyes and blossoms already existed. With these various impressions from The Missionary and from Shelley's own experience in mind, let us repeat the lines from "Alastor" in order that we may see how serpents and blossoms and parasites and the eye beams of children and loving hearts and "trees wedded in their towering branches" came into "close union": Like restless serpents, clothed In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around The gray trunks, and as gamesome infants' eyes,

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With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles, Fold their beams round the hearts oj those that love, These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs Uniting their close union. I n M i s s O w e n s o n ' s novel the likeness b e t w e e n p a r a sites a n d s e r p e n t s is not even suggested, t h o u g h t h e two are so close in p o i n t of space t h a t in Shelley's recollection t h e y m a y easily h a v e flowed together. T h i s process was p e r h a p s facilitated b y W o r d s w o r t h ' s lines in his " Y e w Trees" about a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved, in which t h e t r u n k s of trees suggest t h e sinuousness of snakes. 1 2 3 N o r would it b e s u r p r i s i n g if the c o n n e c t i o n between s e r p e n t s a n d trees derived in p a r t f r o m M i l t o n , with whose influence we h a v e a l r e a d y become familiar. I n the n i n t h book of " P a r a d i s e L o s t " " t h e spirited sly S n a k e " describes to E v e his ascent into t h e f a t e f u l t r e e : About the mossy trunk I wound me soon; For, high from ground, the branches would require T h y utmost reach or Adam's . . ,124 M o r e m e m o r a b l e still is the d r a m a t i c scene in t h e t e n t h book 1 2 5 in which S a t a n , having a n n o u n c e d the success of his j o u r n e y to e a r t h is received b y a n universal hiss instead of a p p l a u s e a n d the fallen angels roll f o r t h f r o m P a n d e m o n i u m in the f o r m of s e r p e n t s to climb i n t o the b r a n c h e s of a magic grove, t h e r e to chew t e m p t i n g f r u i t t h a t t u r n s to b i t t e r ashes. 1 2 6 B u t in spite of all these crowding impressions t h e r e

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is still something to seek as far as the parasites in "Alast o r " are concerned, for the serpents to which they are likened are of no ordinary kind. T h e y are "clothed in rainbow

and in

fire."

Shelley's delight

in " T h e

Ancient

M a r i n e r " was great, and the unforgettable snakes which the Mariner saw on the rotting deep have, it seems, lent a part of their splendor to the serpent-like parasites: Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy, green, and velvet black, T h e y coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden

fire. 1"

This fire the serpents in " A l a s t o r " have appropriated, and with it the rainbow sheen of the huge snake that crawls from the tomb of Anchises, with scales blazing, ceu nubibus arcus mille iacit varios adverso sole colores. 128

T h e images which we have been following have conducted us to the well in which the poet saw his own countenance mirrored. Of the well proper we know nothing except that it was a "still fountain," Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave. Line 458

Since from this brief description it is impossible to say what connections it may have with the innumerable fountains of traditional romance, let us pass on to its surroundings, pictured unforgettably in ten lines of beauty. In its still waters it

surpassing

IMAGERY Images all the woven boughs above, And each depending leaf, and every speck Of azure sky, darting between their chasms; For aught else in the liquid mirror laves Its portraiture, but some inconstant star Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, Or, painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon. Lines 459-68 The fine image of the specks of blue darting on the surface of the water (an illusion produced by rifts in waving masses of leafy shadow) would seem to be the result of imaginative observation of nature; at any rate I have not discovered anything which seems adequate to explain it.129 The star and the "painted bird" and "gorgeous insect," though they, too, are doubtless linked with sensuous perception, must also have connections with Shelley's reading. These, it is easy to conjecture, extend beyond the works which we have been emphasizing here, but we shall not go much further than these. In the scene in The Missionary which provided Shelley with his serpents and parasites, "Flights of many-colored paroquets, of lorys and of peacocks, reflected on the bosom of the river the bright and various tints of their splendid plumage." 130 The phrase, "painted bird," may be, as indicated in Mr. Locock's notes, a recollection of Virgil's phrase, "pictae volucres," in the Georgies]131 but the adjective "painted" is of such common occurrence in poetry that to localize it seems scarcely possible. The same is

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true, of course, of the "floating" insect, though the adjective "gorgeous" does seem to link Shelley's phrase with the "gorgeous insect hovering in the air" of The Excursion.132 T h e presence of the "liquid mirror" in Shelley's description, a mirror we must remember which reflects the face of one whose consuming passion is self-love, recalls that passage in " T h e Excursion" in which the Wanderer warns the Solitary against the analytical tendencies of philosophers because these men flatter man's undue love of self. They prize, he says, The soul and the transcendent universe, No more than as a mirror that reflects To proud Self-love her own intelligence; That one, poor, finite object, in the abyss Of infinite Being, twinkling restlessly.133 T h e mirror, and the soul, a finite object twinkling in the abyss—here was a combination so close to the situation of Shelley's poet by the well that it almost cries out for the star to replace the "finite object." T h e poet looks at himself in the "liquid mirror" and is intent a moment after on a vision of his own soul inspired by that intense selflove which the Wanderer deprecates. Nor is the star far to seek, for it, too, is bound up with the Solitary and his recess among the mountains, and it mingled naturally enough in Shelley's subconscious mind with recollections of these. A few hundred lines earlier in The Excursion the Wanderer is also engaged in advising the Solitary. On this occasion he says: Nor let the hallowed powers, that shed from heaven Stillness and rest, with disapproving eye

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Look down upon your taper, through a watch Of midnight hours, unseasonably twinkling In this deep Hollow, like a sullen star Dimly reflected in a lonely pool.13* And so it is that in "Alastor" the star replaces the "finite object," which Wordsworth meant, perhaps, to be unpoetical, and the fountain becomes a mirror reflecting not only the twinkling star but the countenance of one whose soul is in love with itself.

After the poet leaves the well, a change in poetic accord with the approach of death and with the gloomy atmosphere of Gothic fiction1" occurs in the imagery of the poem. Like one roused from the madness of fever, he passed out of the green ravine and from under the "solemn canopies" of the forest to where Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed T h e struggling brook . . . And nought but knarled roots of ancient pines Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots The unwilling soil. Lines 527-8 and 530-32 Calmly he pursued the stream, that with a larger volume now Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; . . . On every side now rose Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms, Lifted their black and barren pinnacles In the light of evening, a precipice Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,

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Mid toppling stones, black gulphs and yawning caves, Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues To the loud stream. Lines 540-1 and 543-50 Suddenly the narrow pass expanded "its stony j a w s " : the abrupt mountain breaks, And seems with its accumulated crags, To overhang the world: for wide expand Beneath the wan stars and descending moon Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, Dim tracts and vasts, robed in the lustrous gloom Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge Of the remote horizon. Lines 551-59 I n contrast with this wide prospect was "the near scene" with its "naked and severe simplicity," where one starved pine Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response, at each pause In most familiar cadence, with the howl The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river, Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, Fell into that immeasurable void Scattering its waters to the passing winds. Lines 562-70 If we strip from these descriptions their purely decorative details, we have left a body of fundamental images —rocks, precipices, gulfs, and caves—every one of which

IMAGERY had entered into the composition of eighteenth-century nature poetry. But, as has already been remarked, the description in "Alastor" from the time of the poet's entry into the forest to that of his arrival at the precipice is not in the least the heterogenous collection of landscape elements commonly found in this large body of verse. It is remarkable not only for minuteness of detail but for great length and for continuity. In the presentation of these qualities in the description of mountains the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe were indispensable to Shelley. It is true that her descriptions are usually drawn with a sweeping vagueness, her interest being rather in totality of effect and in mood rather than in precision and orderly arrangement; yet they compose continuous pictures. In A Sicilian Romance, for instance, is a passage which in so far as fundamental pattern is concerned reads like a miniature version of the poet's descent of the mountain in "Alastor." In language that reflects the contemporary love of retirement and of the picturesque it describes the impressions of Madame de Menon during an evening walk: . . . She followed the windings of a stream, which was lost at some distance among luxuriant groves of chestnut. The rich colouring of evening glowed through the dark foliage, which, spreading a pensive gloom around, offered a scene congenial to the present temper of her mind, and she entered the shades. Her thoughts, affected by the surrounding objects, gradually sunk into a pleasing and complacent melancholy, and she was insensibly led on. She still followed the course of the stream to where the deep shades retired, and the scene again opening to day, yielded to her a view so various and sublime, that she paused in thrilling and delightful wonder. A group of wild and grotesque rocks rose in a semicircular form, and their fantastic

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shapes exhibited Nature in her most sublime and striking attitudes. Here her vast magnificence elevated the mind of the beholder to enthusiasm. Fancy caught the thrilling sensation, and at her touch the towering steeps became shaded with unreal glooms; the caves more darkly frowned—the projecting cliffs assumed a more terrific aspect, and the wild overhanging shrubs waved to the gale in deeper murmurs . . . The last dying gleams of day tinted the rocks and shone upon the waters, which retired through a rugged channel, and were lost far among the receding cliffs. 136

In both novel and poem a wanderer follows a stream on the mountain-side, the first stage of the course being through a forest, and the second, through a scene of rugged grandeur, of which rocks, caves, and the stream are important elements. In the poem the rocks rise into precipices on either side of the ravine; in the novel the situation is strikingly similar, for there they form a semicircle of "towering cliffs." At the end of Madame de Menon's walk as at the end of the poet's progress, the stream falls away down immense cliffs. But though Mrs. Radcliffe may have revealed to Shelley the lengths to which words could go in coordinated description of mountains, his own observations did more than any literary model to prepare him for the writing of the extended scene in "Alastor." In the History oj a Six Weeks' Tour Mary records the progress of the party through a narrow valley which must have yielded a wealth of detail to Shelley's alert senses, though from the sparseness of the prose description we catch but the merest glimpses of it: The mountains after St. Sulpice became loftier and more beautiful. We passed through a narrow valley, clothed with forests,

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at the bottom of which flowed a river, from whose narrow bed on either side the boundaries of the vale arose precipitously. The road lay about half way up the mountain, which formed one of the sides, and we saw the overhanging rocks above us and below, enormous pines, and the river, not to be perceived but from its reflection of the light of heaven, far beneath . . . Two leagues from Neufchatel we saw the Alps; range after range of black mountains are seen extending one before the other, and far behind all, towering above every feature of the scene, the snowy Alps. They were an hundred miles distant, but reach so high in the heavens, that they look like those accumulated clouds of dazzling white that arrange themselves on the horizon during summer. 137 The heavily wooded sides of the valley, the stream in its deep cleft, and the overhanging rocks, all have obvious associations with the ravine in the poem, and the view of the distant Alps undoubtedly furnished suggestions for the mountains and hills seen on the horizon from the summit of the precipice. Before we give further consideration to these scenes, let us complete our view of them by the addition of certain lines, which, though separated from the passages already quoted, are necessary to the full picture: The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist Filled the unbounded atmosphere; and drank Wan moonlight even to fullness. Lines 602-6 The mist and moonlight, the precipice, the solitary tree at its summit, the torrent that falls into the abyss, and the wide prospect which includes seas, mountains, streams,

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and vast tracts of country, have, every one of them, a literary ancestry, though this ancestry, we may believe, in view of Shelley's fresh recollection of the Alps, merits no more than a passing glance. Although Mary's journal nowhere mentions trees as growing in isolation on the cliffs of the Alps, Shelley must have seen many a solitary that resembled his pine-tree on the edge of the precipice. These forest outcasts had, however, received the attention of both poets and novelists. In " T h e Enthusiast" Joseph Warton mentions the "scathed yew-tree" growing on a barren heath, 138 and Southey, in "Thalaba," T h e first and single Fir That on the limits of the living world Strikes in the ice its roots. 139

In "The Curse of Kehama," that peculiar phenomenon the raining tree, stands alone on the summit of a mountain in the Swerga, the paradise of Indra, god of the elements. In Southey's phrase it is "rock-rooted," 140 which is the precise epithet applied by Shelley to his pine. Mrs. Radcliffe mentions "the scathed oak" hanging alone on the edges of cliffs,141 and Mrs. Byrne the "blasted oak" on the summit of inaccessible mountains, and again, "the scathed branches of a blasted oak, that, bowed by repeated storms, hung almost perpendicularly over the yawning depth beneath." 142 The author of "The Enthusiast" seeks in imagination some pine-topt precipice Abrupt and shaggy, whence a foamy stream, Like Anio, tumbling roars. 143

IMAGERY The hero of Beattie's "Minstrel," who like the hero of "Alastor" is a poet and given to wandering, not only roves Beneath the precipice o'er hung with pine; And sees, on high, amidst the encircling groves, From cliff to cliff the foaming torrents shine: While waters, woods, and winds, in concert join, And Echo swells the chorus to the skies; 144

but delights in the view from the top of the precipice, a wide prospect which in certain respects is not unike that of Shelley's poem: And oft he traced the uplands, to survey, When o'er the sky advanced the kindling dawn, The crimson cloud, blue main, and mountain gray, And lake dim gleaming on the smoky lawn: Far to the west the long, long vale withdrawn, While twilight loves to linger for a while; And now he faintly kens the bounding fawn, And villager abroad at early toil. But, lo! the Sun appears! and heaven, earth, ocean, smile.14®

This type of scene, as Professor Havens has shown,148 was common enough in eighteenth-century nature poetry, especially in topographical poems given to the celebration of some particular hill or mountain. Because it appears several times in "The Excursion,"147 which was fresh in the mind of Shelley, it probably lent considerable force to his recollections of the Alps. In the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, and, to a less degree, in Mrs. Byrne's Zofloya, the scenery is largely a running background of precipices, blasted trees, wild torrents, and vast expanses of country in which at various times lakes,

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seas, streams, clouds, abysses, valleys, and plains all have a place. The first of these authors, especially, delighted in sending her characters on long journeys through the mountains, where from time to time they come breathlessly upon some vantage-point not unlike that in "Alastor." Here, for instance, is the prospect that broke upon the awed eyes of the heroine of The Mysteries ο/ Udolpho while she was crossing the Alps into Italy: The snow was not yet melted on the summit of Mount Cenis, over which the travellers passed; but Emily, as she looked upon its clear lake and extended plain, surrounded by broken cliffs, saw, in imagination, the verdant beauty it would exhibit when the snows should be gone . . . As she descended on the Italian side, the precipices became still more tremendous, and the prospects still more wild and majestic; over which the shifting lights threw all the pomp of colouring. Emily delighted to observe the snowy tops of the mountains under the passing influence of the day—blushing with morning, glowing with the brightness of noon, or just tinted with the purple evening . . . Emily, often as she travelled among the clouds, watched in silent awe their billowy surges rolling below: sometimes, wholly closing upon the scene, they appeared like a world of chaos; and, at others spreading thinly, they opened and admitted partial catches of the landscape—the torrent, whose astounding roar had never failed, tumbling down the rocky chasm, huge cliffs white with snow, or the dark summits of the pine forests that stretched mid-way down the mountains. But who may describe her rapture, when having passed through a sea of vapour she caught a first view of Italy; when, from the ridge of one of those tremendous precipices that hang upon Mount Cenis, and guard the entrance of that enchanting country, she

