Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

It is the business of a friend to say what he thinks without fear of giving offence; and, if I were not a friend, argument is worth its market-price anywhere.

last billet. I am very happy to hear from Mr. | revolution.
Gisborne, and he knows well enough how to interest
me himself, not to need to rob me of an occasion
of hearing from you. Let you and I try if we
cannot be as punctual and business-like as the best
of them. But no clipping and coining, if you
please.

Now take this that I say in a light just so serious as not to give you pain. In fact, my dear fellow, my motive for soliciting your correspondence, and that flowing from your own mind, and clothed in your own words, is, that you may begin to accustom to discipline yourself in the only practice of life in which you appear deficient. You know that you are writing to a person persuaded of all the confidence and respect due to your powers in those branches of science to which you have addicted yourself; and you will not permit a false shame with regard to the mere mechanical arrangement of words to overbalance the advantage arising from the free communication of ideas. Thus you will become day by day more skilful in the management of that instrument of their communication, on which the attainment of a person's just rank in society depends. Do not think me arrogant. There are subjects of the highest importance in which you are far better qualified to instruct me, than I am qualified to instruct you on this subject.

Well, how goes on all The boilers, the keel of the boat, and the cylinder, and all the other elements of that soul which is to guide our "monstruo de fuego y agua" over the sea? Let me hear news of their birth, and how they thrive after they are born. And is the money arrived at Mr. Webb's? Send me an account of the number of crowns you realise; as I think we had better, since it is a transaction in this country, keep our accounts in money of this country.

We have rains enough to set the mills going, which are essential to your great iron bar. I suppose it is at present either made or making.

My health is better so long as the scirocco blows, and, but for my daily expectation of Mary's confinement, I should have been half tempted to have come to see you. As it is, I shall wait till the boat is finished. On the subject of your actual and your expected progress, you will certainly allow me to hear from you.

Give my kindest regards to your mother and Mr. Gisborne-tell the latter, whose billet I have neglected to answer, that I did so, under the idea of addressing him in a post or two on a subject which gives me considerable anxiety about you all. I mean the continuance of your property in the British funds at this crisis of approaching

Believe me, my dear Henry,
Your very faithful friend,

LETTER XXVI.

TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.

P. B. S.

Florence, Oct. 28, 1819. MY DEAR FRIENDS,-I receive this morning the strange and unexpected news, that my bill of £200 has been returned to Mr. Webb protested. Ultimately this can be nothing but delay, as I have only drawn from my banker's hands so much as to leave them still in possession of £80, and this I positively know, and can prove by documents. By return of post, for I have not only written to my banker, but to private friends, no doubt Henry will be enabled to proceed. Let him meanwhile do all that can be done.

Meanwhile, to save time, could not money be obtained temporarily, at Livorno, from Mr. W, or Mr. G―, or any of your acquaintance, on my bills at three or six months, indorsed by Mr. Gisborne and Henry, so that he may go on with his work? If a month is of consequence, think of this.

Be of good cheer, Madonna mia, all will go well. The inclosed is for Henry, and was written before this news, as he will see; but it does not, strange as it is, abate one atom of my cheer. Accept, dear Mr. G., my best regards. Yours faithfully,

LETTER XXVII.

To MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE.

P. B. S.

Florence, Nov. 6, 1819. MY DEAR FRIENDS,-I have just finished a letter of five sheets on Carlile's affair, and am in hourly expectation of Mary's confinement: you will imagine an excuse for my silence.

I forbear to address you, as I had designed, on the subject of your income as a public creditor of the English government, as it seems you have not the exclusive management of your funds; and the peculiar circumstances of the delusion are such that none but a very few persons will ever be brought to see its instability but by the experience of loss. If I were to convince you, Henry would probably be unable to convince his uncle. In vindication, however, of what I have already said,

allow me to turn your attention to England at this hour.

In order to meet the national expenses, or rather that some approach towards meeting them might seem to be made, a tax of £3,000,000 was imposed. The first consequence of this has been a defalcation | in the revenue at the rate of £3,600,000 a-year. Were the country in the most tranquil and prosperous state, the minister, in such a condition of affairs, must reduce the interest of the national debt, or add to it; a process which would only insure the greater ultimate reduction of the interest. But the people are nearly in a state of insurrection, and the least unpopular noblemen perceive the necessity of conducting a spirit, which it is no longer possible to oppose. For submitting to this necessity-which, be assured, the haughty aristocrats unwillingly did-Lord Fitzwilliam has been degraded from his situation of Lord-Lieutenant. An additional army of 11,500 men has received orders to be organised. Everything is preparing for a bloody struggle, in which, if the ministers succeed, they will assuredly diminish the interest of the national debt, for no combination of the heaviest tyranny can raise the taxes for its payment. If the people conquer, the public creditor will equally suffer; for it is monstrous to imagine that they will submit to the perpetual inheritance of a double aristocracy. They will perhaps find some crown and church lands, and appropriate the tithes to make a kind of compensation to the public creditor. They will confiscate the estates of their political enemies. But all this will not pay a tenth part of their debt. The existing government, atrocious as it is, is the surest party to which a public creditor may attach himself. He may reason that it may last my time, though in the event the ruin is more complete than in the case of a popular revolution. I know you too well to believe you capable of arguing in this manner; I only reason on how things stand.

Your income may be reduced from £210 to 150, and then £100, and then by the issue of immense quantities of paper to save the immediate cause of one of the conflicting parties, to any value however small; or the source of it may be cut off at once. The ministers had, I doubt not, long since determined to establish an arbitrary government; and if they had not determined so, they have now entangled themselves in that consequence of their instinct as rulers, and if they recede they must perish. They are, however, not receding, and we are on the eve of great actions.

Kindest regards to Henry. I hope he is not stopped for want of money, as I shall assuredly send him what he wants in a month from the date

of my last letter. I received his letter from Pistoia, and have no other criticism to make on it, except the severest-that it is too short. How goes on Portuguese-and Theocritus? I have deserted the odorous gardens of literature, to journey across the great sandy desert of politics; not, as you may imagine, without the hope of finding some enchanted paradise. In all probability, I shall be overwhelmed by one of the tempestuous columns which are forever traversing, with the speed of a storm, and the confusion of a chaos, that pathless wilderness. You | meanwhile will be lamenting in some happy oasis that I do not return. This is out-Calderonizing Muley. We have had lightning and rain here in plenty. I like the Cascini very much, where I often walk alone, watching the leaves, and the rising and falling of the Arno. I am full of all kinds of literary plans.

Meanwhile, all yours most faithfully,

LETTER XXVIII.

To LEIGH HUNT, Esq.

P. B. S.

Firenze, Nov. 13, 1819.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-Yesterday morning Mary | brought me a little boy. She suffered but two hours' pain, and is now so well that it seems a wonder that she stays in bed. The babe is also quite well, and has begun to suck. You may i imagine that this is a great relief and a great comfort to me amongst all my misfortunes, past, present, and to come.

Since I last wrote to you, some circumstances have occurred, not necessary to explain by letter, which makes my pecuniary condition a very painful one. The physicians absolutely forbid my travelling to England in the winter, but I shall probably pay you a visit in the spring. With what pleasure, among all the other sources of regret and discomfort with which England abounds for me, do I think of looking on the original of that kind and earnest face, which is now opposite Mary's bed. It will be the only thing which Mary will envy me, or will need to envy me, in that journey, for I shall come alone. Shaking hands with you is worth all the trouble; the rest is clear loss.

I will tell you more about myself and my pursuits in my next letter.

Kind love to Marianne, Bessy, and all the children. Poor Mary begins (for the first time) to look a little consoled; for we have spent, as you may imagine, a miserable five months. Good-bye, my dear Hunt.

[blocks in formation]

LETTER XXIX.

To MRS. GISBORNE.

Florence, Nov. 16, 1819. MADONNA, I have been lately voyaging in a sea without my pilot, and although my sail has often been torn, my boat become leaky, and the log lost, I have yet sailed in a kind of way from island to island; some of craggy and mountainous magnificence, some clothed with moss and flowers, and radiant with fountains, some barren deserts. I have been reading Calderon without you. I have read the "Cisma de Ingalaterra," the "Cabellos de Absolom," and three or four others. These pieces, inferior to those we read, at least to the "Principe Constante," in the splendour of particular passages, are perhaps superior in their satisfying completeness. The Cabellos de Absolom is full of the deepest and tenderest touches of nature. Nothing can be more pathetically conceived than the character of old David, and the tender and impartial love, overcoming all insults and all crimes, with which he regards his conflicting and disobedient sons. The incest scene of Amnon and

LETTER XXX.

To JOHN GISBORNE, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR,-I envy you the first reading of Theocritus. Were not the Greeks a glorious people? What is there, as Job says of the Leviathan, like unto them? If the army of Nicias had not been defeated under the walls of Syracuse; if the Athenians had, acquiring Sicily, held the balance between Rome and Carthage, sent garrisons to the Greek colonies in the south of Italy, Rome might have been all that its intellectual condition entitled it to be, a tributary, not the conqueror of Greece; the Macedonian power would never have attained to the dictatorship of the civilised states of the world. Who knows whether, under the steady progress which philosophy and social institutions would have made, (for, in the age to which I refer, their progress was both rapid and secure) among a people of the most perfect physical organization, whether the Christian religion would have arisen, or the barbarians have overwhelmed the wrecks of civilisation which had survived the conquest and

Tamar is perfectly tremendous. Well may Calderon tyranny of the Romans? What then should we say in the person of the former

Si sangre sin fuego hiere, que fara sangre con fuego?

Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical circumstance. It may be the excess of love or hate. It may be the defiance of everything for the sake of another, which clothes itself in the glory of the highest heroism; or it may be that cynical rage which, confounding the good and the bad in existing opinions, breaks through them for the purpose of rioting in selfishness and antipathy. Calderon, following the Jewish historians, has represented Amnon's action in the basest point of view-he is a prejudiced savage, acting what he abhors, and abhorring that which is the unwilling party to his crime.

Adieu. Madonna, yours truly,

P. B. S.

I transcribe you a passage from the Cisma de Ingalaterra-spoken by "Carlos, Embaxador de Francia, enamorado de Ana Bolena." Is there anything in Petrarch finer than the second stanza.

Porque apenas el Sol se coronaba
de nueva luz en la estacion primeva,
quando yo en sus umbrales adoraba
segundo Sol en abreviada esfera ;
la noche apenas tremula baxaba,
à solos mis deseos lisonjera,

quando un jardin, republica de flores,
era tercero fiel de mis amores.

have been? As it is, all of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes, of our youth. We are stuffed full of prejudices; and our natural passions are so managed, that if we restrain them we grow intolerant and precise, because we restrain them not according to reason, but according to error; and if we do not restrain them, we do all sorts of mischief to ourselves and others. Our imagination and understanding are alike subjected to

Alli, el silencio de la noche fria,

el jazmin, que en las redes se enlazava,
el cristal de la fuente que corria,
el arroyo que à solas murmurava,
El viento que en las hojas se movia,

el Aura que en las flores respirava;

todo era amor'; què mucho, si en tal calma, aves, fuentes, y flores tienen alma!

No has visto providente y officiosa, mover el ayre iluminada aveja, que hasta beber la purpura a la rosa ya se acerca cobarde, y ya se alexa? No has visto enamorada mariposa, dar cercos a la luz, hasta que dexa, en monumento facil abrasadas las alas de color tornasoladas?

Assi mi amor, cobarde muchos dias, tornos hizo a la rosa y a la llama; temor che ha sido entre cenizas frias, tantas vezes llorado de quien ama; pero el amor, que vence con porfias, y la ocasion, que con disculpas llama, me animaron, y aveja y mariposa quemè las alas, y llegue a la rosa.

rules the most absurd ;-so much for Theocritus and the Greeks.

In spite of all your arguments, I wish your money were out of the funds. This middle course which you speak of, and which may probably have place, will amount to your losing not all your income, nor retaining all, but have the half taken away. I feel intimately persuaded, whatever political forms may have place in England, that no party can continue many years, perhaps not many months, in the administration, without diminishing the interest of the national debt.And once having commenced-and having done so safely-where will it end?

Give Henry my kindest thanks for his most interesting letter, and bid him expect one from me by the next post.

Mary and the babe continue well.-Last night we had a magnificent thunder storm, with claps that shook the house like an earthquake. Both Mary and Cunite with me in kindest remembrances to all.

Most faithfully yours obliged,

Florence, Nov. 16th, 1819.

P. B. S.

*I subjoin here a fragment of a letter, I know not to whom addressed: it is to a woman-which shows how, worshipping as Shelley did the spirit of the literature of ancient Greece, he considered that this could be found only in its original language, and did not consider that time wasted which a person who had pretensions, intellectual culture, and enthusiasm, spent in acquiring them.

"It is probable that you will be earnest to employ the sacred talisman of language. To acquire these you are now necessitated to sacrifice many hours of the time, when, instead of being conversant with particles and verbs, your nature incites you to contemplation and inquiry concerning the objects which they conceal. You desire to enjoy the beauties of eloquence and poetry-to sympathise in the original language with the institutors and martyrs of ancient freedom. The generous and inspiriting examples of philosophy and virtue, you desire intimately to know and feel; not as mere facts detailing names, and dates, and motions of the human body, but clothed in the very language of the actors,-that language dictated by and expressive of the passions and principles that governed their conduct. Facts are not what we want to know in poetry, in history, in the lives of individual men, in satire, or panegyric. They are the mere divisions, the arbitrary points on which we hang, and to which we refer those delicate and evanescent hues of mind, which language delights and instructs us in precise proportion as it expresses.

What is a translation of Homer into English? A person who is ignorant of Greek, need only look at Paradise Lost, or the tragedy of Lear translated into French, to obtain an analogical conception of its worthless and miserable inadequacy. Tacitus, or Livius, or Herodotus, are equally undelightful and uninstructive in translation. You require to know and to be intimate with those persons who have acted a distinguished part to benefit, to enlighten, or even to pervert and injure humankind. Before you can do this, four years are yet to be consumed in the discipline of the ancient languages, and those of modern Europe, which you only imperfectly know, and which conceal from your intimacy such names as Ariosto, Tasso, Petrarch, and Macchiavelli; or Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, &c. The French language you, like every other respectable woman, already know; and if the

LETTER XXXI.

To HENRY REVELEY, Esg
Florence, Ner. På

MY DEAR HENRY,-I was exceedingly as by your letter, and I cannot but thari ya overcoming the inaptitude of a long dises: It is a gra request, for my pleasure. done, the successful casting of the cylinderit be a happy auspice for what is to fol hope, in a few posts, to remit the necessary no for the completion. Meanwhile, are at portions of the work which can be done r expense, saving time in their progress! D think you lose much money or time by this d

All that you say of the alteration in the fr the boat strikes me, though one of the mi in this, respect, as improvement. I long t aboard her, and be an unworthy partaker: glory of the astonishment of the Livornese, she returns from her cruise round Melo) When do you think she will be fit for sea!

Your volcanic description of the birth of: cylinder is very characteristic of you, and of b One might imagine God, when he made the ar and saw the granite mountains and fiery

great name of Rousseau did not redeem it, it wonk in been perhaps as well that you had remained ath ignorant of it."

*I insert the extract alluded to from Mr. But, letter:

"Friday 14 J

"The event is now past-both the steam cythere air-pump were cast at three o'clock this after two o'clock this morning I repaired to the mill:et the preliminary operations, upon which the success of a fount greatly depends, were conduct proper attention. The moulds are buried in a pit, tot close, before the mouth of the furnace, so that the metal, when the plug is driven in, may run easily i them, and fill up the vacant space left between the and the shell, in order to form the desired cylindes fire was lighted in the furnace at nine, and in the bu the metal was fused. At three o'clock it was cast, the fusion being remarkably rapid, owing 2 -perfection of the furnace. The metal was also b an extreme degree, boiling with fury, and seem dance with the pleasure of running into its prope The plug was struck, and a massy stream of a M dazzling whiteness filled the moulds in the twinkling ( shooting star. The castings will not be cool enough?) drawn up till to-morrow afternoon; but, to judge f all appearances, I expect them to be perfect." "Saturday, 13 Fa "They have been excavated and drawn up. I examined them and found them really perfect; massive and strong to bear any usage and sea-waar sæcula sæculorum. I am now going on gently with brass-work, which does not require any immatu expenses, and which I attend to entirely myself. 1 no workmen about me at present. "With kindest salutations to Mrs. Shelley and Mis "I remain, most truly, "Your obliged friend, and devoted serv " HENRY W. Rome

[ocr errors]

montories flow into their craggy forms, and the splendour of their fusion filling millions of miles of the void space, like the tail of a comet, so looking, so delighting in his work. God sees his machine spinning round the sun, and delights in its success, and has taken out patents to supply all the suns in space with the same manufacture. Your boat will be to the ocean of water, what this earth is to the ocean of other—a prosperous and swift voyager.

When shall we see you all? You not, I suppose, till your boat is ready to sail-and then, if not before, I must, of course, come to Livorno. Our plans for the winter are yet scarcely defined; they tend towards our spending February and March at Pisa, where our communications will not be so distant, nor so epistolary. C—— left us a week ago, not without many lamentations, as all true lovers pay on such occasions. He is to write me an account of the Trieste steam-boat, which I will transmit to you.

Mrs. Shelley, and Miss C return you their kindest salutations, with interest.

Most affectionately yours,
P. B. S.

LETTER XXXII.

TO LEIGH HUNT, Esq,

Florence, Nov. 23, 1819. MY DEAR HUNT,-Why don't you write to us? I was preparing to send you something for your "Indicator," but I have been a drone instead of a bee in this business, thinking that perhaps, as you did not acknowledge any of my late enclosures, it would not be welcome to you, whatever I might send.

What a state England is in! But you will never write politics. I don't wonder; but I wish, then, that you would write a paper in the "Examiner" on the actual state of the country, and what, under all circumstances of the conflicting passions and interests of men, we are to expect. Not what we ought to expect, nor what, if so and so were to happen, we might expect; but what, as things are, there is reason to believe will come; --and send it me for my information. Every word a man has to say is valuable to the public now; and thus you will at once gratify your friend, nay, instruct, and either exhilarate him, or force him

to be resigned, and awaken the minds of the people.

I have no spirits to write what I do not know whether you will care much about; I know well that if I were in great misery, poverty, &c., you would think of nothing else but how to amuse and relieve me. You omit me if I am prosperous.

I could laugh, if I found a joke, in order to put

you in good-humour with me after my scolding; in good humour enough to write to us. Affectionate love to and from all. This ought not only to be the Vale of a letter, but a superscription over the gate of life. Your sincere friend, P. B. SHELLEY. I send you a sonnet. I don't expect you to publish it, but you may show it to whom you please.

LETTER XXXIII.

To LEIGH HUNT, Esq.

Florence, November, 1819.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-Two letters, both bearing date Oct. 20, arrive on the same day; one is always glad of twins.

We hear of a box arrived at Genoa with books

and clothes; it must be yours. Meanwhile the babe is wrapt in flannel petticoats, and we get on with him as we can. He is small, healthy, and pretty. Mary is recovering rapidly. Marianne, I hope, is quite well.

You do not tell me whether you have received my lines on the Manchester affair. They are of the exoteric species, and are meant, not for the "Indicator," but the "Examiner." I would send for the former, if you like, some letters on such subjects of art as suggest themselves in Italy. Perhaps I will, at a venture, send you a specimen of what I mean next post. I enclose you in this a piece for the "Examiner," or let it share the fate, whatever that fate may be, of the "Masque of Anarchy."

I am sorry to hear that you have employed yourself in translating the "Aminta," though I doubt not it will be a just and beautiful translation.

You ought to write Amintas. You ought to exercise your fancy in the perpetual creation of new forms of gentleness and beauty.

With respect to translation, even I will not be seduced by it; although the Greek plays, and

I have lately, and with inexpressible wonder and delight, become acquainted) are perpetually tempting me to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the grey veil of my own words. And you know me too well to suspect that I refrain from a belief that what I could substitute for them would

some of the ideal dramas of Calderon, (with which

deserve the regret which yours would, if suppressed. I have confidence in my moral sense alone; but that is a kind of originality. I have only translated the Cyclops of Euripides, when I could absolutely do nothing else; and the Symposium of *Peter Bell the Third.

« AnteriorContinuar »