What a use to make of the words of a slanderer-by-trade, a libeller surcharged with rancorous enmity against the poet’s father! To insult Shelley by making his character depend in any degree on the words of such a rascal as Stockdale, it is necessary that a man of letters should be a ‘Shelleyan enthusiast.’

It is not a fact that ‘Stockdale had frequent opportunities of observing the uneasy terms on which the two stood to each other.’ With the exception of the two or three occasions when the father and son came together to the Pall-Mall shop, Stockdale never saw them together. Doubtless there was uneasiness between them on those occasions, for they met on matters of disagreement, and in the presence of the man who, for his own advantage, was doing his best to render the father more than usually distrustful of, and anxious about, his son. The whole period of Stockdale’s acquaintance with Mr. Timothy Shelley was covered by the few weeks, during which time they exchanged letters and had two or three conferences touching the poet’s affairs,—the few weeks during which the unscrupulous tradesman was vainly endeavouring to wheedle the Member of Parliament into paying the minor’s bill for the publication of St. Irvyne. What opportunities can so brief and slight an intercourse have offered the publisher for using influence to dispose Mr. Shelley to be a better father? To believe the fellow’s impudent statements, one must believe that during those few weeks he assumed an almost parental authority over the gentleman on whose pocket he had designs. In 1827 sixteen years had elapsed since this slight intercourse of less than two months. How strange that after so many years, Stockdale should have had so clear a memory of the incidents of this slight intercourse,—so distinct a recollection of the peculiarities of the gentleman with whom he spoke on three or four occasions, and exchanged perhaps as many letters! How strange that ‘the Shelleyan enthusiasts’—so suspicious and distrustful of the accuracy of Hogg’s recollections of his most familiar friend whom he knew thoroughly—should accept so readily the publisher’s recollections of the gentleman, of whom he knew scarcely anything!

The same reflections are applicable to Stockdale’s vivid recollections of the Oxonian Shelley, and to Mr. Garnett’s reliance on the accuracy of those recollections. Though they exchanged letters in January, 1811, and had some disagreeable correspondence in later months of the same year, it does not appear that Shelley ever set eyes on the Pall-Mall publisher after December, 1810. The whole period of their personal intercourse cannot have exceeded four months:—months spent chiefly by Shelley at Oxford or in Sussex, whilst the publisher was attending to his affairs in London? To assume that during these four months they had a dozen meetings is to assume too much. It is more probable that they talked with one another on seven or eight several occasions. What opportunities could such an acquaintanceship afford the publisher for knowing his young client in such a way, that sixteen years later he could recall him clearly? Is it reasonable to suppose that the publisher during these interviews (and from several letters in no degree calculated to fill their receiver’s breast with tender emotion) conceived a strong affection—or any affection whatever—for the boy out of whom, or rather out of whose father, he meant to ‘make a bill?’

One might as reasonably imagine a money-lender overflowing with love for any young gentleman ‘in his teens,’ to whom he lends 50l. on the usual terms. Are London publishers so very different from other men of business, that they do business with youthful poets and novelists from impulses of affection, altogether pure of self-interest? I know something of London publishers: few men have better reason to think and speak well of them; to my last hour of consciousness I shall never recall a particular London publisher, without remembering him as one of the trustiest and dearest of the many friends who have contributed to my happiness; but still my impression is, and my experience has been, that a publisher’s regard for a young author has a tendency to rise and fall with the sale of the young author’s works. St. Irvyne having fallen dead from the press, even as Mr. Stockdale expected it to do, I have no doubt that Mr. Stockdale merely regarded his young author as a simpleton, whom he would not trust on any future occasion (during his minority) to pay the printer’s bill. To do Stockdale justice (and even to such a worm I would not be less than just) it should be remarked that he is no such preposterous ‘humbug’ as Mr. Garnett’s words imply. Though he whines hypocritically about ‘his too conscientious friendship’ for Mr. Bysshe Shelley, of University College, Oxford, the professional libeller does not profess to have loved the youth, with whom he was doing ‘risky business.’ In 1827, the disposition to think tenderly of Shelley had not gone so far as to produce a crop of ‘Shelleyan enthusiasts’ capable of believing that the publisher loved the author of St. Irvyne. Had Stockdale claimed credit for loving the dear boy, who came to his shop about the Original Poetry that was not original, the original readers of the Budget would have derided him, and denounced his Budget. Though he says civil things of Shelley, to heighten the effect of the uncivil things said of Shelley’s father, Stockdale forbears to descant on his affection for the future poet. It is enough for him to say, ‘Even from these boyish trifles’ (i.e. St. Irvyne, and the Victor-and-Cazire Book), ‘assisted by my personal intercourse with the author, I at once formed an opinion that he was not an everyday author.’ In saying this (as he meant the ambiguous words to be construed in the way most complimentary to the poet) the budgeteer told a lie,—but a lie not too outrageous to be believed. Further (to insult Sir Timothy Shelley, who in the scribbler’s opinion had refused to discharge ‘every honest claim upon him’), the libeller spoke highly of the poet’s ‘honour and rectitude,’ declaring him a man to ‘vegetate, rather than live, to effect the discharge of every honest claim upon him.’ But to speak of a man in this style is not to show signs of loving him. I know an author who certainly is no ‘everyday author,’ and would (I am sure) be at great pains to pay his creditors twenty shillings in the pound; but far from loving him, I would any day rather go without my dinner than eat it in his company.

