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THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

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The Publishers of the present edition of Mr Shelley's Poetical Works think it necessary to state, that the first poem in the collection, THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,» did not originally bear that title: it appeared under the name of LAON AND CYTHNA; or the Revolution of the Golden City: a Vision of the Nineteenth Century. But, with the exception of this change of name,-into the reasons that led to which it is now unnecessary to inquire-some inconsiderable verbal corrections, and the omission of the following paragraph and note in the preface, the poem is in all respects the same as when first given to the public.

In the personal conduct of my hero and heroine, there is one circumstance which was intended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. It was my object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions on which established institutions depend.

I

have appealed, therefore, to the most universal of all feelings, and have endeavoured to strengthen the moral sense, by forbidding it to waste its energies in seeking to avoid actions which are only crimes of convention. It is because there is so great a multitude of artificial vices, that there are so few real virtues. Those feelings alone which are benevolent or malevolent are essentially good or bad. The circumstance of which I speak was introduced, however, merely to accustom men to that charity and toleration, which the exhibition of a practice widely differing from their own has a tendency to promote. Nothing, indeed, can be more mischievous than many actions innocent in themselves, which might bring down upon individuals the bigoted contempt and rage of the multitude.»

1 The sentiments connected with and characteristic of this circumstance have no personal reference to the writer.

Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

FIELD-PLACE, in the county of Sussex, was the spot where Percy Bysshe Shelley first saw the light. He was born on the 4th of August, 1792; and was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart. of Castle-Goring. His family is an ancient one, and a branch of it has become the representative of the house of the illustrious Sir Philip Sidney of Penshurst. Despising honours which only rest upon the accidental circumstances of birth, Shelley was proud of this connection with an immortal name. At the customary age, about thirteen, he was sent to Eton School, and before he had completed his fifteenth year, he published two novels, the Rosicrucian and Zasterozzi. From Eton he removed to University College, Oxford, to mature his studies, at the age of sixteen, an earlier period than is usual. At Oxford he was, according to custom, imbued with the elements of logic; and he ventured, in contempt of the fiat of the University, to apply them to the investigation of questions which it is orthodox to take for granted. His original and uncompromising spirit of inquiry could not reconcile the limited use of logical principles. He boldly tested, or attempted to test, propositions which he imagined, the more they were obscure, and the more claim they had upon his credence, the greater was the necessity for examining them. His spirit was an inquiring one, and he fearlessly sought after what he believed to be truth, before, it is probable, he had acquired all the information necessary to guide him, from collateral sources—a common error of headstrong youth. This is the more likely to be the case, as when time had matured his knowledge, he differed much on points upon which, in callow years and without an instructor, flung upon the world to form his own principles of action, guileless, and vehement, he was wont to advocate strongly. Shelley possessed the bold quality of inquiring into the reason of every thing, and of resisting what he could not reconcile to be right according to his conscience. In some persons this has been denominated a virtue, in others a sin-just as it might happen to chime in with worldly custom or received opinion. At school he formed a conspiracy for resistance to that most odious and detestable custom of English seminaries,

fagging, which pedagogues are bold enough to defend openly at the present hour.

4酒

At Oxford he imprudently printed a dissertation on the being of a God, which caused his expulsion in his second term, as he refused to retract any of his opinions; and thereby incurred the marked displeasure of his father. This expulsion arising, as he believed conscientiously, from his avowal of what he thought to be true, did not deeply affect him. His mind seems to have been wandering in a maze of doubt at times between truth and error, ardently desirous of finding the truth, warm in its pursuit, but without a pole-star to guide him in steering after it. In this state of things he met with the Political Justice of Godwin, and read it with eagerness and delight. What he had wanted he had now found; he determined that justice should be his sole guide, and justice alone. He regarded not whether what he did was after the fashion of the world; he pursued the career he had marked out with sincerity, and excited censure for some of his actions and praise for others, bordering upon wonder, in proportion as they were singular, or as their motives could not be appreciated. His notions at the University tended to atheism; and in a work which he published entitled « Queen Mab, it is evident that this doctrine had at one time a hold upon his mind. This was printed for private circulation only, and was pirated by a knavish bookseller and given to the public, long after the writer had altered many of the opinions expressed in it, disclaimed it, and lamented its having been printed. He spoke of the commonly-received notions of God with contempt; and hence the idea that he denied the being of any superintending first cause. He was not on this head sufficiently explicit. He seemed hopeless, in mo ments of low spirits, of there being such a ruling power as he wished, yet he ever clung to the idea of some great spirit of intellectual beauty> being throughout all things. His life was inflexibly moral and benevolent. He acted up to the theory of his received doctrine of justice; and, after all the censures that were cast upon him, who shall impugn the man who thus acts and lives?

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