IMAGERY looked down through the lower clouds, and, as they floated away, saw the grassy vales of Piedmont at her feet, and, beyond, the plains of Lombardy extending to the farthest distance, at which appeared, on the faint horizon, the doubtful towers of Turin?148 Let us leave this resounding question unanswered while we reflect upon the elements of this scene and of the wide prospect in "Alastor." Mrs. Radcliffe makes much of the effect of light on the mountains, a device which she repeatedly employs and one which was not wasted on Shelley. In the poem the whole landscape is "robed in the lustrous gloom of leaden-colored even," and the "fiery hills" mingle their "flames with twilight" on the "remote horizon." In the prose description as well as in the poem the precipice and the torrent are both conspicuous, as are also those vapors that come and go among the mountains. The transitory nature of the vapors appears to explain what seems at first sight an inconsistency in Shelley's description. The visibility of objects in the wide prospect is at variance with the mist-filled atmosphere, unless we remember that between the description of the view and of the mist there occurs that of the "silent nook" in which the poet died. Doubtless, in Shelley's mind enough time has passed to permit the arrival of one of those floating clouds that pass among the mountains. For this his own observations may have been sufficient to account, but, before he watched the ways of clouds in the mountains he had read of them in Mrs. Radcliffe. Space does not permit a survey of the many scenes in Mrs. Radcliffe's novels which may have composed a more or less blurred landscape in Shelley's mind, filled with the

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elements which he included in the wide prospect. One passage is, however, so suggestive in connection with his use of mist and moonlight that it ought not to be omitted. In The Mysteries oj Udolpho the novelist brings a party of travelers to the summit of a hill where the trees opened to admit the light of the moon and where the sound of torrents "might be said to soothe rather than to interrupt the silence." 149 Curiously enough this attempt to reconcile the noise of the stream with intense stillness is apparently reflected in "Alastor" in another seeming inconsistency. In writing of the precipice Shelley says "not a sound was heard," though but a moment before he has spoken of the roar of the streams as they fell into the abyss. But whether or not this discrepancy is to be explained by the effect of such statements on the part of Mrs. Radcliffe, certain it is that the scene which follows in the novel could scarcely fail to prove suggestive to Shelley: Before them extended the valley they had quitted: its rocks and woods to the left, just silvered by the rays, formed a contrast to the deep shadow that involved the opposite cliffs, whose fringed summits only were tipped with light; while the distant perspective of the valley was lost in the yellow mist of moonlight. 160

The "summits tipped with light" are not unlike the "fiery hills" on the horizon in "Alastor," and the phrase "the yellow mist of moonlight" makes mist so much a property of light that it may well have suggested the "yellow mist" of the poem which drinks itself full of moonlight. In Mrs. Radcliffe's description mist itself is not actually present, but elsewhere she repeatedly represents the mist seen from some lofty eminence as rolling in billow}'

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masses like the waves of the sea, and from her inclusion at one point of a passage from Beattie's " M i n s t r e l " 1 5 1 we may guess that she owed the conception to that poem. Beattie's hero experienced a "dreadful pleasure" in watching a sea of mist from a lofty height. T h e poet compares him to a ship-wrecked mariner on a desert coast as he views th' enormous waste of vapor, tossed In billows, lengthening to th' horizon round, Now scooped in gulfs, with mountains now embossed! 162 A s the History of the Six Weeks' Tour reveals, Shelley had the good fortune to see this phenomenon made actual. A s the travelers left Besangon, they were delighted with their first taste of mountain scenery, " a high precipice," a "green v a l l e y , " " a n amphitheatre of hills," all of which, we m a y believe, had some bearing on the creation of " A l a s t o r . " T h e same evening they reached an elevation from which they looked out on the whole expanse of the valley filled with a white undulating mist, which was pierced like islands by the piny mountains. The sun had just risen, and a ray of red light lay upon the waves of this fluctuating vapour. To the west, opposite the sun, it seemed driven by the light against the rocks in inmense masses of joaming cloud, until it became lost in the distance, mixing its tints with the fleecy sky. 1 ® 3 T h e full import of the descriptions in Beattie, M r s . Radcliffe, and in M a r y ' s journal is not transferred to " A l a s t o r . " T h e r e the idea of immensity alone is retained in the mist which "filled the unbounded atmosphere," but years later in "Prometheus Unbound" the conception of

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the vapor as rolling in billows and breaking against the cliffs was magnificently embodied in the description of another wide prospect. 154

T h e "horned moon" of "Alastor," as it hangs over the distant peaks, seems a very definite recollection of an evening in France, when, according to M a r y ' s journal, "the horned moon hung in the light of sunset, that threw a glow of unusual depth of redness over the piny mountains and the dark deep vallies they enclosed,'" 0 5 for in the poem the time is distinctly given as evening and the descending moon is first seen in "the lustrous gloom" of what can only be the after-glow of sunset since it causes the hills to gleam like fire. T h e journal is particularly rich in descriptions of sunsets among the mountains and of the light which they cast upon peaks, clouds, and rivers, and something of this richness of impression informs Shelley's description. I t is more difficult to believe that he had seen anything quite comparable to the river which in "Alastor" falls with the howl, thunder, and hiss of "homeless streams" into the "immeasurable void." T h e visit to the valley of the Arve, a visit which was to leave its impress on much that Shelley wrote to the end of his life, did not occur until 1816, and the journal makes no mention of cascades among the mountains. T h e nearest approach to anything of the sort is its account of the rapids of the Reuss which the party descended by boat on the return trip. 150 But the difference between these and the torrent of the poem is so pronounced that we can only believe that Shelley re-

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lied mainly on an oft-repeated convention of the Gothic novel. I n the passages already quoted the torrent has been conspicuous enough so that further illustration is not required, but I cannot forbear to add a description from a novel which had once captivated Shelley, Mrs. Byrne's Zofloya, because it summarizes many of the elements of the mountain scenes in "Alastor" and because it accentuates by contrast the beauty of the poem: Steep rocks, seeming piled on one another, inaccessible mountains, with here and there a blasted oak upon its summit, resembling rather from the distant point at which it was beheld, a stunted shrub; huge precipices, down which the torrent dashed, and foaming in the viewless abyss with mysterious murmuring, produced by the multiplied reverberations of sound.167 T o pass f r o m this stuttering, huddled prose to the pure splendor of the language in "Alastor" is like being miraculously transported from the vapors of some pestilence-haunted valley (the figure is not inappropriate to the horrors of M r s . Byrne and " M o n k " Lewis) to the clear, vital air of a mountain peak. As for the atmosphere of the poem, whatever Gothic gloom there is in it has been so refined as to escape entirely from the criminal colors that stain the romantic wilds of both these writers.

One other scene in the poem remains to be discussed, "the green recess," 158 "the silent nook," 1 ' 59 in which the poet died: Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, It overlooked in its serenity The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.

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IMAGERY It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped The fissured stones with its entwining arms, And did embower with leaves forever green, And berries dark, the smooth and even space Of its inviolated floor, and here The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore, In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay, Red, yellow, or etherially pale, Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach The winds to love tranquillity. Lines 573-88

W i t h o u t making a n y a t t e m p t to disentangle all the elements of this beautiful passage, we shall be able to see, I think, some of the impressions f r o m books which went to the making of this "depository" 1 6 0 of the poet's grace and beauty. Peacock tells us t h a t four of Brockden Brown's novels exercised a powerful fascination over Shelley's mind. 1 6 1 I n one of these, which Shelley read as late as 1814, Edgar Huntly, the hero, lost at night in the wilds of Pennsylvania, discovers a retreat in the side of a mountain at the base of a cliff. T h e r e A cluster of cedars appeared, whose branches over-arched a space that might be called a bower. It was a slight cavity, whose flooring was composed of loose stones and a few faded leaves blown from a distance and finding a temporary lodgment here. On one side was a rock, forming a wall rugged and projecting above. At the bottom of the rock was a rift, somewhat resembling a coffin in shape, and not much larger in dimensions. This rift terminated, on the opposite side of the rock, in an opening

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that was too small for the body of a man to pass. The distance between each entrance was twice the length of a man.162 The rocky nature of this retreat, its lofty situation, and the presence of the fallen leaves bring it close indeed to Shelley's nook. The introduction of the coffin-shaped rift with its suggestion of death provides still another link, as does also Huntly's action when he stretches himself at full length on the stones in an effort to sleep. 163 A spot so rough and bleak may well have some connection with the more rugged aspects of Shelley's nook, which, we should recall, was Upheld by knotty roots and fallen stones, but it leaves untouched the idyllic adornment of green ivy, bright leaves, and rainbow-colored flowers and moss. Let us recall that when Shelley wrote "Alastor" "The Excursion" was fresh in his mind. In that poem the Solitary lives in a "savage region" 164 among the mountains in a "quiet treeless nook" 165 "with rocks encompassed round," 166 a "sweet Recess," 167 So lonesome, and so perfectly secure, Not melancholy—no, for it is green, And bright and fertile, . . . In rugged arms how softly does it lie, How tenderly protected.168 The words, "nook," "recess," "green," and we might count also "quiet," for which "silent" is a natural substitution, reappear in new combinations in Shelley's phrases, "green recess" and "silent nook." But the recess in which the Solitary dwells is not the

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only nook in " T h e Excursion" which presents a vivid contrast with the barrenness of the surrounding mountains. Later on in the poem the Pastor points out to his guests from the churchyard in the valley another nook: High on the breast of yon dark mountain, dark With stony barrenness, a shining speck Bright as a sunbeam sleeping till a shower Brush it away, or cloud pass over it. 1 0 9

This he says is " a n island in the dusky waste," a plot of cultivated ground which a hermit might have chosen because opportunity presented, thence F a r forth to send his wandering eye o'er land And ocean. 1 7 0

Its situation, then, corresponds exactly with that of the nook in "Alastor." T h e Pastor's words recall to the Wanderer the autumn evening (the season and the time are both the same as in " A l a s t o r " ) on which he himself first visited this lofty spot, and he tells of a Scotch peasant who farmed A few small crofts of stone-encumbered ground; Masses of every size and shape, that lay Scattered about under the mouldering walls Of a rough precipice, 1 7 1

and who, far from being discontent with his lot, gave thanks for the unfailing moisture that seeped constantly from the cliff: "round the shaly stones A fertilizing moisture," said the Swain, "Gathers and is preserved; and the feeding dews

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And damps through all the droughty summer day From out their substance issuing, maintain Herbage that never fails."172 In these passages is unfolded a most interesting sequence of green and fertile spots, all of which bear the same relation to the barrenness of mountain regions as the poet's nook does in "Alastor." It is very probable that the fertility of the Scotch peasant's rocky retreat, in particular, gave some hint to Shelley for his stony nook, which was nevertheless a place of nestling green expressly made for the death of a poet. But no more than a hint, for the flora of the nook, which includes ivy and "rainbow flowers and branching moss," is distinctly alpine and recalls the mention in Mary's journal of a forest "carpeted beautifully with moss" 173 and the repeated indication of spots of verdure in rocky regions, about which we wish the author had been more explicit. 174 The green nooks which were fresh in Shelley's mind because of his recent reading of "The Excursion," accorded well with impressions which he had garnered long before from Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. The love of contrast which led him to place the tranquil nook at the top of the barren precipice was pre-figured there. In The Mysteries oj Udolpho the travelers during their descent from the Alps into Italy saw "patches of young verdure, fragrant shrubs and flowers among the rocks." And the colors that follow as the author describes the "yellow blossoms peeping from among the dark green . . . leaves" of the orange and the myrtle, "the scarlet flowers of the pomegranates, and the paler ones of the arbutus" 1 7 6 almost suggest the adjective "rainbow" applied by Shelley to the

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blossoms in the nook. T h e survival of these impressions f r o m the novelist's work is m a d e plausible by the recurrence in Shelley's language of the very phrasing which M r s . Radcliffe used in connection with green retreats. On one occasion in The Mysteries oj Udolpho a fertile valley surrounded by mountains "did indeed present a perfect picture of the lovely and the sublime—of beauty sleeping in the lap of horror." 1 7 6 Again, in the same novel, "pastoral scenes" viewed f r o m a precipice "exhibited their 'green delights' in the narrow vales, smiling amid surrounding horror."111 When Shelley wrote of the "silent nook": It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile Even in the lap oj horror, his language showed plainly the fusion which so often takes place in the memory when words are concerned, for the two passages in the novel have been telescoped so t h a t "smiles," f r o m the second, displaces "sleeping," in the first. T h e nooks which we have found in various works known to Shelley did little more than prepare his mind for the general nature of the "tranquil spot" in "Alastor" and for the contrast between it and its surroundings. T h e delicate refinement of Shelley's descriptions rests, no doubt, on visual impressions of which no more faithful record remains t h a n the poem itself. T h e statement applies, not only to the " b r a n c h i n g moss" and "rainbow flowers," but also to those bright leaves, whose decay, Red, yellow, or etherially pale, Rivals the pride of summer.

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These last, as we are able to conjecture from certain letters written by Shelley in the fall of 1815, owe their being very largely to the autumnal foliage of Windsor Forest, at the eastern end of which he was then residing. The leaves are mentioned twice in a way that shows how much Shelley was impressed by them, 178 though the glory of their coloring is reserved for "Alastor." On the first occasion, moved doubtless by his own illness of a short time before, he speaks of them as symbolic of the brevity of mortal life. Hence by a quite natural association they enter the poem to adorn the nook in which the youthful poet dies. But this first mention of the leaves takes us even further into the web of associations that produced "Alastor." In the same letter Shelley expresses wonder at "the perverted energies of the human mind," citing a certain missionary who wasted "benevolence and talent" in "profitless endeavours." Then he adds a sentence that echoes a remark of Drummond's on self-delusion and also anticipates the theme of "Alastor," though it was written some time before the trip up the Thames which did so much to restore him to physical and mental health: Yet who is there that will not pursue phantoms, spend his choicest hours in hunting after dreams, and wake only to perceive his error and regret that death is so near?179 Already in Shelley's thoughts the leaves were associated with death and so was the pursuit of an ideal and futile creation of the mind. By the time of his return Shelley was ready to weave about the more inclusive idea, treated as a warning to men, the long and brilliant scarf of imagery which we have been considering.

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CONCLUSION Looking back over the impressions from books and from nature which helped to bring this odyssey of a beautiful but ineffectual soul into being, we may feel that we have dissipated the spiritual unity of the poem in a mass of crude details. It will be well to reassemble, if we can, the essential impressions in a pattern roughly corresponding to that of the poem and to try to realize at the same time something of the way in which the creative impulse worked as it swept them up from the chaos of the subliminal mind to live a life different from anything they had known before, while by this very process of selection it doomed other impressions to continue in the darkness of unrealized being. Let us return to that all-important moment when the poet dreamed of the veiled maiden. In harmony with the vague Eastern geography of the poem, it was an oriental romance which brought the Vale of Cashmire, and with it the "divine Luxima," into this pattern woven of ideas and images. The exquisite Indian, whose motions seemed too ethereal to belong to earth, retains in this second incarnation the same insubstantial qualities. Attuned to the poet's inmost soul, she is no more than a vision that, fading quickly into darkness, leaves the anguished lover to make his way to the haunts of men and finally to the seashore.

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T h e r e the idea of this self-secluded soul drew to itself by the most natural of affinities the wholly metaphorical little boat of another helpless solitary tossed in his gloomy imagination on the ocean of life. T h u s the theme of the poet's journey is sounded at the outset of his voyage. Since death is to be the punishment for his solitude and since the desire for death was on him \vhen he found the shallop, death becomes for a time the powerful attraction which makes his frail c r a f t not only the "little b o a t " of the Solit a r y in " T h e Excursion" but the leaky one that bore Joan to the charnel-like realms of Despair, the canoe on the Reuss with joints that let in the water as it passed rocks that were death to touch, and, perhaps also, the sinking boat of another lover, King Ceyx. Something of all these, at least, is in the shallop, and yet it is not identical with any of them. And now that the poet, setting out in search of death, is borne like a flying cloud before the wind, the images, too, come as fleetingly as wind-dapples that run on a smooth-surfaced stream. But the ocean does not long continue its calm, for voyagers most unlike this gazelle of a poet are also speeding over the deep, and although they themselves are hidden in shadow, the waves which beset them rise like mountains in the poet's path. Among these rejected voyagers is the founder of an empire and a lying adventurer of ancient times, and a prosaic Englishman born of the imagination of one Paltock, a barrister, and a Mariner whose fascination derives from daemonic agencies that preside over strange quarters of the globe. And besides these there is Shelley himself hurrying across the English Channel with a woman he loves on a stormy night.

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All these are moving swiftly through the mist that is and is not recollection. And now it is the prosaic Englishman's equally prosaic vessel, which, as if for the glory of his country's supremacy on the seas, leaves the rest behind, and communicating the onrush of its advance to the poet's shallop, flies straight for the cliffs that rise above the shore. Although we never see the calamity that overtakes the Englishman's ship as it plunges into the rock, the film is not broken. It is never broken. It is continuous and ever new even though the parts which compose it are all old. For suddenly the Englishman's small boat, saved from the wreck of the ship, merges with this chameleonlike shallop, bringing with it in the path of the flying craft an underground passage most unwelcome to the poet, for whom the sight of the cliffs means the death that he desires. Quite as suddenly, the underground passage through which the small boat of the Englishman passes succeeds to a mountain-walled valley a little like that which shuts in the lake he finds in the Antarctic regions. But the valley is also an Alpine valley, and the lake never appears in the poem. A Proteus-like change in its nature links it through the Lake of Geneva that in Burnet's pages swells to the tops of the Alps with something vaster and more portentous than any lake can ever be. A t this point there should have been, but there probably was not, a great thundering in Shelley's ears as the weakened bastions of the earth crumbled to plunge to destruction all of the living world excepting one man and his family, and as the huge fragments of that orb stretched out by God over the waters, toppling into the abyss, cast

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up the lofty mountains, which are and which are not the mountains of The Sacred Theory and of Genesis because they are also the Alps. The mighty deluge is reduced to a climbing whirlpool which keeps reminiscences of whirlpools on the Rhine, of swirling waters that caught the Englishman's boat in the subterranean passage, of the fountains of the deep as they appear in Genesis and in the pages of Burnet; and yet the abyss from which the whirlpool comes is not Burnet's abyss but the ocean as Shelley knew it. Then by the most logical of associations, the shallop as it trembles on the mounting crest of this modified deluge, assumes, without losing its own individuality, something of the nature of Noah's ark, which surely in appearance it does not resemble. In a role borrowed from the ark it rests on the topmost ridge of the mountain till God's breath, blowing from the Septuagint and disguised as the west wind, sends it with divine indifference to the poet's wishes into an idyllic stream. Here we almost lose the flying skein of associations as we realize that, although the stream is of those waters that keep pouring from the mountains in the Septuagint after the deluge and that although it is also the placid stream which Thalaba descends in another little boat, its flowery banks and woven groves are linked with Shelley's recollections of the headwaters of the Thames, seen from a moving wherry, and with countless other visual impressions of actual streams which we can never hope to recapture. Until the time of the shallop's entrance into the brook the idea of imminent death, linked of course to the main theme of self-love but nevertheless subordinate to it, is

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the determining force which assigns to most of the sensuous images their place in the growing pattern. B u t the dominant's persistence must be answered. T h a t answer is furnished by the yellow flowers that gaze at themselves in the crystal water in commemoration of a y o u t h who, like the poet in the boat, wasted away with love of self; and so the old Greek myth lends its delicate impulses to the shaping associations. These come crowding now more densely as the net streams far and wide to bring into being the most luxuriant wilderness of English poetry—a veritable wood of error, the error of self-love, steeped in a romantic twilight, which, though it seems a super-sensuous refinement of eighteenth-century retirement poetry is so much more than these words indicate that we m a y despair of ever following the links binding the ethereal details together. But that they are there we have seen enough to know. We are conscious that behind them exist not only murmuring streams, and echoing caves, and implicated foliage as they were seen and read about by Shelley m a n y times, but also parasites from the Vale of Cashmire, fiery snakes that coil and swim on a rotting sea, a great serpent lit with rainbow colors as it crawls f r o m a classic tomb, pythons that roll into the branches of an apple orchard in hell, the eye-beams of little Ianthe and of lovers in sonnets and in a sentimental romance, brilliantly plumed birds f r o m above the Indus river, gorgeous insects f r o m Heaven knows where, and shadowy shapes that float through the dull verses of retirement poets or the rhetorical sentences of Mrs. Radcliffe or hang in silence under four trees of Borrowdale, and finally a fountain in which a Greek youth

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admires his own beauty, a fountain that is at once a pool that reflects a star and the mirror which, in "The Excursion," philosophers hold up to self-love. All of these unite to form either the wilderness that is an outward symbol of the poet's self-seclusion or the deep glen at its heart which witnesses the worst of his delusions, the vision of his own soul across the grave. With the mention of the grave the scene changes, and the gloomy colors with which the sensational Mrs. Byrne stained the romantic wilds of her Zofloya, refined now almost beyond recognition, diffuse themselves over frowning cliffs and a roaring stream as they frown and roar not only in Zofloya but in many other novels of the Gothic tradition and in the Alps. The solitary shapes of weatherbeaten trees appear from the same mountains, from the ever-present Gothic romances, and from Southey and Wharton and Beattie, whose poems nobody any longer cares to read. So we come at last to the precipice and the wide prospect and the torrent that pours itself into the void as life is poured into death—all of them born of numberless linked impressions from things which Shelley has seen or read about. Shelley is fond of his poet, and he cannot let him die on the bare rocks of the precipice. How frail a thing is a symbol! Its grace and beauty belong, after all, to the imagination, and it wakens a tender solicitude, especially if it expresses a failing of one's own nature. There must be flowers and moss from countless woodlands and from the Alps, and leaves bright with decay from many autumns, to alleviate the sadness of death, to smile like beauty in the lap of horror through the forgotten words of

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a forgotten romancer, and to receive the atoms which a rank materialist, in the pages of Sir William Drumond, declares will be found after dissolution in new combinations of matter. In response to this need of the imagination there gather to be composed into new being, first, the impression of a rocky retreat in a novel about Pennsylvania by an American, and then a crowd of other impressions quite different—green nooks that shine out from the prosy pages of " T h e Excursion" and the Gothic novels that we are always meeting, and from the Alps, from which also there is no escape. T h e moon is sinking behind the peaks, and the sensuous frame of the poet, that was once delicately attuned to the mysterious universe, is now attuned to it once more as there rise within his passive being the sense impressions which he once loved, impressions that are in Locke the beginning of knowledge, and in Berkeley the signs by which a God, infinitely wise and good, addresses the minds of men. T h e torture of hope and despair which Shelley's own passion and Drummond's powerful "sentiment" produced have fallen from him. T h e vast moon-meteor withdraws the last ray of its light, and the pulse is quenched in his heart. T h e body that was once an "organic harp," played on by an intellectual breeze from Berkeley and Coleridge, is now "still, dark, and dry, and unremembered." Y e t many men live on who do and say heartless things, and mighty Earth From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, In vesper low or joyous orison, Lifts still its solemn voice.

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And so we are left to ponder silently this "phantasmal scene," where to love its beautiful shapes too ardently is to court separation from other men and self-destruction. W e are left to consider, too, how in this very beautiful, if not very great, poem Shelley conforms to these words of a philosopher whom he admired: In all that great extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation.

NOTES CHAPTER

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1. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (new edition), 291, 292. 2. Shelley, 86. 3. Ibid. 4. Shelley: The Man and the Poet (3d edition), 120. 5. Publications of the Modern Language Association oj America (hereafter abbreviated P M L A ) , XLV, 1098-1115. 6. I say "proportional representation" because the phrase indicates, I think, what Professor Havens must have meant to say rather than what he did say when, after listing the four purposes which he thinks the poem expresses rather than the one that it should have expressed, he declares: " T o the first of these purposes, which dominates some 400 lines of the poem, and to the first part of the fourth, which controls SO lines, the Preface gives approximately the same space." In Forman's edition the Preface occupies 66 lines. Obviously, Professor Haven's statement will not bear literal interpretation. 7. Especially by Francis Thompson, in his well known essay entitled "Shelley." 8. See note 74 to Chapter II for Peacock's account in his Memoirs of Shelley of the way in which he came to supply the title; also note 93 to the same chapter. 9. Letters (ed. Ingpen), 976. 10. MR. Shelley's "Note on 'Alastor,' " Poetical Works (ed. Dowden), 94. 11. Dowden, The Life oj Percy Bysshe Shelley (1886), I, 528. 12. Letters, 445. 13. Mrs. Shelley's "Note on 'The Revolt of Islam,' " Poetical Works (ed. Dowden), 207. 14. Published in 1805. 15. Shelley, with an introduction by the Rt. Hon. George Wyndham, 50. 16. Professor Lowes borrows the phrase from Henry James. See The Road to Xanadu (New and Enlarged Edition), 480, n. 54. He quotes in the same note the saying of Francis Thompson which I have also used.

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CHAPTER II 1. Havens, "Shelley's ' A l a s t o r , ' " PMLA, X L V , 1008. 2. T h e same might be said of the relation between Dante's letter to Can Grande a n d " T h e Divine C o m e d y . " 3. Line 81. 4. Lines 121-22. 5. F o r the origin of ideas in sensation and reflection, see A. C. Fraser's edition of the Essay, I, 121-25, 141-42, 159, 185-88, 216-17. F o r the n o n existence of innate ideas see I, 106-7 a n d 109-11. 6. Rossetti assigned it to the year 1815. 7. Works, VI, 283. 8. Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Fräser, I, 142. 9. Works, VI, 260. 10. I m a k e this statement on the authority of the H a r v a r d University Library. 11. D r u m m o n d gives no a d e q u a t e idea of the röle of God as infinite spirit using n a t u r e as a kind of beautiful sign-language. He seems t o have been a very n a r r o w sensationalist. Shelley had become acquainted with Berkeley as early as 1812 on the advice of Southey. But at first, as we learn f r o m a letter written to Godwin, J u l y 29, 1812, he could not be shaken loose f r o m his faith in materialism. See Letters, 347. An essay by Professor G. S. Brett entitled "Shelley's Relation t o Berkeley a n d D r u m m o n d " (in Studies in English by Members of University College, Toronto, pp. 170-202) is chiefly concerned with Berkeley's system as something which remained to qualify Shelley's Platonism, this modification showing itself particularly, Professor Brett believes, in a N e w tonian conception of light. T h e subject is of no consequence as regards "Alastor," and t h e a u t h o r does not mention t h e poem except on one occasion, when he suggests t h a t t h e imagery with which Shelley set forth the animation of the veiled maiden (particularly lines 161-63, 167-68, a n d 175-77) m a y have been suggested b y D r u m m o n d ' s refutation of the ancient t h e o r y of "animal spirits" (Academical Questions, p. 284.) 12. T h e idea contained in the latter half of this statement occurs repeatedly in Berkeley's writings. See especially Works (ed. Fräser), I, 267 ff., 283, 288, 294, 324. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Works, I, 173. Ibid., passim. Ibid., 307 ff., 325. Ibid., 171, 308, 313.

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17. See G. A. Johnston, The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy, 204-5. 18. Works, VI, 259. 19. Ibid., 260. 20. Ibid., 259. 21. Later, in Adonais (XLVI), Shelley used the Platonic myth of the soul's return to a star. J. A. Stewart ( T h e Myths of Plato, 304-5) says the Timaeus assigns souls "each one to its fixed star; and it is these individual Souls which in the completion of their speculative journey round the outer sphere of the Heaven, are transferred to the earth and planets in order to partake of their first birth." 22. G. A. Johnston, The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy, 251. 23. Works, VI, 262. 24. Shelley here makes reference to Chapter III of Academical Questions, where Newton is discussed. 25. Works, IV, 502-3. 26. Works, VI, 262. 27. Ibid., 263. 28. Ibid., 259. 29. Ibid., 258. 30. Line 18. 31. Line 38. 32. Line 1. 33. This phrase, taken bodily from Wordsworth's "My Heart Leape Up When I Behold," appears in line 3. 34. Shelley's acquaintance with Spinoza went back as far as his days at University College. Writing to Hogg, January 12, 1811, about his love for Harriet Grove, he quotes Spinoza on a first cause (Letters, 41). For mention of the Tractatus Theologico Politicus and the Opera Posthuma, see Letters, 377. 35. Line 697. Some of Berkeley's own phrasing seems quite suggestive in connection with these words. Thus in the third of the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, the following remark is made in regard to the idea that sensible qualities have no absolute existence in nature: "It seems, then, we are altogether put off with the appearances of things, and those false ones, too." (Works, I, 322.) In the second dialogue we meet the question: "How should those Principles be entertained that lead us to think all the visible beauty of the creation a false imaginary glare?" (Ibid., 303.) The italics in both passages are mine.

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36. "But, if we attentively consider the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising magnificence, beauty and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of the creation, together with the exact harmony and correspondence of the whole, . . . I say if we consider all these things, and at the same time attend to the meaning and import of the attributes One, Eternal, Infinitely Wise, Good, and Perfect, we shall clearly perceive that they belong to the aforesaid Spirit, 'who works all in all,' and 'by whom all things consist.' " (Works, I, 232.) 37. Academical Questions, 15-16. 38. Line 144. 39. Lines 129-39. 40. Essay, I, 136. 41. Shelley and the Unromantics, 190. 42. Lines 102-3. 43. Essay, I, 303. 44. Academical Questions, 11. 45. Ibid., 12. 46. Ibid., 13. 47. Ibid., 12, 13, and 14. The italics are Drummond's. 48. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), I, 291. 49. Academical Questions, 20-21. 50. Works, I, 85. 51. Ibid., II, 144. 52. Works, VI, 267-69. Shelley had read, undoubtedly, Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. A passage in this book faintly suggests Shelley's portrayal of the physical response of nerves and eyes which the lover desires: "I cannot, without a thrill of delight, recollect . . . looks I have felt in every nerve which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. Fate has separated me from another, the fire of whose eyes, tempered by infantine tenderness, still warms my breast." (Op. cit., 73) 53. Works, 269-70. The following account from the Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, from which quotation was made in the preceding note, comes rather close to the description in the essay "On Love" of what the soul finds in nature: "Nature is the source of sentiment,—the true source of taste; yet what misery, as well as rapture, is produced by a quick perception of the beautiful and sublime, when it is exercised in observing

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animated nature, when every beauteous feeling and emotion excites responsive sympathy, and the harmonized soul sinks into melancholy, or rises to extasy, just as the chords are touched, like the aeolian harp agitated by the changing wind. But how dangerous is it to foster these sentiments in such an imperfect state of existence; and how difficult to eradicate them when an affection for mankind, a passion for an individual, is but the unfolding of that love which embraces all that is great and beautiful." (Op. cit., 71.) The last sentence anticipates the too ideal love of Shelley's poet. Interesting, too, is the fact that in "Alastor" the music of the harp, which Mary Wollstonecraft associates with the soul, appears in the description of the veiled maiden (lines 165-67.) The maiden is, we should remember, the poet's soul in the guise of a woman. 54. In this statement I follow the paraphrase made by Inge of Enneads, IV, iii, 12. Strictly speaking, the statement does not fit the situation of the poet by the well, for Plotinus is writing of the causes of the soul's descent into generation; but it is interesting to note that the philosopher's words remind Inge of the Narcissus myth. He says, "The soul is 'deceived' and 'bewitched' by the charm of sensuous things, which bear an illusory resemblance to the world of Spirit. It beholds itself in the mirror of Matter, and like Narcissus, falls in love with the image, and plunges in after it." In Thomas Taylor's translation of the passage thus paraphrased, the words of Plotinus run thus: "The souls of men, however, beholding the images of themselves, like that of Bacchus in a mirror, were from thence impelled to descend." Select Works of Plotinus (Bohn's Popular Library), 223. 55. The position of the Platonists with regard to the divine harmony, or music of the spheres, may be illustrated by the following sentence from Iamblichus: "The soul, before she gave herself to body, was an auditor of divine harmony; and . . . hence, when she proceeded into body, and heard melodies of such a kind as especially preserve the divine vestiges of harmony, she embraced these, from them recollected divine harmony, and tends and is allied to it, and as much as possible participates of it." (Thomas Taylor's Translation of The Mysteries 0) the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, Chapter IX.) 56. "The Eolian Harp," 12-17. 57. Ibid., 32-33. 58. Ibid., 42-43. 59. Ibid., 44-49. The likeness of the passages in Coleridge's poem about the soul and the harp to the passage from Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters quoted above (note 53) is striking. Both were published in 1796.

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60. The expression is Thomas Hardy's ( J u d e the Obscure, Harper's Modern Classics, 276). He uses it of the two lovers Jude and Sue, whom he calls Shelleyan idealists (Ibid., 279). Hardy felt a great admiration for Shelley, and an illuminating study might be made of his indebtedness in the matter of character to the Shelleyan idealist whom he brings to grief in this worst of all possible worlds. See for some further examples his remarks on Angel Clare in Tess oj the D'Urbervilles (same edition, page 246) and on Fitzpiers in The Woodlanders (same edition, pp. 245 and 252). 61. Letters, 920. 62. See "Laon and Cythna," II, xxxvii, and xlii-xliii; also "Prometheus Unbound," III, iv, 153-63. 63. Works I, 231. 64. Ibid., 233. 65. See G. A. Johnston, The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy, 154-57. 66. Havens, op. cit., 1106. 67. Ibid., 1099. 68. The passage is correctly explained by Locock in his notes to the poem. 69. Havens, op. cit., 1102. I confess I am at a loss to understand how after this statement Professor Havens can present by summary and quotation Shelley's exact indication to the contrary. 70. Lines 254-71. 71. Lines 280-90. 72. Works, VI, 270. 73. Drummond has a long passage on self-delusion which may possibly have made some impression on Shelley. In his refutation of the system of Descartes, who believed that the material world existed because God would not deceive us, he says: "God does not deceive us; but we deceive ourselves. We are not satisfied with speaking of the objects of our perception—of what we feel and understand. We seek to attach ideas to mere abstractions and to give being to pure denominations. The dreams of our imaginations become the standards of our faith. Essences, which cannot be defined; substances, which cannot be conceived; powers, which have never been comprehended; and causes, which operate we know not how; are sounds familiar to the language of error . . . Deluded by his own mind, man continues to wander in the mazes of the labyrinth, which lies before him, unsuspicious of his deviations from the truth. Like some knight of romance in an enchanted palace, he mistakes the fictitious for

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the real, and the false for the true . . . The prisoner, who dreams in his dungeon, imagines himself walking abroad in the fields, or in the streets. He enjoys the sweets of fancied liberty. See how gladly he inhales the fresh air of the morning, or embraces the friends whom he loves. He suspects not that the world, which he has revisited, exists only in himself; and that he must shortly awaken to the conviction of his error—to solitude, captivity, and sorrow. Is there not one, who perceives his own ideas, and calls them external objects; who thinks he distinguishes the truth, and who sees it n o t ; who grasps at shadows, and who follows phantoms; who passes from the cradle to the tomb, the dupe and often the victim of the illusions, which he himself has created?" (Academical Questions, 166-67.) The last sentence suggests not only the action of Shelley's poet in at first mistaking his own suspicion of death for the temptation of a fiend but also his having fallen in love with the veiled maiden, that is, with a phantom which his own mind created. Curiously enough, in a letter written in August, 1815, Shelley, while moralizing on "the perverted energies 01 the human mind," wrote a sentence which reads like a pharaphrase of Drummond and a forecast of "Alastor": "Yet who is there that will not pursue phantoms, spend his choicest hours in hunting after dreams, and wake only to perceive his error and regret that death is so near?" (Letters, 444.) 74. Since the sound was in the poet's mind, the experience was purely subjective. The "fair fiend" ά λ α σ τ ω ρ does not exist as an external power in spite of the fact that Shelley knew the evil daemons of the neoPlatonists, those "mali daemones," who, as Proclus says, "etiam in sacris occurrunt, et fallunt sub praetextu bonorum." (De Anima atque Daemone. The passage is to be found on page 185 in Marsilio Ficino's book of extracts from the neo-Platonists entitled lamblichus De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum, etc. This is Coleridge's "one little volume." See Lowes, The Road to Xanadu, 231. I am indebted to Professor J. D. Rea of Miami University for the loan of his copy, printed in London and dated 1577.) These beings, in station somewhere between gods and men, were, like the devil, given to assuming the appearance of goodness in order to deceive the elect. Shelley, however, gets no closer to them than mere allusion. The idea of a person destroyed by the power of his own thoughts is beautifully expressed in "Adonais," where that person is Shelley himself: And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. St. xxxi

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As we know from Peacock, Shelley wrote the poem with the idea of self-love as the destructive weakness of the poet's soul. He then, at his friend's suggestion, applied to this weakness the Greek name άλασιωρ together with the phrase which forms the subtitle, "The Spirit of Solitude," meant to be explanatory in nature. "He was at a loss," says Peacock, "for a title, and I proposed that which he adopted: Alastor; or the Spirit of Solitude. The Greek word άλαστωρ is an evil genius, κακοδαιμων. . . . The poem treated the spirit of solitude as a spirit of evil. I mention the true meaning of the word because many have supposed Alastor to be the name of the hero of the poem." (Memoirs of Shelley, 55-56.) I can see no reason to be disturbed by Shelley's application of the Greek term to something purely subjective, a fatal tendency of the soul. It seems to me in strict accord with the particular kind of allegory which Shelley was composing. Those who desire to see the various meanings of άλαστωρ displayed may consult Miss Marion Wier's article, "Shelley's 'Alastor' Again." (PMLA, XLVI, 947-50.). Miss Wier designates two uses of the word in Greek: that of a spirit of retribution, or avenging angel, and that of a person who becomes an alastor or wanderer because he is accursed. Miss Wier thinks that Shelley mingled these two conceptions, and the suggestion is by no means without point. The poet's sin is love of self. This love of self is "the spirit of solitude," bringing with it its own retribution, and it so dominates the poet's mind that he becomes a wanderer, a being accursed, like Orestes in The Eumenides of Aeschylus. The fact that the Greek word was not in Shelley's mind when he wrote the poem does not prove, as Professor Havens considers (see his answer to Miss Wier appended to her article), that he was uninfluenced by the second of the two ideas mentioned above, for unconscious recollections of Orestes may have helped to make his poet a wanderer. 75. Professor Havens uses this line to prove that the poet did not seek the prototype of his vision among mortals. 76. Metamorphoses, III, 463-64. 77. Ibid., 471. 78. Ibid., 493. 79. A number of vivid impressions from Gothic fiction had contributed to Shelley's idea of emaciation. In "Alastor" the poet's physical condition is described for the most part in language too delicate to remind one very forcibly of these passages in the sensational romances. A simple detail alone, that of the hand hanging like dead bone in its withered skin, suggests the crude horrors of "Monk" Lewis. In the ballad called "Grim, King of the Ghosts; or, The Dance of Death," we read:

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No flesh bad the spectre, his skeleton skull Was loosely wrapped round with a brown shrivelled skin. Tales of Terror and Wonder, ed. Morley, 56 See for good examples of emaciation in Lewis's work The Monk, ed. Baker, 295-96 and 330-31 and The Castle Spectre, V, iii. 80. Line 55. 81. Line 64. 82. Line 80. 83. Lines 105-6. 84. Works, VI, 270. 85. Lines 451-54. 86. Lines 145-49. 87. For the description of the maiden's voice see lines 153-57, and cf. lines 479-92. Because the Spirit by the well uses this natural language, Professor Havens attempts {op. cit., 1104) to identify it with the "Mother of this unfathomable world" addressed in the invocation ; but he has taken no cognizance of Shelley's warning against such an assumption in the lines about the "treacherous likeness" which the human heart sees across the grave. 88. Works, VI, 276-77. 89. I, 196-97. 90. See the note to his essay on "The Letters of Keats," Oz/ord Lectures on Poetry, 240-44. 91. "The Excursion," IV, 601-2. 92. Ibid., 1029-34. 93. For Peacock's statement of the way in which he came to supply the title, see note 74 above. There will doubtless be readers who will wonder why Shelley was "at a loss for a title" if he knew all the while what he was about, as I have been endeavoring to show. It seems quite clear to me that the situation must have been this: Shelley had written the poem in elaboration of the theme which had so struck him in "The Excursion." He had shown the destruction latent in self-love and solitude, making solitude, of course, subjective. How was he to get the idea of vengeance into the title? To call the poem simply "The Spirit of Solitude" would leave that suggestion unaccomplished. He explained the idea of the poem to Peacock, and Peacock came out with the Greek word, in which the idea of vengeance was ready to hand. 94. Line 569. 95. See lines 501-14. There is no particular reason why we should attend to so common a conception as that of a stream symbolizing the course

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of life, but it is interesting to note that in "The Excursion" the same image occurs. (See III, 967-91.) There, as in "Alastor," the stream falls into the "unfathomable gulf" of death. 96. Lines 571-72. 97. See lines 588-601. 98. "Hamlet," V, i, 261-63. Shelley writes "said i' the world" and "shews o' the world" further on (lines 691 and 711), and frequently in the poem one finds passages breathing an indefinable Shakespearean atmosphere. 99. Academical Questions, 248. 100. Ibid., 257. 101. See, for example, his remarks on the formation of complex ideas, Essay, I, 205 ff. 102. The elixir of life, borrowed from Godwin's St. Leon, plays a part in Shelley's second novel, St. Irvyne or the Rosicrucian, published in 1811. See Shelley's letter to Stockdale in which he confesses his obligation to Godwin's novels. (Letters, 14.) Writing to Miss Hitchener on November 26, 1811, Shelley pronounced St. Leon "good, very good." (Ibid., 177.) As late as September 22, 1818 he quoted from it admiringly. (Ibid., 626.) 103. In this sentence, for the sake of condensation, I have combined phrases from passages slightly separated in the text. (See Works VI, 279-80.) 104. See especially Chapters VIII, IX, and X of "The System of Nature." The only edition of this work which I have seen is an English translation: Nature, and Her Laws: As Applicable to the Happiness oj Man, Living in Society; Contrasted with Superstition and Imaginary Systems. London. 1834. On the title-page the author is named as M. De Mirabaud in spite of the fact that in the publisher's preface the real authorship is indicated. On June 3, 1812, Shelley wrote to Godwin, "I have just finished reading 'La (sic) Systeme de la Nature,' par M. Mirabaud. Do you know the real author, It appears to me a work of uncommon powers." (Letters, ed. Ingpen, 315.) His admiration for the book seems in the next few months to have increased so much that in August he declared himself to be engaged on a translation though still, apparently, ignorant of the authorship and of the fact that good French required not La Systeme but Le Systeme: "I am about translating an old French work, professedly by M. Mirabaud—not the famous one [that is, not de Mirabeau]—'La Systeme de la Nature.' Do you know anything of it?" (Ibid., 360). The "old French work" was first published in 1770. In the biographical account of D'Holbach, prefixed to the translation noted

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above, the title-page of the first edition is thus described (in translation): The System of Nature, or of the Laws of the Physical and Moral World, by Mirabaud, perpetual secretary, and one of the forty, of the French Academy. London (i.e., Amsterdam) 1770, 2 vols. 8vo. CHAPTER III 1. Professor Fairchild points out that Shelley's hymn to Necessity in "Queen Mab" probably reflects the influence of Spinoza. He adds: "Now one peculiarity of Spinoza was that his conception of nature was both scientific and religious. He adored the Cartesian physico-mathematical universe with all the passion of a mystic. By showing that it was possible to regard necessity from a viewpoint as warmly emotional as Godwin's was coldly cerebral, he provided the romanticists with a bridge between the ideas they wished to escape and the mood they wished to enjoy. Or, to shift the metaphor, he suggested that if necessity were sufficiently warmed by feeling it might be persuaded to melt." (The Romantic Quest, 376.) 2. See Professor Melvin M. Rader's stimulating discussion of "Presiding Ideas in Wordsworth's Poetry," University of Washington Publications in Language and Literature, Vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 121-216. Professor Rader shows that even by the time of the 1805-06 version of "The Prelude" Wordsworth "had abandoned his strict pantheism" (op. cit., 181), and that he had come to accept . . . God and man divided as they ought, Between them the great system of the world Where Man is sphered, and which God animates. Prelude (1805-06), X I I I , 266-68 3. Miss Winstanley has noted these differences in her essay entitled "Shelley as Nature Poet." See Englische Studien, XXXIV, 26. 4. See the notes in Locock's edition of the poems. 5. These reminiscences are conveniently summarized in Mr. C. D. Locock's edition of the poems. 6. Letters, 109. Cf. the less explicit but similar remarks to be found in another letter on pp. 103-4. Miss Owenson is better known as Lady Morgan. 7. Preface to "Laon and Cythna," Works, I, 85. 8. Letters, 109. 9. The Missionary, an Indian Tale (New York, 1811), 56. 10. Line 155. 11. "Three years she grew in sun and shower," 29-30.

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12. The Missionary, 59. 13. Ibid., 61. 14. Ibid., 72. Cf. also 159. 15. Ibid., 97. 16. Ibid., 187. 17. Ibid., 104-5. 18. See lines 154-65. 19. The Missionary, 259. 20. Ibid., 165. 21. Ibid., 149. 22. Ibid., 235. 23. Ibid., 269. 24. Ibid., 126-27. 25. Shelley's ideas of feminine beauty owed a good deal to the sensational romances which excited him as a boy. I shall set down a few of the more conspicuous descriptions, not with the idea of accounting wholly for Shelley's heroines but for the purpose of showing what there was in the romances which he found easy to assimilate to the Platonic idealism later on. Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines are remarkable for the way in which their superior minds are revealed in their faces. Thus she writes of one heroine, "The graces of her person were inferior only to those of her mind, which illumined her countenance with inimitable expression," and again, "The soft blush of her cheek showed the colors of her mind." (Works, 722 and 736.) Of the same character she writes, "She moved in the dance with the light steps of the Graces." (Ibid., 724.) Another heroine has a figure "light and graceful," an airy step, an animated mien, an enchanting smile, and a countenance which "quickly discovered all the various emotions of her soul." (Ibid., 5.) Adeline of The Romance of the Forest "had the airy lightness of a nymph, and when she smiled, her countenance might have been drawn for the younger sister of Hebe: the captivations of her beauty were heightened by the grace and simplicity of her manners, and confirmed by the intrinsic value of a heart, That might be shrin'd in crystal, And have all its movements scann'd." Ibid., 88 Emily of the renowned Mysteries of Udolpho, whose form was distinguished by an "elegant symmetry," possessed an attraction more noteworthy than mere physical beauty in the "varied expression of counte-

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nance, as conversation awakened the nicer emotions of her mind." (Ibid., 225.) At the beginning of The Italian, before the horrible animosity of the Marquise di Vivaldi and Schedoni had clouded her life, Ellena di Rosalba bore some faint resemblance to Shelley's radiant heroines: ". . . She was rising from a small altar where she had concluded the service; the glow of devotion was still upon her countenance as she raised her eyes, and with a rapt earnestness fixed them on the heavens. . . . Her fine hair was negligently bound up in a silk net, and some tresses that had escaped it, played on her neck, and round her beautiful countenance, which now was not even partially concealed by a veil. The light drapery of her dress, her whole figure, air, and attitude, were such as might have been copied for a Grecian nymph." {Ibid., p. S36.) Lewis attempted to give to his heroine Antonia in The Monk expressive beauty rather than mere beauty of form. He says candidly that her features were not regular, and that, considered separately, many of them were not even handsome, but that "when examined together the whole was adorable" and like the head of a seraph. This impression he attributes to sweetness and sensibility. The details of her appearance most notable for their likeness to those of Shelley's heroines are the profusion of her hair which, not being confined, "poured itself below her waist" and the brilliance of her eyes. These were blue in color and "seemed an heaven of sweetness, and the crystal in which they moved sparkled with all the brilliance of diamonds." (The Monk, 5.) A more complete portrait of Antonia is given in the scene in which Ambrosio penetrates to her chamber at night: "She lay with her cheek reclining upon an ivory arm; the other rested on the side of the bed with graceful indolence. A few tresses of her hair had escaped from beneath the muslin which confined the rest, and fell carelessly over her bosom, as it heaved with slow and regular suspiration. The warm air had spread her cheek with higher color than usual. A smile inexpressibly sweet played round her ripe and coral lips, from which, every now and then, escaped a gentle sigh or an half-pronounced sentence. An air of enchanting innocence and candour pervaded her whole form, and there was a sort of modesty in her very nakedness, which added fresh stings to the desires of the lustful monk." (Ibid., 239.) The principle upon which this description is founded is that of the irradiation of the physical body by the virtuous soul, its tenant. The device appears in intensified form in the account given of Rosabella of Corfu in Lewis's tale, The Bravo 0/ Venice: "Rosabella had scarcely numbered seventeen summers; her light and delicate limbs, enveloped in a thin white garment which fell around her in a thousand folds; her

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blue and melting eyes, whence beamed the expression of purest innocence; her forehead, white as ivory, over-shadowed by the ringlets of her bright dark hair; cheeks whence terror had now stolen the roses; lips which a seducer had never poisoned with his kisses; such was Rosabella, a creature in whose formation partial Nature seemed to have omitted nothing, which constitutes the perfection of female loveliness." ( T h e Bravo of Venice, 1805, pp. 68-69.) In Mrs. Byrne's Zofloya the röle of the conventional heroine of Gothic romance is distinctly minimized in order that another woman, the depraved Victoria, who corresponds to Ambrosio in The Monk, may occupy the center of the stage. But the necessity of keeping innocence in the background enabled the author to invest it with a charm scarcely of the earth. The orphan Lilla, a child in simplicity and natveti and little more than a child in years, flits through the dark scenes of crime like a visitant from some purer world: "Eminently indeed calculated to incite an ardent love in youth, was the mind and person of the orphan Lilla. Pure, innocent, free even from the smallest taint of a corrupt thought, was her mind; delicate, symmetrical, and of fairy-like beauty, her person, so small yet of so just proportions; sweet, expressing a seraphic serenity of soul, seemed her angelic countenance, slightly suffused with the palest hue of the virgin rose. Long flaxen hair floated over her shoulders: she might have personified (were the idea allowable) innocence in the days of her childhood. Her very situation had a powerful claim upon the heart of sensibility, for the blooming Lilla was an orphan." ( Z o f l o y a , p. 128.) The description recalls Lewis's Rosabella of Corfu; but because so large a portion of Mrs. Byrne's narrative takes place at a castle in the Apennines, she is able to bestow an additional grace upon Lilla by assimilating her character to the beauty of forest scenery. As the girl bounds through the gloom of evening, she looks "like an aerial spirit, seen by the dubious light, scarcely appearing in its delicate movements to touch the ground," {Ibid., p. 163.) or again, like "the beauteous and timid spirit of the solitude." (Ibid., p. 219.) The lightness and grace of this figure are almost invariably present in Shelley's heroes as well as in his heroines. To go no further afield than "Alastor," we find that here Shelley's poet has a form more graceful than the antelope's, and that his passage through natural solitudes has all the swiftness and lightness of Lilla's career through the forest. He is called a "fleeting visitant" and, in a passage similar to the descriptions which liken Lilla to an aerial spirit and to the spirit of the wilderness, is mistaken by a mountainer for

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the Spirit of wind With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet Disturbing not the drifted snow. Lines 259-61 26 Line 192. 27. Cf. "Laon and Cythna," I, xxiii, where the boat is of moonstone; and the same poem, XII, xxi, where it is of pearl. Cf. also "The Witch of Atlas," xxxi-iv. 28. First edition, IX, 21-24. Shelley recommended "Joan of Arc" to Elizabeth Hitchener in a letter dated July 25, 1811 (Letters, 120.) Ackermann thought the poet's boat in "Alastor" was suggested by the one which appears in "Thalaba" (II, 287-88), but Thalaba's boat is a perfectly sound one. 29. The Monk appeared in 1795; "Joan of Arc" in 1796. 30. IX, 104. 31. Joan's boat may be one of the Spenserian recollections in "Joan of Arc." See the complaint of Britomart in The Faerie Queene, III, iv, ix. Britomart's "my feeble vessel, crazd and crackt," seems very close to Southey's "where thro' the crazy vessel's yawning side." 32. Works, VI, 146. 33. IV, 1086-88. 34. IV, 1029-34. 35. Writing of the realistic description of a storm in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Voyage a L'Ile de France Arvede Barine speaks of the "tempetes classiques d'avant Saint-Pierre." He cites as typical a description from Fenelon's Telemaque, taken, he says, "tout entiere dans Virgile et dans Ovide." (Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 50.) For a discussion of this "formula storm," as Professor H. F. Watson calls it, in Elizabethan literature, see his The Sailor in English Fiction and Drama, 46 ff. 36. The image of a serpent struggling in the grasp of a bird of prey occurs frequently in classical literature. It is best known in two famous passages, one in the Iliad (XII, 200-207), and one in the Aeneid (XI, 751-S6). It also occurs twice in the Metamorphoses (IV, 361-64 and 714-17), but in less memorable form. It was a poetic conception of which Shelley was extremely fond. He had used it earlier in "Alastor" to represent the poet's anguish over the disappearance of the dream maiden (see lines 224-36). Later, in "Laon and Cythna" (I, vi-xiv), it furnished a scene which is scarcely equaled anywhere else in English poetry for sheer virtuosity of description. The image recurs in brief form in "Prometheus Unbound" (III, i, 72) and in "Hellas" (308).

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37. Odyssey, V, 292-93 and 295-96. The translation here and elsewhere is that of Professor A. T. Murray in the Loeb Classical Library. 38. Ibid., 54. 39. Ibid., III, 289-90. 40. Aeneid, I, 105. 41. The story occupies lines 62-220 of Chaucer's poem. 42. Metamorphoses, X I , 480-81. 43. Line 322. Shelley had read not only Ovid's description of the swelling and whitening waves but the magnificent simile in the Georgia fluctus uti medio coepit cum albescere ponto, longius ex alto que sinum trahit, utque volutus ad terras immane sonat per saxa, neque ipso monte minor procumbit; at ima exaestuat unda verticibus nigramque alte subjectat harenam. I l l , 237-41 The lines contain still another instance of the classical comparison of the wave to a mountain. 44. Metamorphoses, X I , 490-91. 45. Ibid., 514-15. 46. History of a Six Weeks' Tour, Works, VI, 143. 47. Line 335. 48. Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," 41-50. 49. Robert Paltock, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (Everyman Library), 48. 50. Lines 333-40. 51. Lines 351-57. 52. Works, VI, 122. 53. Line 308. 54. Works, VI, 122. 55. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," 199-211, 263-66, 318-30, 430-33. 56. Aeneid, III, 567. 57. Caves occur frequently in the forests of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances. On two occasions, once in A Sicilian Romance and once in The Mysteries 0} Vdolpho, caves in cliffs by ihe sea are mentioned. (Works, 58 and 509.) 58. Quellen, Vorbilder, Stoffe zu Shelley's poetischen Werken, 9. For the passage in "Thalaba" see vol. II, pp. 304-5. 59. First published in 1751. Very likely Shelley owed his acquaintance

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with this book to Southey, for the earlier poet had copied a more than two-page extract from the tale into the notes to "The Curse of Kehama" in order to account for the translucent wings of his minor deity, Ereenia. See the first edition of the poem, pp. 28S-87. 60. For the account by Medwin of Shelley's pleasure in Peter Wiikins, see his Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Forman), 24. Peter Wiikins appears in the list of works read by the Shelleys in 1815. See the transcript from Mary's journal, printed in Mrs. Julian Marshall's Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, I, 123. 61. See "Laon and Cythna," XII, xx, and "Prometheus Unbound," III, iii (stage directions). 62. The Life and Adventures of Peter Wiikins, 49. 63. Ibid., 60. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., 62. 66. Sometimes the word "cavern" is replaced by "way" or "avenue." The phrasing occurs most frequently in A Sicilian Romance. {Works, 62, 63, 64.) 67. A recent writer, however, has broken this silence by conjecturing that a bend in the Rhine River was the origin of this tremendous whirlpool. (Havens, in "Shelley's 'Alastor,"' PMLA, XLV, 1111.) 68. Life, 419. 69. Life, 85. 70. The Life and Adventures of Peter Wiikins, 60. 71. History of a Six Weeks' Tour, Works, VI, 151. 72. The Sacred Theory of the Earth is Burnet's own rendering of the Latin original, Telluris Theoria Sacra, which according to Professor Lowes (The Road to Xanadu, 2d edition, 461, n. 61) was published in two parts, the first in 1681 and the second in 1689. The English version of the first two books which I have used is entitled The Theory of the Earth, and of all the General Changes which it hath already undergone, or Is to Undergo, till the Consummation of all Things. The Two First Books concerning the Deluge, and Concerning Paradise. London, printed by R. Norton for Walter Kettilby, at the Bishops-Head in St. Paul's Churchyard, 1684. 73. Mrs. Marshall's extracts from Mary's journal show that as late as September, 1814, Shelley was reading "Thalaba" aloud to Mary and Jane Clairmont. See The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, I, 90. 74. See "Thalaba," II, 55-56.

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75. The Theory of the Earth, 119. 76. Ibid., 32. 77. "That the inside of the earth is hollow and broken in many places . . . we have both the Testimony of Sence and of easie Observations to prove: H o w many Caves and Dens and hollow passages in the ground do we see in many Countries, especially amongst Mountains and Rocks; and some of them endless and bottomless so far as can be discovered." (Ibid., IIS.) 78. Ibid., 116. 79. Ibid., 10. 80. Ibid., 26-27. 81. This legend is related in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates. It may be read in Η . B. Swete's Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, where it is edited by H. St. J. Thackeray. 82. Γενεσις, VII, 17-20. The literal translation of this passage and of the others which follow was made for me by my friend Professor Frank Lowry Clark of the department of Greek at Miami University, to whom acknowledgment for this and for other kindnesses is gratefully made. 83. Ibid., V i n , 1-5. 84. Genesis, VII, 19. 85. It is entirely possible, of course, that without violating the conception of the continuity of the water, Shelley was influenced in creating the stream at the summit of the mountain by Southey's description of the Holy River Ganges, which arises somewhere on the very top of Mount Meru. ( T h e Curse of Kehama, p. 95.) Since this river seems to have some connection with life as dominated by a creative mind, it may also have had something to do with the poet's address to the stream as the symbol of his being. 86. Genesis, VIII, 1. 87. Line 400. 88. In "Laon and Cythna" the river descended by the hero and heroine after death is glorified with neo-Platonic and Apocalyptic imagery, but the subject is too large for discussion here. 89. Cf. "Thalaba," II, 290-91 with "Alastor," 397-412. 90. "Paradise Lost," IV, 245-46. 91. Lines 950-52. In "Alastor" also the season is autumn. See lines 58286.

92. See Havens, The Influence of Milton on English Poetry. 93. The best discussion of the formative influence of Gothic fiction on Shelley is to be found in Koszul's La Jeunesse de Shelley, 23 ff.

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94. Lines 1030-32 (ed. Robertson). 95. Lines 131-35 and 139-46. 96. Not much attention seems to have been paid to the second book of "The Minstrel" where the hero turns philosopher. 97. The Romance of the Forest, Works, 105. 98. Ibid., 110. The poem is entitled "Night." 99. The Mysteries oj Udolpho, Works, 493. The poem is entitled "To the Bat." 100. Ibid. Innumerable passages might be cited to prove Mrs. Radcliffe's affinity with the twilight school of poetry, but there is no need to pile up examples. Let it suffice to quote the sentiments of M. St. Aubert in The Mysteries oj Udolpho: "The evening gloom of woods was always delightful to me . . . I remember that in my youth this gloom used to call forth to my fancy a thousand fairy visions and romantic images; and I own I am not yet wholly insensible of that high enthusiasm which makes the poet's dream. I can linger with solemn steps, under the deep shades, send forward a transforming eye into the distant obscurity, and listen with thrilling delight to the mystic murmuring of the woods." Replying to this speech of her father's, Emily remarks on his having expressed what she thought no one but herself had experienced, and adds, "But hark! here comes the sweeping sound over the wood-tops. Now it dies away. How solemn the stillness that succeeds! Now the breeze swells again! It is like the voice of some supernatural being—the voice of the spirit of the woods, that watches over them by night." (Works, 230.) Emily's speech about "the voice of the spirit of the woods" is a mild forerunner of those passages in "Alastor" which describe the voice of the veiled maiden and of the spirit by the well. 101. The Romance of the Forest, Works, 193. The poem is entitled "To the Nightingale." 102. "Ode VII." Chalmers' The Works 0) the English Poets, XVIII, 330. 103. In the first collective edition of Wordsworth's poems, published in March, 1815. The item "Wordsworth's Poems" appears in the list of books read by Shelley and Mary in 1815. Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, I, 123. 104. Lines 16-18. 105. Lines 25-28. 106. Lines 32-33. 107. See lines 423-25 and 543-50. 108. IV, 1171-75.

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109. "Paradise Lost," IV, 258-59. 110. Ibid., IV, 138-39 and 141-42. Thomas Gisborne's poem "Walks in a Forest," which was extremely popular in Shelley's boyhood, contains a number of really admirable pictures of trees, but no one of them suggests the lines in "Alastor." 111. The Mysteries of Udolpho, Works, 241. 112. Ibid., 239. 113. Whether or not these impressionistic flashes caused Shelley to associate the ash and the acacia with clouds, there can be no question as to the superior poetic quality of this association over that which Coleridge gave the mountain ash in "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison." Coleridge's ash tree grows in a roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep, And only speckled by the mid-day sun, Lines 10-11 a dell which could scarcely have escaped Shelley's eye. There its slim trunk . . . from rock to rock Flings arching like a bridge. Lines 12-13 This modification of a natural object by an unnatural one makes the trunk of the tree rather than its foliage the center of the image, and it cannot be said to make the tree seem ethereal. In spite of this difference Coleridge's ash was, like Shelley's, of memorable tremulousness, for its few poor yellow leaves Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still, Fann'd by the waterfall! Lines 14-16 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123.

The Missionary, 42. Ibid., 56. Ibid. Ibid., 178. Ibid., 188. Line 228. The Missionary, 188-89. Ibid., 186. Life (new edition), 200. It is possible that the close union of tendrils and boughs owes

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something to Southey's banyan tree in "The Curse of Kehama," from the branches of which Many a long depending shoot, Seeking to strike its root, Straight like a plummet, grew towards the ground, Some on the lower boughs, which crost their way, Fixing their bearded fibres, round and round, With many a ring and wild contortion wound. First edition, p. 134 Shelley's memory may also have retained some impression of the trees in the Paradise of Sin in "Thalaba": . . . round their trunks the thousand-tendril'd vine Wound up, and hung their boughs with greener wreaths, And clusters not their own. First edition, II, p. 25 In this paradise, as in the forest in "Alastor," there is the sound of the "waterfall remote" and "the murmuring of the leafy groves." Ibid., p. 27. 124. Linea 589-91. 125. Lines 504-84. 126. In Ovid, Metamorphoses, XII, 11-17, a serpent crawls into a tree to eat a mother bird and her young. 127. Lines 277-81. 128. Aeneid, V, 88-89. 129. A passage in "The Curse of Kehama" a part of which was quoted in note 123 above is not without certain pertinent suggestions, however. Through the "leafy cope" of the banyan tree which often swayed with the "gentle motion" of the "passing wind" Came gleams of chequered light, and there is more than this to be considered in the terrestrial paradise which Southey describes. In this paradise are a brook and a well, as in "Alastor," and also a small lagoon "pellucid, deep, and still": Like burnish'd steel Glowing, it lay beneath the e>e of noon And when the breezes, in their play, Ruffled the darkening surface, then with gleam Of sudden light, around the lotus stem

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It rippled, and the sacred flowers that crown The lakelet with their roseate beauty, ride, In gentlest waving rock'd, from side to side, And as the wind upheaves Their broad and buoyant weight, the glossy leaves Flap on the tinkling waters, up and down. Southey's gleams of light, whether related to the banyan or to the lotus, are particularly suggestive though still remote enough from Shelley's darting "specks of azure sky," and the wind-swayed lotus leaves may have some relation to that portion of Shelley's idea which remains unexpressed, that is, to the motion of the foliage, from which in turn came the apparent motion of the specks. 130. 189. 131. I l l , 243. 132. II, 46. 133. IV, 990-94. 134. IV, 483-88. 135. In Shelley's great favorite Zoßoya, or The Moor, by "Rosa M a tilda" (Mrs. Byrne), this gloomy atmosphere reaches its height. In that novel a retreat in the Apennines becomes the scene of the crimes of Victoria, the heroine, who is a kind of female Ambrosio. Thus Mis. Byrne stains the romantic wilds of Mrs. Radcliffe with the criminal colors of Lewis. 136. Works, 40-41. 137. Works, VI, 138-40. 138. Line 32. 139. II, 283. 140. First edition, p. 64. Through its associations with torrents and the roar of their diffused waters, the raining tree may have had no little share in the creation of the scene at the precipice. Southey wrote: L o ! where from thence as from a living well A thousand torrents flow! Rolling adown the steep From that aerial height, Through the deep shade of aromatic trees, Half-seen, the cataracts shoot their gleams of light, And pour upon the breeze Their thousand voices; far away the roar

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In modulations of delightful sound, Half-heard and ever varying floats around. Ibid. 141. The Mysteries of Udolpho, Works, 325. 142. Zofloya, or The Moor, ed. Summers, 172 and 219. This novel w a s first published in 1806. 143. Lines 29-31. 144. I, xix. 145. I, xxi. 146. The Influence oj Milton on English Poetry, pp. 247 ff. 147. The descriptions of wide prospects in "The Excursion" are not iremarkable for detail. See I, 196-205; IV, 109-22; V, 679-86. 148. Works, 297-98. 149. Works, 243. 150. Ibid. 151. Ibid., 495. See also the descriptions on pp. 242 and 494. 152. I, xxi. 153. Works, VI, 135-36. 154. Act II, sc. iii, lines 17-32 and 43-46. The likeness of this passage to that in Mary's Journal has been pointed out by Professor Peck, Life, I, 382-83. 155. Works, VI, 137. 156. Ibid., 145-46. 157. 172. 158. Line 625. 159. Line 572. 160. Line 594. 161. The four novels were Wieland, Ormond, Edgar Huntly, and Mervyn. Peacock declares that these novels, along with "Schiller's Robbers and Goethe's Faust, were, of all with which he was familiar, those which took the deepest root in his mind, and had the strongest influence in the formation of his character," and again that "nothing so blended itself with the structure of his interior mind as the creations of Brown." (Memoirs, 36-37.) This is very likely an extravagant estimate of Brown's influence. Professor Melvin T. Solve in an interesting paper entitled "Shelley and Papers, the Novels of Brown" (The Fred Newton Scott Anniversary University of Chicago Press, 141-56), has indicated the affinities existing between the two writers, affinities which sprang from their dependence upon a common background of reading and upon similar temperaments.

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He concludes, by way of correcting Peacock's judgment, that Shelley's debt to Brown can with assurance be said to comprise no more than "a poetical name" [Constantia (see the lyric "Constantia Singing") from Constantia Dudley in Ormond] "and some assistance in the clarification of his concept of the feminine ideal." He overlooks entirely, and it is not surprising that he should have done so, the connection of the nook in Edgar Huntly with that in "Alastor." Mary recorded in her journal under date of November 16, 1814: "Shelley reads Edgar Huntly to us." (Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, I, 100.) The novel was, therefore, fresh in Shelley's mind when "Alastor" was written. 162. Edgar Huntly, or Memories of a Sleep-Walker, 206-7. 163. Ibid., 207. 164. II, 326. 165. II, 337. 166. II, 334. 167. II, 349. 168. II, 354-56 and 358-59. 169. V, 671-74. 170. V, 683-851. 171. V, 864-67. 172. V, 867-72. 173. Works, VI, 136. 174. Ibid., 137, 138, 141, 144. 175. Works, 299. 176. Ibid., 248. 177. Ibid., 325. 178. On both occasions Shelley was writing to Hogg. See Letters, 445 and 446. 179. Letters, 444. For Drummond's remarks on self-delusion see note 73 to the preceding chapter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY With some exceptions, I have listed in the Bibliography only those works mentioned in the text and notes.

EDITIONS OF S H E L L E Y ' S WORKS

The Poetical Works of Shelley. London, 1 9 0 7 . The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose. 8 vols. London, 1880. LOCOCK, C. D.: The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London, DOWDEN, EDWARD:

FORMAN, HARRY B U X T O N :

1911. BIOGRAPHY, MEMOIRS, AND L E T T E R S BARINE, ARVEDE:

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Paris, 1891. W A R D : Shelley and the Unromantics. London,

CAMPBELL, O L W E N

1924. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London, 1886. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. New edition. London,

D O W D E N , EDWARD:

1920.

: The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, with an Introduction by Professor Edward Dowden. London, 1906. I N G P E N , ROGER: The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. Bohn's Standard Library. London, 1915. MARSHALL, M R S . J U L I A N : The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. 2 vols. London, 1889. M E D W I N , T H O M A S : The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by H. Buxton Forman. Oxford, 1913. PEACOCK, T H O M A S LOVE: Memoirs of Shelley with Shelley's Letters to Peacock. Edited by H. F. Brett-Smith. London, 1909. P E C K , WALTER E D W I N : Shelley: His Life and Work. 2 vols. Boston,

HOGG, T H O M A S J E F F E R S O N

1927.

Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. London, 1796.

WOLLSTONECRAFT, M R S . M A R Y :

ι6ο

B I B L I O G R A P H Y PHILOSOPHY

BERKELEY, GEORGE: Works. 3 vols. Edited by A. C. Fraser. Oxford, 1871. BRETT, G. S.: Shelley's Relation to Berkeley and Drummond. Studies in English, by Members of University College, Toronto. Collected by Principal Malcolm W. Wallace. Toronto, 1931. DRUMMOND, SIR WILLIAM: Academical Questions. Vol. I (the only volume published). London, 1805. FICINO, MARSILIO: Iamblichus D e Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum, etc. London, 1S77. GODWIN, WILLIAM: An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. 2 vols. London, 1793. HOLBACH, P A U L H E N R Y T H I R Y , BARON D': N a t u r e a n d H e r

Laws:

As Applicable to the Happiness of Man, Living in Society; Contrasted with Superstition and Imaginary Systems. 2 vols. London, 1834. IAMBLICHUS, On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. Translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor. Chiswick, 1821. INGE, W I L L I A M R A L P H :

The

Philosophy

of P l o t i n u s . G i f f o r d

Lec-

tures at St. Andrew's, 1917-1918. 2 vols. Second edition. London, 1923. JOHNSTON, G. Α.: The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy. London, 1923. LOCKE, JOHN: An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Edited by A. C. Fraser. 2 vols. Oxford, 1894. PLATO: T h e Dialogues. Translated into English by Β. Jowett. Third edition. S vols. Oxford, 1924. PLOTINUS: Select Works. Thomas Taylor's translation, edited by G. R. S. Mead. Bohn's Philosophical Library. London, 1914. SPINOZA, BENEDICT DE: The Chief Works. Translated from the Latin, with an Introduction by R. Η. M. Elwes. 2 vols. Bohn's Philosophical Library. London, 1905. STEWART, J. Α.: The Myths of Plato. Translated with an Introduction and other Observations. London, 1905. VOLNEY, M . (C. F. C . ) : T h e Ruins: or, A Survey of the Revolutions of Empires. F i f t h edition. London, 1807.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

161

DRAMA, F I C T I O N , A N D P O E T R Y BROWN, CHARLES BROCKDEN: A r t h u r

Mervyn,

or M e m o i r s

of

the

Y e a r 1793. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1887. Edgar H u n t l y or Memoirs of a Sleep-walker. Philadelphia, 1887. Ormond or the Secret Witness. Philadelphia, 1887. Wieland or T h e T r a n s f o r m a t i o n . Philadelphia, 1887. CHAUCER, GEOFFREY: Complete Works. Edited by W . W . Skeat. L o n d o n , 1915. COLERIDGE,

SAMUEL

TAYLOR:

Poetical

Works.

Edited

by

James

D y k e s Campbell. London, 1914. COLLINS, GRAY, a n d BEATTIE: P o e t i c a l W o r k s . A N e w E d i t i o n

with

M e m o i r s and Notes. Boston, 1861. DACRE, CHARLOTTE ( M R S . B Y R N E ) : Z o f l o y a o r T h e M o o r , w i t h

an

introduction by the Rev. M o n t a g u e Summers. London, 1928. GODWIN, WILLIAM: St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth C e n t u r y . S t a n d a r d Novels. N o . V. London, 1831. HOMER: T h e Iliad, with an English translation b y A. T . M u r r a y . 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library. London and N e w York, 1924-29. T h e Odyssey, with an English translation by A. T . M u r r a y . 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library. London and New Y o r k , 1924. JONES, SIR WILLIAM: Poems. Chalmers' " T h e W o r k s of the English P o e t s f r o m Chaucer to Cowper." Vol. X V I I I . London, 1810. LEWIS,

MATTHEW

GREGORY:

The

Bravo

of

Venice,

A

Romance.

T r a n s l a t e d f r o m the German. London, 1805. T h e Castle Spectre. French's Standard D r a m a , the Acting Edition, No. C C X I I . T h e M o n k : A Romance. Edited by E . A. Baker. L o n d o n , 1907. Tales of T e r r o r and Wonder. Edited by Morley. L o n d o n , 1887. MASON, WILLIAM: Poems. Chalmers' " T h e W o r k s of English P o e t s f r o m Chaucer to Cowper." Vol. X V I I I . London, 1810. MILTON, JOHN: T h e Complete Poetical Works. Student's Cambridge Edition. Boston, (no d a t e ) OVID: Metamorphoses, with an English translation by F r a n k J u s t u s Miller. 2 vols. L o e b Classical Library. New York, 1922. OWENSON, M i s s (SIDNEY) : T h e Missionary, an Indian Tale. T h r e e volumes in one. New Y o r k , 1811.

162

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

PALTOCK, ROBERT: T h e Life and Adventures of P e t e r Wilkins. E v e r y m a n ' s L i b r a r y . London and New York, ( n o d a t e ) RADCLIFPE, MRS. ANN: T h e Novels. Ballantyne's Novelist's Library. Vol. X . SOUTHEY, ROBERT: T h e Curse of K e h a m a . L o n d o n , 1810. J o a n of Arc, an Epic Poem. Bristol, 1796. T h a l a b a the D e s t r o y e r . 2 vols. London, 1801. SPENSER, EDMUND: T h e Complete Poetical W o r k s . Student's C a m bridge Edition. Boston, 1908. THOMSON, JAMES: T h e Seasons and T h e Castle of Indolence. Edited b y J . Logie R o b e r t s o n . Oxford, 1891. VIRGIL: W i t h an English translation b y H . R u s h t o n Fairclough. 2 vols. L o e b Classical Library. N e w York, 1925. WARTON, JOSEPH: P o e m s . Chalmers' " T h e W o r k s of the English P o e t s f r o m Chaucer to Cowper." Vol. X V I I I . L o n d o n , 1810. WARTON, THOMAS: P o e m s . Chalmers' " T h e W o r k s of the English P o e t s f r o m Chaucer to Cowper." Vol. X V I I I . L o n d o n , 1810. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM: T h e Poetical Works. Edited by T h o m a s H u t c h i n s o n . London, 1914. LITERARY HISTORY AND CRITICISM

ACKERMANN, RICHARD: Quellen, Vorbilder, Stoffe zu Shelley's poetischen W e r k e n . Erlangen und Leipzig. 1890. BIRKHEAD, EDITH: T h e Tale of T e r r o r : Α S t u d y of t h e Gothic R o m a n c e . London, 1921. BRADLEY, ANDREW CECIL: Oxford Lectures on P o e t r y . L o n d o n , 1909. FAIRCHILD, HOXIE NEALE: T h e R o m a n t i c Q u e s t . N e w Y o r k ,

1931.

H A V E N S , RAYMOND D E X T E R :

English

The

I n f l u e n c e of

Milton

on

P o e t r y . Cambridge, 1922. Shelley's " A l a s t o r . " Publications of the M o d e m Association. X L V , pp. 1098-1115. LOWES, J O H N LIVINGSTON: T h e R o a d t o X a n a d u . N e w a n d

Language enlarged

edition. Boston, 1930. RADER, MELVIN M . : Presiding Ideas in W o r d s w o r t h ' s P o e t r y . University of Washington Publications in Language and L i t e r a t u r e . Vol. 8, N o . 2, pp. 121-216. RAILO, EINO: T h e H a u n t e d Castle: A Study of the E l e m e n t s of English R o m a n t i c i s m . London and New Y o r k , 1927. SANTAYANA, GEORGE: Shelley: or T h e Poetic Value of R e v o l u t i o n a r y Principles. T h e W i n d s of Doctrine. London, 1913.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

163

SOLVE, MELVIN T . : Shelley and the Novels of Brown. Fred Newton Scott Anniversary Papers, pp. 141-56. Chicago, 1929. STRONG, ARCHIBALD T.: Three Studies in Shelley and An Essay on Nature in Wordsworth and Meredith. London, 1921. THOMPSON, FRANCIS: Shelley. With an introduction by the R t . Hon. George Wyndham. Second edition. New York, 1912. TODHUNTER, JOHN: A Study of Shelley. London, 1880. WATSON, HAROLD FRANCIS: The Sailor in English Fiction and Drama 1550-1800. New York, 1931. WEIR, MARION: Shelley's "Alastor" Again. Publications of the Mode m Language Association. X L V I , pp. 947-50. WINSTANLEY, LILIAN: Shelley as Nature Poet. Englische Studien. Vol. X X X I V , pp. 17-51. YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER: T h e Philosophy of Shelley's Poetry. Es-

says, pp. 79-116. New York, 1924. MISCELLANEOUS WORKS

BURNET, THOMAS : The Theory of the Earth, and of all the General Changes which it hath already undergone, or Is to Undergo, till the Consummation of all Things. The Two First Books concerning the Deluge, and Concerning Paradise. London, 1684. THE ENGLISH BIBLE. King James Version. THE OLD TESTAMENT in Greek According to the Septuagint. Ed. by Henry Barclay Swete. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1925.

INDEX Academical Questions (Drumm o n d ) : read by Shelley, 6; Shelley's opinion of, 13-14, 1617; on origin of ideas, 18; on feeling, 23-24; on virtue, 25; on self-delusion, 41, 125, 14041 n. 73; and second vision in Alastor, 48; on Spinoza, 54; on dissolution of matter, 55 Ackermann, R i c h a r d : on cavern in Alastor, 77; on boat, 149 n. 28 Adonais, 141 n. 74 Aeneid, t h e : storm in, 72, 73, 76; snake, 104; serpent and eagle, 149 n. 36 Aeschylus, 142 n. 74 Alastor: time of composition, 1; criticism of, 1-3; singleness of idea, 6; title, 41, 142 n. 74, 143 n. 93 Άλάστωρ, 41, 53, 55, 141 η. 74 Allegory, as applied to Alastor, 9-10 Alps, importance of Shelley's recollection of, 111, 112 Ancient Mariner, The, 61: sea voyage, 74, 76; sky, 76; snakes, 104 Arab maiden, 20 Asia, in Prometheus Unbound, 21

Autumn 94

(James Thomson), 91,

Barine, Arvede, 149 n. 35

Beattie, James. See Minstrel, The Berkeley, George: Shelley's acquaintance with writings of, 6, 136 n. 11; main tenets of his philosophy, 14; effect of his philosophy on Shelley, 14-18; his philosophy and the poet's mind, 18-19; his philosophy and the music of the soul, 32; his philosophy and Shelley's narcism, 32-35; his philosophy and the poet's punishment, 41; and the poet's second vision, 48 Bible: Shelley's knowledge of, 82; deluge, 88, 89. See also Septuagmt Bird, "painted," 47, 105 Boat, 41-42, 68-71: Joan's boat, 69-70, 149 n. 31; canoe on Rhine, 70; boat of Wordsworth's Solitary, 70-71; Ceyx's boat, 73, 74; boat in which Shelley crossed Channel, 74; Peter Wilkins' ship and small boat, 78-80, 82; Noah's ark, 81, 87, 89; "diligence par e a u " on the Rhine, 82; Thalaba, 146 n. 28; Ackermann's discussion of, 149 n. 28 Boughs: "woven," or "wedded," 93; Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, 96; Wordsworth's Yew-Trees, 97; retirement poets and Go-

INDEX thic novelists, 100; The Missionary, 100-1, 102 Bradley, A. C., 51 Bravo of Venice, The (Lewis), 147 n. 25 Brett, G. S., Shelley's Relation to Berkeley and Drummond, 136 ». 11 Brook. See Stream Brown, Brockden, 120-21, 157, 158 n. 161 Bumet, Thomas, Theory of the Earth, 83-87, 152 n. 77 Byrne, Mrs. (Charlotte Dacre, "Rosa Matilda"), 112, 113, 119, 148-49 n. 25, 156 n. 135 Campbell, Mrs. Olwen Ward, 21 Castle Spectre, The (Lewis), 143 n. 79 Cavern, 42: classical literature 76; Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, 76, 81, 150 n. 57; Southey's Thalaba, 77, 79; Peter Wilkins, 78, 80-81; Burnet's Theory of the Earth, 83-85 Caves, 53, 92, 108: 18th-century retirement poetry, 94; YewTrees and The Excursion, 9899; Paradise Lost, 99; The Missionary, 100; Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, 110, 150 ». 57 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 73, 99 Cliffs, 42, 107-8: classical literature, 76; Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, 76, 109-10; Peter Wilkins, 78-81; Six Weeks' Tour, 110-11

Clutton-Brock, Arthur, on Alastor, 2

Coleridge, S. T., 7, 61: The Ancient Mariner, 74, 76, 104; The Eolian Harp, 31-32, 139 n. 59; This Lime-Tree Bower, 154 n. 113 Collins, William, 95 Curse of Kehama, The (Southey), 112, 151 n. 59, 152 n. 85, 155 n. 123, 129, 156-57 n. 140 Dacre, Charlotte. See Byrne, Mrs. Dante 7, 136 n. 2 De Anima atgue Daemone (Proclus), 141 n. 74 Death: Shelley's preoccupation with, 5; as viewed in On Life, 15-17; poet's search for, 3549; Wordsworth's Solitary, 52; alteration in landscape, 53, 107-8; of poet in "silent nook," 53-57; On a Future State, 57-58; Shelley's attitude toward, in Alastor, 58; associated with poet's boat, 69-70, 80; associated with cliffs and cavern, 77-78, 80; associated with whirlpool, 77-78, 89-90; Edgar Huntly's retreat, 121 Dell. See Glen Deluge, 81, 83: Theory of the Earth, 84-87; Septuagint, 8789; Bible, King James Version, 88, 89 Divine Comedy, The, 7, 136 n. 2 Dowden, Edward, on Alastor, 1, 3 Dream. See Veiled maiden Drummond, Sir William, 6, 13-

I N D E X 14, 16-17, 136 η. 11. See also Academical Questions Edgar Huntly (Brown), 120-21, 157 n. 161 Elegiac Stanzas on a Picture of Peele Castle (Wordsworth), 51 Emilia, in Epipsychidion, 21 Enneads, The (Plotinus), 139 n. 54 Enthusiast, The ( J . Warton), 112

Eolian Harp, The (Coleridge), 31-32, 139 n. 59 Epipsychidion (Shelley), 4, 21 Essay concerning Human Understanding, An (Locke): read by Shelley, 6; theory of knowledge, 12-13, 56; on dreams, 20-21; on love, 22; on effect of ill health on the mind, 50 Eumenides, the (Aeschylus), 142 n. 74 Excursion, The (Wordsworth): influence on theme of Alastor, 51-53; unity of nature, 59; Solitary's boat, 70-71; mountain recess, 98-99; "gorgeous insect," 106; simile of star, 106-7; "mirror" of "Selflove," 106-7; wide prospects, 113, 157 n. 147; nooks, 12123; stream, 143-44 n. 95 Eyes, of infants, 102-3 Faerie Queene, The: allegory 9, 10; trees, 99; Britomart's boat, 149 «. 31 Fairchild, Η. N., 145 η. 1

167

"Fair fiend," 40-41, 141 n. 74 Ficino, Marsilio, 141 n. 74 Flowers: "yellow," 43-45, 46; "rainbow," 54-55, 123, 124 Forest, 42-43, 47, 90-91, 92-93: Paradise Lost, 91, 99, 103; Thomson's Autumn, 91, 94; II Penseroso, 94, 95; Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, 96-97, 100; Wordsworth's Yew-Trees, 9798, 103; The Excursion, 9899; The Missionary, 100-2 Fountain, or well, 47, 104-7: The Curse of Kehama, 155 «. 129 Georgics, the, 105, 150 n. 43 Gibbon, Edward, 83-84 Gisborne, Thomas, 154 n. 110 Glen: veiled maiden, 20; Spirit by the well, 47; retirement theme, 93-96; Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, 96; The Missionary, 100; Coleridge, 154 n. 113 Godwin, William, 6, 136 n. 11: on necessity, 24-25; elixir of life, 57, 144 n. 102 "Gorgeous insect," 47, 105, 106 Gothic fiction: formative influence on Shelley, 92, 152 n. 93; atmosphere of poem 107-8, 119. See also Radcliffe, Byrne, Lewis Gray, Thomas, 95 "Green recess." See "Silent nook" "Green serpent," 101 Grim, King of the Ghosts (Lewis), 142-43 n. 79 Hardy, Thomas, 140 n. 60