Truth to tell, the ‘traces of a sincere affection for the young author,’ which Mr. Garnett has discovered in Stockdale’s words about Shelley, are so far from being distinctly apparent, that I have vainly sought for them in the pages, where they are so manifest to the author of Shelley in Pall Mall. I think Mr. Garnett goes a little too far in saying—

Gentlemen given to gushing often say more than they mean. I cannot conceive Mr. Garnett means all he says in his perplexing article. I have vainly worked through Stockdale’s Budget in search for the proofs, that Stockdale was forcibly impressed by the intellectual energy and moral loveliness of the author of St. Irvyne. But the ‘Shelleyan enthusiasts’ are so apt to weaken their case by exaggeration; they are so excessive in their statements. The notion that Stockdale the Libeller was a man to be captivated by moral beauty is comical.

CHAPTER XII.

I. With magniloquence, that may seem comical to persons deficient in Mr. Forman’s ability to venerate every scrap of paper blotted by the poet’s pen, Mr. MacCarthy declares himself to ‘have discovered the surrounding light that indicates the presence of a star,’ without being so fortunate as to have ‘detected its nucleus.’ This is only Mr. MacCarthy’s figurative and beautiful way of saying that, without coming upon a copy of the work, he has come upon evidence that Shelley, towards the close of his second term of residence at Oxford, published A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, for the benefit of Mr. Peter Finerty, then undergoing imprisonment in Lincoln Gaol for libel on Lord Castlereagh,—that this poem was a very beautiful poem,—and that it differed from all the poet’s earlier and all his later writings, in having a quick and large sale.

Readers, who take Mr. MacCarthy’s view and estimate of the evidence, have no doubt that the sale of this remarkable poem, after paying the costs of its production, yielded nearly one hundred pounds to the fund that was raised for Mr. Finerty’s sustenance and comfort in captivity. To persons who remember the wretched quality of the Oxonian Shelley’s prose and verse, it can scarcely be obvious why a lost poem by his still feeble pen should be likened to a star, and why the shadowy evidence that he wrote the poem should be comparable with the surrounding light of the heavenly body. Let that pass, however; and let it be conceded that evidence of so successful a poem, by the youthful and hitherto unfortunate aspirant to literary fame, would be a matter of some interest, even to persons in no degree touched with Shelleyan madness. What is the evidence that Shelley produced this successful poem, no copy of which has ever come under the notice of living man? The evidence consists of,—

(a) This advertisement in the 9th March, 1811, number of the Oxford Herald:—

(b) Four advertisements of the same poem in London newspapers; two of them being in the Morning Chronicle for 15th and 21st March, 1811, whilst the other two may be found in the Times for 10th and 11th April, 1811.

(c) These words by an anonymous writer in the Dublin Weekly Messenger of 7th March, 1812:—

(d) The fact that Shelley sent from Dublin a copy of the paper containing these words, and particularly called Godwin’s attention to the article in which they appeared.

(e) The fact that during his imprisonment Mr. Finerty had the sympathy of the Dublin Weekly Messenger.

These are all the facts Mr. MacCarthy produces in evidence that Shelley wrote a poem no living man ever saw, no single person of any time is known to have seen. Of course the gentleman, who is so severe on Hogg’s inaccuracies, blunders and contradicts himself in marshalling so slender an array of facts. For instance, after stating (p. 100) precisely and correctly that the earliest of the five advertisements of the poem appeared in the Oxford Herald of 9th March, 1811, he avers a few pages later (p. 105) that this same earliest advertisement appeared in the paper of 2nd March, 1811.

How does this curiously inaccurate gentleman reason from his facts? To Mr. MacCarthy it appears indisputable that the poem must have been written and published, as the five advertisements declare it ‘Just Published.’ But it is no uncommon thing now, it was no rare thing eighty years since, for publishers to announce books as ‘just published,’ before their actual day of publication. Books have been printed and so announced, and yet at the last moment have been withheld from publication. Moreover, it would be no new thing for a literary adventurer to advertise that a work by his pen would shortly appear, without having any intention or power to fulfil the promise of the announcement. The books of the British Museum Library would be more numerous by several thousands, had authors invariably acted up to their advertisements.

Underscoring the words ‘undoubted authority,’ Mr. MacCarthy intimates that Shelley himself must have been the ‘undoubted authority.’ The assumption is reasonable, but it is only an assumption. Could he be proved to have been the sure authority, it would still be noticeable that, though he declared the poem had been published for Mr. Finerty’s benefit, some other person may have been the journalist’s authority for saying the profits amounted to nearly 100l. For, whilst declaring ‘from undoubted authority,’ that Shelley sent the profits to Mr. Finerty, the article-writer is curiously silent as to the quality of his authority for writing, ‘We have heard they amounted to nearly an hundred pounds.’ In fact, his language implies that, whilst having the best authority for the first, he had not the best authority for the second, statement.

