No More Learning

He chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of
liberty, some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the
opinions of the world; but who is animated throughout by an ardent
love of virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons of political and
intellectual freedom on his fellow-creatures. He created for this
youth a woman such as he delighted to imagine--full of enthusiasm for
the same objects; and they both, with will unvanquished, and the
deepest sense of the justice of their cause, met adversity and death.
There exists in this poem a memorial of a friend of his youth. The
character of the old man who liberates Laon from his tower prison, and
tends on him in sickness, is founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, when
Shelley was at Eton, had often stood by to befriend and support him,
and whose name he never mentioned without love and veneration.

During the year 1817 we were established at Marlow in Buckinghamshire.
Shelley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no
great distance from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames. The
poem was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of
Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is
distinguished for peculiar beauty. The chalk hills break into cliffs
that overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech; the
wilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant
vegetation; and the cultivated part is peculiarly fertile. With all
this wealth of Nature which, either in the form of gentlemen's parks
or soil dedicated to agriculture, flourishes around, Marlow was
inhabited (I hope it is altered now) by a very poor population. The
women are lacemakers, and lose their health by sedentary labour, for
which they were very ill paid. The Poor-laws ground to the dust not
only the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and
were obliged to pay poor-rates. The changes produced by peace
following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with them the most
heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley afforded what alleviation he
could. In the winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe
attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the poor cottages. I
mention these things,--for this minute and active sympathy with his
fellow-creatures gives a thousandfold interest to his speculations,
and stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race.
The poem, bold in its opinions and uncompromising in their expression,
met with many censurers, not only among those who allow of no virtue
but such as supports the cause they espouse, but even among those
whose opinions were similar to his own. I extract a portion of a
letter written in answer to one of these friends. It best details the
impulses of Shelley's mind, and his motives: it was written with
entire unreserve; and is therefore a precious monument of his own
opinion of his powers, of the purity of his designs, and the ardour
with which he clung, in adversity and through the valley of the shadow
of death, to views from which he believed the permanent happiness of
mankind must eventually spring.

'Marlowe, December 11, 1817.

'I have read and considered all that you say about my general powers,
and the particular instance of the poem in which I have attempted to
develop them. Nothing can be more satisfactory to me than the interest
which your admonitions express. But I think you are mistaken in some
points with regard to the peculiar nature of my powers, whatever be
their amount. I listened with deference and self-suspicion to your
censures of "The Revolt of Islam"; but the productions of mine which
you commend hold a very low place in my own esteem; and this reassures
me, in some degree at least. The poem was produced by a series of
thoughts which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm.
I felt the precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this task,
resolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume
contains was written with the same feeling--as real, though not so
prophetic--as the communications of a dying man. I never presumed
indeed to consider it anything approaching to faultless; but, when I
consider contemporary productions of the same apparent pretensions, I
own I was filled with confidence. I felt that it was in many respects
a genuine picture of my own mind. I felt that the sentiments were
true, not assumed. And in this have I long believed that my power
consists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates
to sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in
common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote
distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the
living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions
which result from considering either the moral or the material
universe as a whole.