No More Learning

_4749 When]Where edition 1818.
_4804 Where]When edition 1818.
_4805 on a line]one line edition 1818.


NOTE ON THE "REVOLT OF ISLAM", BY MRS. SHELLEY.

Shelley possessed two remarkable qualities of intellect--a brilliant
imagination, and a logical exactness of reason. His inclinations led
him (he fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions.
I say 'he fancied,' because I believe the former to have been
paramount, and that it would have gained the mastery even had he
struggled against it. However, he said that he deliberated at one time
whether he should dedicate himself to poetry or metaphysics; and,
resolving on the former, he educated himself for it, discarding in a
great measure his philosophical pursuits, and engaging himself in the
study of the poets of Greece, Italy, and England. To these may be
added a constant perusal of portions of the old Testament--the Psalms,
the Book of Job, the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime poetry of
which filled him with delight.

As a poet, his intellect and compositions were powerfully influenced
by exterior circumstances, and especially by his place of abode. He
was very fond of travelling, and ill-health increased this
restlessness. The sufferings occasioned by a cold English winter made
him pine, especially when our colder spring arrived, for a more genial
climate. In 1816 he again visited Switzerland, and rented a house on
the banks of the Lake of Geneva; and many a day, in cloud or sunshine,
was passed alone in his boat--sailing as the wind listed, or weltering
on the calm waters. The majestic aspect of Nature ministered such
thoughts as he afterwards enwove in verse.
His lines on the Bridge of
the Arve, and his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", were written at this
time. Perhaps during this summer his genius was checked by association
with another poet whose nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, yet
who, in the poem he wrote at that time, gave tokens that he shared for
a period the more abstract and etherealised inspiration of Shelley.
The saddest events awaited his return to England; but such was his
fear to wound the feelings of others that he never expressed the
anguish he felt, and seldom gave vent to the indignation roused by the
persecutions he underwent; while the course of deep unexpressed
passion, and the sense of injury, engendered the desire to embody
themselves in forms defecated of all the weakness and evil which cling
to real life.

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.