I N D E X H a r p , and music of the soul, 3032, 138-39 n. 53, 139 n. 59 Havens, Raymond D.: on relation of Alastor to Preface, 2-3, 9; on Shelley's neglect of his theme 35-39, 56, 140 n. 69, 142 n. 75; on wide prospects in 18th-century poetry, 113; on meanings of άλάστωρ, 142 η. 74; on Spirit by the well, 143 n. 87; on whirlpool, 151 n. 67 History of a Six Weeks' Tour ( M r s . Shelley): partial record of Shelley's observation of nature, 62; canoe on Rhine, 70; storm on Lake Luceme, 74; crossing Channel, 75-76; whirlpool on Rhine, 82 ; mountain scenery, 110-11, 117, 118, 123 Hogg, Thomas Jefferson: Shelley's letters to, 5, 63-64, 137 n. 34; on Shelley's familiarity with the Septuagint, 82 Holbach, Baron d', 57-58, 14445 n. 104 H o m e r . See Iliad; Odyssey "Horned moon," 118 H u m e , David, 6 Iamblichus, 139 n. 55, 141 n. 74 Ianthe, Shelley's daughter, 102 Iliad, serpent and eagle, 149 n. 36 II Penseroso, 94-95 Imagery, in Alastor, 1, 2, 6-8, 10, 61-62. See also names of images, as Boat, Cavern, etc. Imaginary voyages, 60-61 Immortality, Shelley's attitude

toward, 15-16, 47-51, 57-58 "Influxes of sense," 56 Inge, William Ralph, 139 n. 54 Insect, "gorgeous," 47, 105, 106 Intimations of Immortality (Wordsworth), 40 Italian, The (Radcliffe), 147 n. 25 Jeunesse de Shelley, La (Koszul), 152 n. 93 Joan of Arc (Southey), 69-70, 149 n. 28, 29, 31 Johnston, G. Α., The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy, 16 Koszul, Α., 152 η. 93 Kuhla Khan (Coleridge), 61 Laon and Cythna (Shelley): dedicatory stanzas, 4; Platonic idealism, 6; preface to, 25-26; equality of sexes, 3233, 140 n. 62; boats, 149 n. 27; winged children, 151 n. 61; stream, 152 n. 88 Leaves, 53-54, 125 Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, ( M a r y Wolland Denmark stonecraft), 138-39 n. 52, 53, 59 Lewis, Matthew Gregory ("Monk"): influence on Southey's Joan of Arc, 69; atmosphere of writings 119, 156 n. 135; emaciation, 14243 n. 79; heroines 147-48 n. 25 Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, The (Paltock), 78-81,

I N D E X 82-83; an imaginary voyage, 60; wind at sea, 74; Shelley's pleasure in, 151 n. 60 Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The, 151 n. 73 Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, The (Medwin), 78 "Liquid mirror," 106-7 Locke, John. See Essay concerning Human Understanding Locock, C. D., 63. 105, 140 n. 68, 145 n. 4-5 Lowes, John Livingston, 7, 61, 141 n. 74 Lute. See Ha φ Luxima, heroine of The Missionary, 63-68 Lyre. See Ha φ Maiden. See Veiled maiden Marshall, Mrs. Julian, 151 n. 73 Mason, William, 97 Medwin, Thomas, 78, 82, 151 n. 60 Memoirs of Shelley (Peacock), 142 n. 74, 157 n. 161 Metamorphoses, the (Ovid): Narcissus 43-45; storm at sea, 72, 73; serpent and bird of prey, 149 n. 36; 5εφεηΙ and tree, 155 n. 126 Milton, John, 92: II Penseroso, 94-95; Paradise Lost, 91, 99, 103 Mind, The (Shelley), 12 Minstrel, The (Beattie): hero, 95, 153 n. 96; mountain scenery, 113; mist, 116-17 Mirror, "liquid," 106-7

Missionary, The (Owenson): imaginary voyage in, 60; heroine, 63-68; Vale of Cashmire, 100-3; "eye-beams," 102; birds, 105 Mist, 116-18 Monk, The (Lewis), 143 n. 79, 147 n. 25, 149 n. 29 Moon, "homed," 118 Morgan, Lady (Miss Owenson). See Missionary, The Moss, "branching," 54, 123, 124 "Mother of this unfathomable world," 17, 30, 60, 143 n. 87 Mountain scenery: Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, 92, 100, 10910, 112, 113-17, 123-24; The Excursion, 98-99; The Missionary, 100-2; Shelley's observations of, 110-12, 117-18; Zofioya, 112, 113-14, 119, 123; 18th-century poets, 112-13; Edgar Huntly, 120-21; The Excursion, 121-23 Music, of the soul, 29-32, 139 n. 55. See also Harp "My heart leaps up" (Wordsworth), 137 ft. 33 Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, The (Iamblichus), 139 n. 55 Mysteries of Udolpho, The (Radcliffe): twilight, 96-97, 153 n. 100; trees, 100, 112; mountain scenery, 114-15, 116; flowery nooks, 123-24; heroine, 146-47 n. 25; cave. 150 n. 57 Myths of Plato, The (Stewart), 137 n. 21

I70

I N D E X

Narcism, 26, 29, 32, 35 Narcissus, 43-46, 54, 139 η. 54 "Natural piety," 17, 137 η. 33 Nature, and the imagery of Alastor, 59-60, 61-62 Nature and Her Laws (Holbach). See Syst&me de la Nature Neo-Platonism: the soul and the mirror of matter, 29, 139 «. 54; evil daemons, 41, 141 n. 74; music of the soul, 139 n. 55; in Laoti and Cythna, 152 n. 88 Necessity, doctrine of, 24, 55, 145 n. 1 Noah's ark, 81, 82. See also Deluge Nook. See "Silent nook" Nympholepsy, 4, 34. See also Narcism Odes (Mason), 97, 153 n. 102 Odyssey, 71, 72-73 On a Future State (Shelley), 50, 57 On Life (Shelley), 12, 14-15, 16, 17, 57, 58, 136 n. 6 On Love (Shelley), 26-27, 29, 31, 40, 46 Orestes, 142 n. 74 Ovid. See Metamorphoses Owenson, Miss (Lady Morgan). See Missionary, The "Painted bird," 47, 105 Paltock, Robert. See Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins Pantheism, 17, 29, 59-60, 145 n. 2 Paradise Lost, 91, 99, 103

Parasites, 100-4 Peacock, Thomas Love: suggests title of Alastor, 52-53, 142 n. 74, 143 n. 93; on Brockden Brown's influence on Shelley, 120, 157 n. 161 Peck, Walter Edwin, 157 n. 154 Penseroso, II, 94-95 Peter Wilkins. See Life and Adventures of "Phantasmal scene," 18, 137 n. 35 Pilgrim's Progress, 7 Pine tree, 53, 112 Plato, 6, 12, 21 Platonism, 1-2, 21-22 Plotinus, 29, 139 n. 54 Political Justice (Godwin), 2425 Precipice, 53, 107-8. See also Mountain scenery Preface to Alastor: Havens' view of, 2-3; allegorical intention, 9-10; character and education of poet, 11-12, 18; beauty of the universe, 18; poet's dream, 19-20, 22, 27-28, 28-29; poet's solitude, 33-34; human sympathy, 34-35; agreement of poet's actions with, 35-47; and poet's vision of Spirit by well, 48, 49; poet's punishment and death, 55 Presiding Ideas in Wordsworth's Poetry (Rader), 145 n. 2 Proclus, 141 n. 74 Prometheus Unbound (Shelley): heroine, 21; preface, 25, 26; equality of sexes, 32-33, 140 n. 62; mist, 117-18; winged

INDEX children, 151 η. 61 Queen Mab, 1, 5, 16, 59, 61, 145 η. 1 Quellen, Vorbilder, Stoße zu Shelley's poetischen Werken (Ackermann), 149 n. 28 Radcliffe, Mrs., 60: cliffs and cavern by sea, 76, 150 n. 57; influence on Shelley's imagination, 92; retirement theme, 9697; mountain scenery, 100, 109-10, 112, 113-17, 123-24. See also Sicilian Romance, A; Romance of the Forest, The; Mysteries of Udolpho, The; Italian, The Rader, Professor Melvin M., 145 n. 2 Recess. See "Silent nook" Retirement, theme of, 93-99, 100 Road to Xanadu, The (Lowes), 7, 61, 141 n. 74 Romance of the Forest, The (Radcliffe); recess, 96; heroine, 146 n. 25 Romantic Quest, The (Fairchild), 145 n. 1 "Rosa Matilda." See Byrne, Mrs. Sacred Theory of the Earth. See Theory of the Earth St. Irvyne or the Rosicrucian (Shelley), 144 n. 102 St. Leon (Godwin), 57, 144 «. 102 Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 149 η. 35 Seasons, The (Thomson), 95 Second vision, 47-51, 143 n. 87, 153 n. 100

171

Select Works of Plotinus (Taylor), 139 n. 54 Sensation, psychology of, Drummond on, 23-25. See also Essay concerning Human Understanding Septuagint, The, 82, 87-89 Serpents: and parasites, 92-93, 101-2; Wordsworth's YewTrees, 103; in trees, 103, 155 n. 126; fiery, 104; rainbowcolored, 104 Shakespeare, 54, 144 n. 98 Shallop. See Boat Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 34, 34-35: on Shelley's interest in metaphysics, 6; on Shelley's reading of Thalaba, 151 n. 73. See also History of a Six Weeks' Tour Shelley, Percy Bysshe: state of mind and health in 1815, 3-5, 34-35; imagination, 7; interest in metaphysics, 6; tendency to atheism, 16-17, 57-58; attitude toward immortality, 1516, 47-51, 57-58 Shelley and the Novels of Brown (Solve), 157-58 n. 161 Shelley and the Unromantics (Campbell), 21 Shelley as Nature Poet (Winstanley), 145 n. 3 Shelley: His Life and Work (Peck), 157 n. 154 Shelley's "Alastor" Again (Wier), 142 n. 74 Shelley's Relation to Berkeley and Drummond (Brett), 136 n. 11

172

I N D E X

Sicilian Romance, A (Radcliffe), 109-10, 150 n. 57 "Silence and Twilight," 96-97 "Silent nook," 119-20: Edgar Huntly, 120-21; The Excursion, 121-23; the Alps, 123; The Mysteries of Udolpho, 123-24; Windsor Forest, 12425 Snakes. See Serpents Solve, Melvin T., 157-58 n. 161 Southey, R o b e r t : imaginary voyages, 60; praise of Burnet, 8384; advises Shelley to read Berkeley, 136 n. 11; and Peter Wilkins, 150-51 n. 59. See also Curse 0} Kehama, The; Joan of Arc; Thalaba Speculations on Metaphysics (Shelley), 12 Spenser, Edmund. See Faerie Queene, The Spinoza, Benedict de: Shelley's acquaintance with, 6, 137 n. 34; pantheism, 17, 59, 145 n. 1 ; D r u m m o n d on, 54-55 Spirit by the well, 47-51, 143 n. 87, 153 n. 100 "Spirit of Solitude," 41, 52-53, 55, 142 n. 74 Star: reflected in well, 47, 105; The Excursion, 106-7 Stewart, J . Α., The Myths of Plato, 137 n. 21 Storm, 71-76, 79, 149 n. 35 Stream: at summit of mountain, descended by poet's boat, 43; Septuagmt, 87-89; Thalaba, 90; T h a m e s River, 90; as

symbol of life, 143-44 n. 95; 152 n. 85 Symonds, John Addington, 1-2 Symposium, The ( P l a t o ) , 2, 21 Systdme de la Nature, Le (Holbach), 57-58, 144-45 n. 104 Tales of Terror and Wonder (Lewis), 142-43 n. 79 Taylor, Thomas, 139 n. 54, 55 Telluris Theoria Sacra ( B u r n e t ) . See Theory of the Earth Thalaba ( S o u t h e y ) : cavern, 77, 79; praise of Burnet, 83-84; stream, 90; "single Fir," 112; boat, 149 n. 28; re-read by Shelley in 1814, 141 n. 73; tendrils and boughs, 154-55 n. 123 Thames River, boat trip on, 5, 90 Theory of the Earth ( B u r n e t ) , 83-87, 152 n. 77 "This Lime-Tree Bower" (Coleridge), 154 n. 113 Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (Berkeley), 137 n. 35 Thompson, Francis, 7 Thomson, James, 91, 94 Torrent, 53: and voice of maiden, 64, 65; Gothic convention, 116, 118-19; The Curse of Kehama, 156-57 n. 140. See also Mountain scenery Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Berkeley): on reality, 13; on magnificence and beauty of

I N D E X universe, 18, 138 η. 36; on knowledge of other minds, 33 Trees, 99-100: and serpents, 103, 155 n. 126; solitary, 53, 112; Coleridge, 154 n. 113; Southey, 155 n. 123 Twilight, 93-98 Vale of Cashmire, 20, 47; The Missionary, 63, 100-2 Valley: like inverted cone, 42; Peter Wilkins, 81; Theory of the Earth, 86-87 Veiled maiden, 19-22, 27-30: Locke's psychology, 13, 19-22; and self-love, 35; Luxima, in The Missionary, 63-68; G. S. Brett on, 136 n. 11; heroines of Gothic fiction, 146-49 n. 25 Virgil. See Aeneid; Georgics Visions. See Veiled maiden; Spirit by the well Volney, C. F. C., 63 Voyage ä L'Ile de France (St.Pierre), 149 n. 35 Voyages, imaginary, 60-61 Walks in a Forest (Gisborne), 154, n. 110 Wandering Jew, The, 57, 58

173

W a r t o n , Joseph, 95, 112 Warton, Thomas, 95 Well. See Fountain Whirlpool: 42, 77, 82; Havens on, 151 n. 67. See also Deluge Wier, Marion, 142 n. 74 Wilderness. See Forest Windsor Forest, 125 Winstanley, Lilian, 145 n. 3 Witch of Atlas, The, 149 n. 27 Wollstonecraft, Mary, Letters f r o m Norway, 138-39 n. 52, 53, 59 Wordsworth, William: "natural piety," 17, 137 n. 33; Intimations, 40; and Shelley's approach to nature in Alastor, 59-60; Lucy, 65; retirement theme, 96, 97-99; Yew-Trees, 97-98, 103. See also Excursion, The Yew-Trees 98, 103

(Wordsworth),

97-

Zofloya ( B y r n e ) : "blasted oak," 112; mountain scene, 119; heroine, 148-49 n. 25; gloomy atmosphere, 156 n. 135

VITA Harold Leroy Hoffman was born in Dayton, Ohio, December 1, 1893, the son of David Philip and Linna Varian Hoffman. He attended public schools in Dayton, and in September, 1913, entered Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in June, 1917, enlisted in the army in December, and was sent to France the following summer. Before his return in 1919 he studied for four months at the University of Bordeaux. He entered the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the autumn of that year as the holder of a University Scholarship in English, and in June, 1920, received the degree of Master of Arts. During the following academic year he continued his studies in the Graduate School and taught freshman composition in Harvard College. In 1921-22 he taught English at Miami University and from 1922-26 at New York University. In 1925 he matriculated in the Graduate School of Columbia University as a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He was awarded the University Fellowship in English for the year 1926-27. In the fall of 1927 he returned to Miami University as associate professor. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternities.