Faith and Doubt in the I. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: To understand the poetry of the nineteenth century, we must understand the French Revolution of the last dozen years of the eighteenth; for that tremendous convulsion scored deep the thought and emotion of mankind, and the whole of the higher literature of Europe that has followed it might be treated largely as an evolution from that supreme event. The French Revolution was the outburst, in one terrific moment on one devoted spot of the planet's surface, of all the passion of protest against tyranny over the lives and thoughts of men which had been gathering ever accumulating force for centuries. A people utterly bereft of all that gives worth to life, bound hand and foot, body and soul, under the tyranny of king and priest, heard the biting gibes of Voltaire, were inflamed by the sounding theories of Rousseau on the Social Contract, and rose with one overwhelming impulse to slay oppression for ever, and establish the universal reign of the Rights of Man. The contagion spread far and wide; all that was brave and generous in England sympathised at first with a neighbouring people's stroke for freedom. The fall of the Bastille was pronounced by no less a statesman than Fox much the greatest event that had ever occurred in history. A seed was sown in many a young English mind which should grow to a great and mighty tree. A spark was kindled in many a British heart which should spread to a consuming fire. An impulse was given to the struggle of mankind for the largest and freest life of the mind which should never again die out. وو But "the mills of God grind slowly.' By evolution, not revolution, His main purposes are accomplished. A violent onslaught means a quick reaction. The heralds of freedom became the demons of terror. The swing round of Edmund Burke but symbolises the reaction in the whole English people. Presently, men who had been in a delirium of delight at the levelling sweep of democracy over throne and church were crying out for the re-establishment of hierarchical and aristocratic order. In the early years of our own century it was only the voices of the HIS CHILDHOOD. 3 bravest and most enthusiastic that still sang songs of freedom and had faith left to prolong the strife for universal emancipation. Shelley still chanted peans of defiance against all authority. Wordsworth turned back from his first enthusiasms to uphold the cause of order. These two men, both sons of the Revolution, illustrate the manner of its working on souls of opposite temperament, both lovers and ministers of goodness, purity, and truth. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792, three years after the outburst of the Revolution, the year before the execution of the King of France. By family he was of the Tory squirearchy; by temperament he was democrat and heretic, protestant against all authority. Already at Eton they called him "Atheist Shelley." It is those school-days by the Thames, with the regal towers of Windsor confronting him across the river, that he describes when he writes: And then I clasped my hands and look'd aroundBut none was near to mock my streaming eyes, Which pour'd their warm drops on the sunny ground So without shame I spake :- "I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannise Without reproach or check." I then control'd My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. Picture him there in the Eton fields, the lad of twelve or fourteen summers, the organiser of revolt against the immemorial sanctity of "fagging," his slim childish figure crowned by that wealth of sunny locks to be grizzled with care and sorrow ere he was thirty; those wonderful "stageyes," surmounted by that arch of forehead, looking out in wonder on this complex world, the passion of revolt-less for himself than for all the wronged and oppressed-burning in his bosom, as aloof from the sports of his fellows, he dedicates himself to wisdom, justice, freedom, mildness, that he may have power to do battle with that tyranny which he already wearies to behold. Yes, the Eton boy already incarnated that "Spirit of Revolt" alike against secular and against spiritual rule, which throbbed in the French Revolution, and still pulsed with irregular beat through the heart of Europe. The brief story of his remaining years is the story of how he gave expression to that spirit in words of imperishable music, suffusing it more and more as he mellowed and matured with that spirit of universal love and rapture in the joy of the goodness and beauty that are to be, which stamps his poetry with character transcendent in its kind over that of every rival. A marvellous love of knowledge in this |