Affectionate love to and from all.

This ought not only to Your sincere friend,

be the Vale of a letter, but a superscription over the gate of life.

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 VII.

[Mask of Anarchy-Tasso's Amintas-Dramas of Calderon-Cyclops of Euripides-and Symposium of Plato-State of England.]

December, 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 wrapped 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 recovered.

You do not tell me whether you have received my lines on the Manchester affair. They are of the exotic 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 inclose you in this a piece for the Examiner; or let it share the fate, whatever that fate may be, of the Mask of Anarchy.

I am sorry to hear that you have employed yourself in translating 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.

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*

With respect to translation, even I will not be seduced by it; although the Greek plays, and some of the ideal dramas of Calderon (with which I have lately, and with inexpressible wonder and delight, become acquainted), are perpetually tempting me to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the gray vail of my own words. And you know me too well to suspect that I refrain from the belief that what I would substitute for them would 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 Plato, which is the delight and astonishment of all who read it—I mean, the original, or so much of the original as is seen in my translation, not the translation itself.*

*

* The translation is worthy of the original.

LETTERS OF SHELLEY.

325

I think I have an accession of strength since my residence in Italy, though the disease itself in the side, whatever it may be, is not subdued. Some day we shall all return from Italy. I fear that in England things will be carried violently by the rulers, and that they will not have learned to yield in time to the spirit of the age. The great thing to do is to hold the balance between popular impatience and tyrannical obstinacy; to inculcate with fervor both the right of resistance and the duty of forbearance. You know, my principles incite me to take all the good I can get in politics, forever aspiring to something more. I am one of those whom nothing will fully satisfy, but who am ready to be partially satisfied by all that is practicable. We shall see.*

Give Bessy a thousand thanks from me for writing out, in that pretty neat hand, your kind and powerful defense. Ask what she would like best from Italian land. We mean to bring you all something; and Mary and I have been wondering what it shall be. Do you, each of you, choose.

*

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Adieu, my dear friend,

Yours, affectionately ever,

P. B. S.

LETTER VIII.

[Visit to Lord Byron-His Lordship's proposal to set up a periodical work-Horace Smith-Adonais-Prometheus Unbound-CenciSentiments of Lord Byron.]

Pisa, August 26th, 1821.

MY DEAREST FRIEND-Since I last wrote to you, I have been on a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna. The result of this visit was a determination on his part to come and live at Pisa, and I have taken the finest palace on the Lung' Arno for him. But the material part of my visit consists in a message which he desires me to give you, and which, I think, ought to add to your determination-for such a one I hope you have formed-of restoring your shattered health and spirits by a migration to these "regions mild of calm and serene air."

He proposes that you should come and go shares with him and me, in a periodical work, to be conducted here; in which each of the contracting parties should publish all their original compositions, and share the profits. He proposed it to Moore, but for some reason it was never brought to bear. There can be no doubt that the profits of any scheme in which you and Lord Byron engage, must, from various yet co-operating reasons, be very great. As to myself, I am, for the present, only a sort of link between you and him, until you can know

*Shelley would have been pleased to see the change that took place under the administration of Canning-a change, which is here described by anticipation. He would have been still more pleased to see what is doing every day, by wise degrees, under Lord John Russell.

each other and effectuate the arrangement; since (to intrust you with a secret which, for your sake, I withhold from Lord Byron) nothing would induce me to share in the profits, and still less in the borrowed splendor, of such a partnership.* You and he, in different manners, would be equal, and would bring, in a different manner, but in the same proportion, equal stocks of reputation and success: do not let my frankness with you, nor my belief that you deserve it more than Lord Byron, have the effect of deterring you from assuming a station in modern literature, which the universal voice of my contemporaries forbids me either to stoop or aspire to. I am, and I desire to be, nothing.

I did not ask Lord Byron to assist me in sending a remittance for your journey; because there are men, however excellent, from whom we would never receive an obligation in the worldly sense of the word; and I am as jealous for my friend as for myself. I, as you know, have it not but I suppose that at last I shall make up an impudent face, and ask Horace Smith to add to the many obligations he has conferred on me. I know I need only ask.

I think I have never told you how very much I like your Amintas ; it almost reconciles me to translations. In another sense I still demur. You might have written another such poem as the Nymphs, with no great access of effort. I am full of thoughts and plans, and should do something if the feeble and irritable frame which incloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should do great things. Before this you will have seen Adonais. Lord Byron, I suppose from modesty on account of his being mentioned in it, did not say a word of Adonais, though he was loud in his praise of Prometheus: and, what you will not agree with him in, censure of the Cenci. Certainly, if Marino Faliero is a drama, the Cenci is not: but that between ourselves. Lord Byron is reformed, as far as gallantry goes, and lives with a beautiful and sentimental Italian lady, who is as much attached to him as may be. I trust greatly to his intercourse with you, for his creed to become as pure as he thinks his conduct is. He has many generous and exalted qualities, but the canker of aristocracy wants to be cut

*Shelley afterward altered his mind; but he had a reserved intention underneath it, which he would have endeavored to put in practice, had his friend allowed him.

INDEX.

Earthquakes, three shocks of, ii. 154 Giotto, ii. 146, 148

Emperors, Roman, their counte- Grose, Mr. Justice, i. 284