Again, arguing from Shelley’s veracity, Mr. MacCarthy insists that by sending the article to Godwin without disclaiming any of the grounds on which he is commended in it, Shelley endorsed the whole statement, and pledged his honour to its truth.

Was Shelley so precisely accurate in all his statements, that we should be bound to believe the words, if he could be shown to have written them himself? To readers who have given due consideration to a certain letter referred to in the last chapter, it must be comical to hear the author of Shelley’s Early Life arguing that the words of the Dublin Weekly Messenger must be true, because in sending the paper to Godwin, the poet did not warn him of their inaccuracy. Readers will have stronger reason for smiling at Mr. MacCarthy’s simplicity, when they know more about the earlier of Shelley’s letters to Godwin,—letters overflowing with the most staggering misrepresentations.

Yet further, it is argued by Mr. MacCarthy that, having the friendliest relations with the Dublin Weekly Messenger, Mr. Finerty was doubtless a regular and attentive reader of the paper, must therefore have seen the words relating to the profits of the poem, and would of course have contradicted them had they been untrue. As Mr. Finerty did not contradict the words, his silence must be regarded as tantamount to direct testimony from his pen, that the poem was published for his benefit, and yielded a sum of nearly one hundred pounds to the fund raised for his benefit.

Against this series of assumptions and the argument founded upon them, several considerations may be urged. (1) Because the Dublin Weekly Messenger favoured his cause, it does not follow that a copy of the paper was sent to Mr. Finerty every week during his imprisonment in Lincoln Gaol. (2) There is no evidence that the paper was usually sent to him every week (in times when the rates of postage were heavy), or even that it was sent on any single occasion to him during that term. (3) As he was treated with extraordinary severity during his imprisonment, it is by no means so certain as the author of Shelley’s Early Life imagines, that the prisoner was allowed to see newspapers containing expressions of sympathy with and admiration of him. (4) On the contrary, though he may have seen the copies of the Dublin Weekly Messenger that contained no reference to his case, it is highly improbable that during his imprisonment he was allowed to see the copies of the journal which spoke of him eulogistically. (5) It is conceivable that, if he saw the words of the Dublin newspaper during his imprisonment, he knew them to be inaccurate, and yet refrained from contradicting them. He may have read the words in prison without knowing whether they were true or false, as the business of collecting the money for his benefit was in the hands of a committee. He may have known that Shelley published a poem for his advantage, and known also that the publication yielded no profits: in which case he would not have been so ungracious as to contradict the statement of the amount of the profits, and thereby call attention to the literary miscarriage of a well-wisher who, besides subscribing a guinea to the Finerty Fund, had also recommended the fund to public favour in the unsuccessful work. If he saw the words of the Dublin newspaper, and knew them to be untrue, the inaccuracy was no reason why he should call attention to a misstatement that could do him no harm, was on the contrary calculated to stimulate the feeling in his favour, and could not be corrected without risk of giving annoyance to the young gentleman who anyhow had subscribed a guinea to the Finerty Fund.

Whilst the evidence of the publication of a poem is far from conclusive, the evidence is very strong that, if a poem was published, its sale must have fallen far short of the number indicated by the not authoritative words (the statement made on mere hearsay talk) of the anonymous writer of the Dublin Weekly Messenger. If the poem was published at all, it appears from the advertisements to have been offered for sale at the price of two shillings a copy. If a poem was published, it was probably not a poem of many thousands, or even many hundreds, of lines. Let us suppose that a poem was published, and the costs of printing, producing, publishing, and advertising the work were 50l.—a moderate sum at which to put the expenses, if the poem contained from five hundred to a thousand lines. Allowances to the trade being taken into account, there must have been a sale of at least two thousand copies at the rate of two shillings a copy, for the sale to bring in 50l. for expenses of publication, and 100l. for the Finerty Fund. The sum accruing to that fund from the sale is put by the anonymous writer of the Dublin Weekly Messenger at something less than 100l. On the other hand, account must be taken of copies sent to reviewers and copies given by the author to his friends;—copies that, without being paid for, passed into circulation. These copies may be computed as equal to the number by which the actual sale of the work fell short of 2000 copies,—i.e. the sale that would have yielded a clear 100l. (over the 50l. for costs) to the Finerty Fund. What is the evidence that so large a number of copies of the poem cannot have been put in circulation?

Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy seizes every occasion for inaccuracy, and now and then makes an occasion, in the absence of a decent opportunity, for blundering. What does Mr. MacCarthy mean ‘by University College at Cambridge?’ Oxford has a college styled University College; there is a college so called in London; but Cambridge has no University College. By the charitable writer of the present page, it is assumed that by ‘University College at Cambridge,’ Mr. MacCarthy (who is so merciless and malignant to Hogg for his occasional inaccuracies) means The Cambridge University Library. Let it be so assumed by the reader.

It follows, that some years since Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy sought by printed circular for a copy of this Shelleyan poem (which possibly was never published) in the shop of nearly every second-hand bookseller in Great Britain and Ireland; that he caused the Librarians of the Bodleian Library, and the Cambridge University Library, to search for a copy of the poem in their libraries; that he induced Mr. Quaritch of Piccadilly, Mr. Stibbs of Museum Street, and the Messrs. Longmans of Paternoster Row, ‘and others,’ to make search by advertisements and special inquiries, for a copy of the poem,—without coming upon a copy after all the trouble.

Yet more:—Hogg never heard of this poem; Peacock never heard of it, so far as the evidences go; no one of the poet’s friends or relations appears ever to have heard of it; no review of the poem has come to light; and (more remarkable yet!) no one of the many published lists of subscriptions to the Finerty Fund, to be found in the Morning Chronicle, and other papers of the period (examined by Mr. MacCarthy), makes mention of any single contribution amounting to 100l.,—of any contributions whatever as the result of the sale of the poem.

What a labour of searching for a copy of the poem, and for evidence about the poem, that may never have been written! Surely the searching would have resulted in the discovery of a copy, had 2000 copies passed into circulation, or in the discovery of some stronger evidence of the poem’s publication, had the sale of the work yielded any considerable sum of money to the Fund, which amounted in the course of twelve months to something more than 1000l.

The evidence is not even conclusive that Shelley had a serious intention to produce a poem for Mr. Finerty’s advantage. He may have put forth the advertisements to whip up the public interest in the movement for the unfortunate journalist’s benefit. Evidence so weak can only be used conjecturally. I am disposed to regard the advertisements as bonâ-fide advertisements, and to think they referred to some poem published by Shelley for the alleged object. The author may also have published the poem with an eye to his own advantage; may have hoped to use the excitement of a political stir as a means of floating into circulation a poem, which, in case it succeeded, the ‘Gentleman of the University of Oxford’ could claim in his own name. He had been for some time thinking of publishing a satirical poem. ‘I am,’ he wrote to Hogg from Field Place, on 20th December, 1810, ‘composing a satirical poem. I shall print it at Oxford, unless I find, on visiting him, that R. is ripe for printing whatever will sell. In case of that, he is my man.’ There is evidence (though of a doubtful quality) that he wrote the first sketches for a poem, which eventually took shape in Queen Mab, in the summer of 1810. Much of that poem would answer to the title of A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things.

Shelley put so many fictions into his earlier letters to Godwin, that the reader, who is not a ‘Shelleyan enthusiast,’ hesitates to trust any statement of those highly imaginative epistles, that is not supported by another witness. But he may have been writing truth at Keswick on 16th January, 1812, when he wrote of himself as the author of the Essay on Love, a little poem. This ‘little poem,’ if it was ever written, may have been the same poem as the Political Essay on the Existing State of Things, if the latter was ever written. Were it announced to-morrow on good authority that a copy had been recovered of the poem by Shelley, for a copy of which Mr. MacCarthy made so vain a search, I should expect to learn that the poem, published for Mr. Finerty’s benefit, proved to be poetry that was subsequently worked into Queen Mab. If the Poetical Essay (of March and April, 1811) contained some of the more violent and outrageous passages of Queen Mab, the same considerations that caused the poet’s Oxford bookseller to destroy all the copies of The Necessity of Atheism, that were in his hands, would determine him to destroy at the same time all the copies of the Poetical Essay lying in his premises.

II. What evidence does MacCarthy produce that Shelley was a contributor of poetry and of prose articles of literary subjects to the Oxford Herald, whilst he was an Oxford undergraduate?

(1) Mr. MacCarthy’s sole reason for attributing the Ode to the Death of Summer to Shelley’s pen, is that it possesses the ‘peculiar Shelleyan flavour by which we can so easily recognise his later poems,’ the qualities of feeling and expression, which justify the author of Shelley’s Early Life for saying,—

But whilst there is no positive testimony that the Oxonian Shelley could give his verses the peculiar flavour for which Mr. MacCarthy commends the ‘Ode,’ which appears in the Oxford Herald of 22nd September, 1810, the poems of St. Irvyne, published three months later, may well dispose critical readers to question, whether the author of the novel was capable of producing verses, having any resemblance to the poetry of his later time. It may, of course, be urged that the verses, put into the ridiculous romance, were the nerveless efforts of a considerably earlier period; but it is difficult to believe that, could he have produced the Ode to the Death of Summer in September, 1810, the Oxonian Shelley could a few weeks later have offered the public such feeble effusions as the St. Irvyne verses.

(2) Whilst Shelley’s title to be regarded as the author of The Ode rests on the ‘Shelleyan flavour’ of the poem, which in that respect differs from all the poetry known to have proceeded from his pen before the end of 1810, his claim to be regarded as one of the producers of the ‘prose essays on some of the older English poets’ (which appeared in the Oxford Herald during his residence at the University) rests on the fact that one of these essays is signed, ‘P. S.’ ‘One of the papers, signed “P. S.”’ says Mr. MacCarthy, ‘appeared during the period of Shelley’s residence, and may possibly have been written by him.’ It is quite as probable that some Peter Smith, or other person with P. S. for his initials, wrote the verses.

(3) Consisting altogether of the two initial letters, the evidence which disposes Mr. MacCarthy to rate the poet with the literary essayists of the Oxford newspaper, cannot be declared convincingly cogent and conclusive. It is, however, far less weak and shadowy than the evidence that the undergraduate of University College, Oxford, produced the English translations from the Greek Anthologia, which appeared in the Oxford Herald of 5th January, and 12th January, 1811, with the signature ‘S’ attached to each set of verses. After identifying Shelley with the translator by this solitary letter, Mr. MacCarthy next argues that, having been thus detected in translating verses of the Greek Anthologia, Shelley may be fairly suspected of being, and indeed assumed to be, the translator of the epigram by Vincent Bourne, that appeared in English dress in the Oxford Herald of 23rd February, 1811 (signed ‘Versificator’); and also the translator (signing himself ‘Versificator’) who produced the English versions of two epigrams from the Greek Anthologia, that appeared in the Oxford Herald of 9th March, 1811. To those, who hesitate in declaring Shelley the producer of the two January translations, because his surname began with the letter ‘S,’ it may well appear considerably less than manifest that Shelley should be regarded as the producer of Versificator’s translations, because he had a taste for making verses. After arguing that ‘S’ was Shelley, because the Shelleys resembled the Smiths in one interesting particular, and that ‘Versificator’ must have been Shelley, because Shelley had as good a right as any one else to style himself so, this perplexing Mr. MacCarthy (who is of so much account with the Shelleyan experts) tells us in a note, that some one, during Shelley’s time at Oxford, sent a translation from Vincent Bourne to the Oxford Herald, signed ‘S. S.—Edmonton.’ On such trifles and trifling, weeks and months were wasted by the Shelleyan expert, who, with all his boastful show of laborious research, never troubled himself to find out, when Shelley and Hogg became members of their University.

III. For reasons, with which there is no need to trouble the reader of the present chapter, Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy holds a strong opinion that the spurious letter, alleged to have been written by Shelley from University College on 22nd February, 1811, to ‘The Editor of the Statesman,’ may have been a genuine performance, although it appeared for the first time to the public in the notorious Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1852), that passed through Mr. Robert Browning’s editorial hands only to provoke the scrutiny, that was followed quickly by their suppression. Maintaining that the letter may have been genuine, Mr. MacCarthy is only a few degrees less confident that the epistle was the genuine performance of the undergraduate who, ten days later, wrote Leigh Hunt the epistle that seems to have been studied by the manufacturer of the forgery.

Opening with a long paragraph, whose style affords conclusive evidence that it was not composed by the Oxonian Shelley, the epistle of the earlier date closes with the following sentences taken verbatim from the letter of later date:—

Whilst these two sentences accord in style with the rest of the letter to which they properly belong (the genuine letter addressed to Leigh Hunt on 2nd March, 1811), they are preceded in the spurious epistle of later manufacture and earlier date (22nd February, 1811) with writing of this incongruent style:—

So fine a judge of ‘Shelleyan flavour’ as Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy ought surely to have observed how greatly this piece of writing differs in style and quality from the prose of Shelley’s novels, his Oxonian letters to Stockdale and Hogg, his Irish addresses, and all his prose writings of the same period. Instead of discovering the difference, however, our nice connoisseur of ‘Shelleyan flavour,’ and the historic probabilities, exclaims in a rapturous note to the last sentence of the quotation:—

There is no evidence that Mr. Finerty was, or ever had been, the editor of the Statesman. There are no grounds for thinking he ever had been the editor of that paper. Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy admits he has no reason to think Mr. Finerty ever was editor of the Statesman. Yet he insists that this spurious letter (genuine epistle as he thinks), dated 22nd February, 1811, to the Editor of the Statesman, must have been addressed to a man (who was not that paper’s editor), because it contains a reference to the imprisonment of some person in terms quite as applicable to an imprisoned journalist who had never been, as to an imprisoned journalist who had been or was editor of that paper.

Nothing in the letter to the Editor of the Statesman implies that the imprisoned journalist had been in any way connected with the paper, or that the writer of the letter believed the imprisoned journalist to have been connected with the paper. Yet Mr. MacCarthy is at great pains to show how the Oxonian Shelley may have come to imagine that the cruelly entreated Mr. Finerty was editor of the paper, with which he in fact is not known to have had any professional connexion. The libel on Lord Castlereagh, for which Mr. Finerty was sent to prison, having been published in the Statesman as well as the Morning Chronicle, it was natural for Shelley (argues Mr. MacCarthy) to assume that Mr. Finerty was editor of the Statesman. Shelley was by no means such a fool as the ‘Shelleyan enthusiasts’ would have us think him. The youngster reasoned wildly sometimes, but he was not likely to think a journalist must be the editor of one paper because he had been sent to prison for libelling a Minister in another paper. Knowing well enough that Mr. Finerty (in whose concerns he took a lively interest) had been committed for eighteen months to Lincoln Gaol on 7th February, 1811, Shelley was not likely to imagine a fortnight later he was the Acting Editor of the London Statesman. Knowing right well Mr. Finerty had been sentenced to eighteen months, Shelley was not likely so soon after the sentence to imagine the journalist had been sent to prison for two years. To read Mr. MacCarthy’s perplexing pages is to see that the gentleman was not more successful in confounding his readers than in confounding himself. Yet because he threw a new kind of mud on Shelley’s earliest biographer, this superlatively inaccurate and stupefying writer has been cried up as a great Shelleyan authority.

After setting forth the words of the spurious epistle, Mr. MacCarthy remarks in his usual style of laborious inaccuracy:—

February 22nd, 1811. Six days later—that is, on the 2nd of March in the same year!—What particularity and what curious persistence in blundering! The gentleman, who is so severe on Hogg for an occasional slip, is more than usually fortunate when he is only twenty-five per cent wrong in a calculation of days. Mr. MacCarthy, however, is right in holding there is no reason to doubt the genuineness of the youthful Shelley’s first letter to the Editor of the Examiner. Written in the Oxonian Shelley’s best, but far from strenuous, style, the epistle (of 2nd March, 1811) to Leigh Hunt—the epistle Leigh Hunt never answered—could not have proceeded from any hand but Shelley’s hand. Strangely ingenious things have been done in the way of Shelleyan forgeries, but no fabricator of spurious letters and other materials for fictitious biography would have thought of manufacturing the delicious bit of puerile bounce that makes the letter end in this droll fashion:—

From his Eton days to a time considerably subsequent to his expulsion from Oxford, it was Shelley’s practice to open correspondence with strangers by telling them how greatly he differed in his worldly circumstances and prospects from ordinary young men. In this strain of boyish boastfulness, he is known to have approached so many people, that it is reasonable to suppose it to have been his usual device for putting himself in the favourable regard of persons, whose acquaintance he sought. To the Messrs. Longman, of Paternoster Row, he wrote from Eton: ‘My object in writing it was not pecuniary, as I am independent, being the heir of a gentleman of large fortune in the county of Sussex.’ To Stockdale he introduced himself by word of mouth in much the same fashion. In the earliest days of their acquaintance, Hogg heard not a little from Sir Bysshe Shelley’s grandson, of matters redounding to the dignity of the Castle Goring Shelleys; the romantic traditions of his house; the arguments with which the Duke of Norfolk urged him to look to politics as his proper field of action. ‘My father is in parliament,’ he writes on 2nd March, 1811, to the editor of the Examiner, whom he has never seen, ‘and on attaining twenty-one I shall, in all probability, fill his vacant seat.’ Ten months later (10th January, 1812), he is writing to William Godwin, whilst seeking the philosopher’s friendship by letter before seeing him,

In the musical egotisms of his poetry, the ear catches the same note of boastful arrogance and self-complacence. Whilst preaching the gospel of love, and proclaiming his determination to sacrifice himself for the good of others on the first convenient opportunity, Shelley knew how to remind his hearers that he would sacrifice a great deal more than the common sort of philanthropists; and there were moments when, not content with virtue’s peculiar and sweetest reward,—an approving conscience, he was more eager to provoke, than avoid, the plaudits of the multitude.

The reader of the epistle to Leigh Hunt may well smile at the youngster’s announcement that, in the course of two years, he would probably occupy a seat in the House of Commons, through his father’s timely retirement from political life. It is not the wont of even the most affectionate father to be so considerate for his heir-apparent; and though he was a much kindlier and more generous parent than the ‘Shelleyan enthusiasts’ like to admit, Mr. Timothy Shelley, of Field Place, was by no means a likely man to retreat into private life, in order that his eldest son might become Member of Parliament for New Shoreham in his twenty-second year. Delighting in the status of a member of elective assembly, the self-complacent and rather pompous gentleman plumed himself on standing well with his ‘party’ and ‘Mr. Speaker,’ and being so highly respected by ‘the house’ and ‘the country’ that he gave peculiar weight and moral influence to the committees to which he was appointed. By no means so destitute of imagination as numerous detractors have declared him, Mr. Timothy Shelley resembled his son in an aptitude for conceiving whatever tended for the moment to put him on good terms with himself. To hear Mr. Timothy Shelley repeat over his second bottle the compliments whispered into his ear by Mr. Speaker, was to infer that, if his words were reported accurately, Mr. Speaker was an habitual and extravagant flatterer, or had some unaccountable partiality for the Member for New Shoreham. To believe all the Member for New Shoreham said of himself, was to believe, that no committee was appointed in the Lower House until he and Ministers had spoken together respecting its constitution, that few nice questions of foreign policy were decided until Ministers had asked him what might, and what might not, be done. The kindly gentleman, who declared he had furnished Archdeacon Paley (or ‘Palley,’ as the Member for New Shoreham pronounced the name) with all the main arguments for the ‘Evidences,’ could persuade himself that his smile or frown determined the course of Ministers and Administrations. Whilst the Oxonian Shelley liked to imagine himself in parliament, his father delighted in imagining himself the very soul of parliament. So imaginative a father was not likely to vacate his seat for the advantage of so imaginative a son.

The mere absence of reasonable grounds for the statement would not, however, justify a confident opinion that Shelley was guilty of deliberate untruth when he wrote on 2nd March, 1811, that, on coming of age, he would probably succeed to his father’s vacant place in the House of Commons. Enough has been said in previous pages of this work to show that, together with a capacity for saying what he knew to be untrue, the Oxonian Shelley, no less than the Shelley of later time, possessed a fancy so curiously vigorous and fertile of inventions, that it may be held in some degree accountable for some of his numerous misstatements. In their desire to shield him from the obloquy of wilful and habitual untruthfulness, some of the poet’s friends have, no doubt, exaggerated this consequence of his imaginative energy. In maintaining that his friend cordially detested falsehood, and in respect of his frequent inaccuracies of statement, was the mere ‘creature, the unsuspecting and unresisting victim, of his irresistible imagination,’ Hogg not only went beyond his evidences, but traversed and contradicted them in a manner to provoke suspicion of his own honesty. Even where he admits that the inaccuracies were referable, in a large measure, to untruthfulness, Peacock betrays a similar disposition to make the utmost of the singular imaginativeness, which he held no less accountable for the poet’s frequent deviations from veracity.

By those who would rate none too highly the testimony of these two notable witnesses to the poet’s character, allowance must of course be made for the partiality of friendship. On the other hand, it must be remembered that, whilst affording them opportunities for studying his character closely, their intimacy with so singular and interesting a companion, offered them the strongest inducements to judge him fairly and know him thoroughly. If it must be conceded that Hogg and Peacock would never have thought of referring their friend’s imperfect veracity to his excessive imaginativeness, had he been nothing more to them than a slight acquaintance, it must also be conceded that the circumstances of their close and affectionate intercourse with the poet, qualified them to give the true explanation of his most perplexing utterances and most pitiable infirmity. Having regard to the general trustworthiness of the witnesses, and also to the several obvious considerations which may well dispose the reader to receive their evidence with suspicion and incredulity, I cannot question that, however much they overstated their respective opinions out of tenderness for the poet’s fame, both Hogg and Peacock had reasonable grounds for believing that a quick and undisciplined fancy was far more, or scarcely less, accountable than moral obliquity for their friend’s untruthful assertions. For the moment, therefore (but only for the moment), let it be assumed that, whilst penning the lines to Leigh Hunt, the undergraduate of University College really believed he was likely to take his father’s seat in parliament in the course of the next two or three years.

The assumption puts the reader face to face with another difficulty. The Oxonian Shelley, who made this remarkable announcement to Leigh Hunt, was the same Oxonian Shelley, who used to declare himself indebted to Dr. Lind’s timely intervention for preservation from the madhouse, to which his father meant to consign him. Whilst there is evidence of some sort that one of Shelley’s hallucinations haunted him from boyhood to the last month of his existence, there is no evidence of any kind that his most transitory hallucinations perished within a few days of the hour, when he first came under their power. It took him more than a year to get the better of his morbid fancy that Hogg was set on seducing his first wife. It took him several weeks to survive his equally ludicrous and distressing fancy, that he was stricken with leprosy. There is no ground for suspecting he was visited by hallucinations so fleeting that they might be styled ‘illusions of the hour.’ If, at the time of writing to Leigh Hunt, he really believed he would enter parliament in his twenty-second year, the hallucination must be regarded as holding his mind for a considerable period, concurrently with the hallucination touching his father’s determination to confine him for life as a lunatic. If there are grounds for thinking he really hoped to enter parliament so soon through his father’s affectionate consideration, the grounds are still stronger for thinking he really apprehended incarceration in a madhouse, through his father’s cruelty. To believe his father capable of retiring from parliament for the advantage of a son who had occasioned much trouble and reasonable displeasure, it was necessary for Shelley to think his father a rare example of parental devotion and beneficence. To believe his father capable of locking him up in a madhouse, at the instigation of resentment and notions of domestic policy, it was necessary for Shelley to think his father a monstrous example of parental malice and cruelty.

If he thought his father capable of such self-sacrifice for his boy’s happiness, Shelley must have thought his father an admirably good parent. If he thought his father capable of such barbarity to his own offspring, Shelley must have deemed his father a superlatively cruel and wicked parent. To have believed his father capable of the parental self-sacrifice and the parental cruelty, Shelley must in the same moment of time have regarded his father as one of the very best and one of the very worst parents. It is not in the power of human sanity or human madness to think thus differently of the same person at the same moment. If Shelley really believed his father was watching for an opportunity to shut him up in a madhouse, he was fibbing when he wrote to Leigh Hunt, that his father would probably soon retire from parliament in his favour. If Shelley believed what he wrote to Leigh Hunt, he was fibbing when he talked to Hogg and others of his cruel father’s malignant purpose to shut him up in a lunatic asylum. Strange creature though he was, it is difficult to believe even of Shelley that, whilst seeing his father’s goodness, he could be so malignantly wicked to do his utmost to persuade his friends of his father’s inordinate badness. Perhaps it is even more difficult to imagine, strange being though he was, that whilst thinking his father an execrably bad parent, Shelley would be so perverse as to invent the story, which went to prove his father an extraordinarily good one.

To escape from this tangle of difficulties, from this dilemma of four horns, readers are at liberty to assume that the Oxonian Shelley believed no tittle of either of the marvellous stories. Dismissing the assumption that the youngster wrote to Leigh Hunt in good faith and simple honesty, they may take it as proved that, in bragging about the seat he would have in parliament as soon as he should have taken his degree, the undergraduate was fibbing, in order that the newspaper editor should form something more than an adequate notion of his correspondent’s importance. They may also take it as proved, that the undergraduate was no more sincere in talking about his wicked father’s design to lock him up in a madhouse, than in writing that his father would probably retire from parliament in his favour. The time, doubtless, came when Shelley believed his worst fictions to his father’s discredit, even as tellers of untruths usually come in course of time to believe the fabrications which they persist in repeating steadily and earnestly:—even as ‘the nobleman, who recently languished in captivity at Portland,’ has doubtless succeeded in persuading himself that he is the veritable Sir Roger Tichborne.

But before fancies, born of fierce and violent resentments, acquired the complexion and force of hideous truths to his disordered judgment, it is conceivable—ay, it cannot be doubted—that Shelley passed through states of mental and moral disturbance, which were fruitful of impressions and misconceptions, so curiously composed of fact and fancy, of truth and chimera, that he might be well described as a victim of semi-delusions. Between the period when he was altogether sane and the period when he suffered from steady hallucination, at least on one subject, and transient hallucinations on other subjects, there was a period during which he was neither absolutely free from delusions nor wholly possessed by any delusion respecting his father’s character and conduct.

IV. Yet another ‘discovery’ respecting the Oxonian Shelley, for which the ‘Shelleyan enthusiasts’ overflowed with gratitude to Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy. To believe all that is told to his honour in Shelley’s Early Life is to believe that Shelley made himself responsible for the costs and charges of publishing the little volume of verse, which gave Miss Janetta Phillips her modest place in literary annals. That Miss Janetta was writing poetry whilst Shelley kept terms at Oxford, that she rose to a high place in his poetical regard in the spring of 1811, and that whilst waging war with bigotry and superstition in academic circles, he was at much pains to get subscribers for her book of poems, are matters of historic certainty. In the April of that year, when Miss Elizabeth Shelley was fast falling from her brother’s favour, he wrote to Hogg, ‘Elizabeth is, indeed, an unworthy companion of the Muses. I do not rest much on her poetry now. Miss Phillips betrayed twice the genius; greater amiability, if to affect the feelings is a proof of the excess of the latter.’ The long list of subscribers to Poems by Janetta Phillips. Oxford: Printed by Collingwood and Co., 1811, affords conclusive evidence that, whilst regarding her poetical ability with approval, Shelley bestirred himself in Oxford, London, and Sussex, to further Miss Janetta’s literary venture. Subscribing himself for six copies of the work, he induced his sister Elizabeth to put her name down for a copy of the metrical effusions, which ‘betrayed twice the genius’ of her compositions. Miss Hellen Shelley at the Clapham Boarding School, and her friend Miss Harriett Westbrook, also produced half-crowns from their little purses for the benefit of Miss Janetta Phillips. Other members of Shelley’s circle ordered the book at his instance. Mr. Medwin, of Horsham, ordered a copy; Mr. Charles Grove took a copy; Mrs. Grove, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, put her name down for three copies. It was, doubtless, at Shelley’s solicitation that his Oxford bookseller consented to subscribe for Miss Janetta’s little volume. It is probable that the young lady had other friends besides Shelley in the University, where she found no less than eighty subscribers for her Poems. Still, it may be safely assumed, she was considerably indebted to Shelley’s influence in the colleges for the sympathy and money of so many gownsmen. That Shelley admired Miss Janetta’s poetry, and pushed the fortunes of her book to the utmost of his ability, is certain.

But what proof is there that he generously took upon himself the charges of publication, and thereby incurred a debt that drained his pocket a few months later? What are the facts that to this extent ‘exhibit Shelley in the amiable light of being an active encourager of a youthful muse?’ Here is Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy’s evidence to the fact. In one of the undated letters, which he wrote in the summer (say July) of 1811, from Radnorshire to Hogg at York, Shelley says—‘I have at this moment no money, as Philipps’ and the other debt have drained me.’ What evidence to the point! In the spring of the year Miss Janetta Phillips published a little book, which was so largely subscribed for that, besides paying the charges of production, it must have put a good many guineas into the author’s pocket. Three or four months later Shelley writes from Wales that ‘Philipps’ and the other debt have drained’ him so completely that he is without money. It follows, according to Mr. MacCarthy, that at the time of writing the letter Shelley was suffering from his generosity to Miss Janetta Phillips. The ‘Shelleyan enthusiasts,’ who mistook Mr. MacCarthy for a prophet because he wrote abusively of Hogg, may be assured that neither of the debts referred to in the epistle had anything to do with Miss Janetta Phillips’s book. Printed whilst the young lady’s poetry was passing through the press at Oxford, Shelley’s tract on The Necessity of Atheism—the publication that resulted in his expulsion from University College, Oxford—was printed by E. and W. Phillips, of Worthing. I have not thought it worth my while to inquire about Miss Janetta’s parentage and history; but I should not be surprised to learn she was the daughter of one of these Worthing printers, and that Shelley’s efforts for the success of her book proceeded in some degree from friendliness for the printers, who were just then rendering him secret and confidential service. One thing is certain about Miss Janetta. Though it occasioned him considerable trouble at the moment, the publication of her poems caused him no subsequent discomfort. The debts, referred to in the letter, were the debt to Stockdale for the production of St. Irvyne, and the debt to the Messrs. E. and W. Phillips, of Worthing, for printing The Necessity of Atheism. Mr. MacCarthy’s precious discovery is ‘a mare’s-nest’ for the cynical reader to chuckle over.

CHAPTER XIII.