No More Learning

Cobbett and
Peter use the same language for a different purpose: Peter is indeed a
sort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than
Peter, because he pollutes a holy and how unconquerable cause with the
principles of legitimate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one
ridiculous and odious.

If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more
indignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied
in the moral perversion laid to their charge. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])


NOTE ON PETER BELL THE THIRD, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

In this new edition I have added "Peter Bell the Third". A critique on
Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley
exceedingly, and suggested this poem.

I need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of "Peter
Bell" is intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth's
poetry more;--he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate
its beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal.
He conceived the idealism of a poet--a man of lofty and creative
genius--quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing
the beautiful and good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices
and pernicious errors; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardour
for truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the
sources of the moral improvement and happiness of mankind, but false
and injurious opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and
force were the best allies of purity and virtue. His idea was that a
man gifted, even as transcendently as the author of "Peter Bell", with
the highest qualities of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be
infected with dulness. This poem was written as a warning--not as a
narration of the reality. He was unacquainted personally with
Wordsworth, or with Coleridge (to whom he alludes in the fifth part of
the poem), and therefore, I repeat, his poem is purely ideal;--it
contains something of criticism on the compositions of those great
poets, but nothing injurious to the men themselves.
No poem contains more of Shelley's peculiar views with regard to the
errors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and the pernicious
effects of certain opinions on society. Much of it is beautifully
written: and, though, like the burlesque drama of "Swellfoot", it must
be looked on as a plaything, it has so much merit and poetry--so much
of HIMSELF in it--that it cannot fail to interest greatly, and by
right belongs to the world for whose instruction and benefit it was
written.

***


LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE.

[Composed during Shelley's occupation of the Gisbornes' house at
Leghorn, July, 1820; published in "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Sources of
the text are (1) a draft in Shelley's hand, 'partly illegible'
(Forman), amongst the Boscombe manuscripts; (2) a transcript by Mrs.
Shelley; (3) the editio princeps, 1824; the text in "Poetical Works",
1839, let and 2nd editions. Our text is that of Mrs. Shelley's
transcript, modified by the Boscombe manuscript. Here, as elsewhere in
this edition, the readings of the editio princeps are preserved in the
footnotes. ]

LEGHORN, July 1, 1820. ]

The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, _5
Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought--
No net of words in garish colours wrought
To catch the idle buzzers of the day--
But a soft cell, where when that fades away, _10
Memory may clothe in wings my living name
And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which must remember me
Grow, making love an immortality.

Whoever should behold me now, I wist, _15
Would think I were a mighty mechanist,
Bent with sublime Archimedean art
To breathe a soul into the iron heart
Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,
Which by the force of figured spells might win _20
Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
For round the walls are hung dread engines, such
As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch
Ixion or the Titan:--or the quick
Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, _25
To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,
Or those in philanthropic council met,
Who thought to pay some interest for the debt
They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,
By giving a faint foretaste of damnation _30
To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest
Who made our land an island of the blest,
When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire
On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire:--
With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag, _35
Which fishers found under the utmost crag
Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,
Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles
Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn
When the exulting elements in scorn, _40
Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
As panthers sleep;--and other strange and dread
Magical forms the brick floor overspread,--
Proteus transformed to metal did not make _45
More figures, or more strange; nor did he take
Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass
Of tin and iron not to be understood;
And forms of unimaginable wood, _50
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks,
The elements of what will stand the shocks
Of wave and wind and time. --Upon the table
More knacks and quips there be than I am able _55
To catalogize in this verse of mine:--
A pretty bowl of wood--not full of wine,
But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink
When at their subterranean toil they swink,
Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who _60
Reply to them in lava--cry halloo!
And call out to the cities o'er their head,--
Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,
Crash through the chinks of earth--and then all quaff
Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. _65
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk--within
The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,
In colour like the wake of light that stains
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
The inmost shower of its white fire--the breeze _70
Is still--blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas.