Chapter XXXV: Letter I: Lyons, March 22, 1818 (2)

On the inner compartment of the Arch of Titus, is sculptured in deep relief, the desolation of a city. On one side, the walls of the Temple, split by the fury of conflagration, hang tottering in the act of ruin. The accompaniments of a town taken by assault, matrons and virgins and children and old men gathered into groups, and the rapine and licence of a barbarous and enraged soldiery, are imaged in the distance. The foreground is occupied by a procession of the victors, bearing in their profane hands the holy candlesticks and the tables of shewbread, and the sacred instruments of the eternal worship of the Jews. On the opposite side, the reverse of this sad picture, Titus is represented standing in a chariot drawn by four horses, crowned with laurel, and surrounded by the tumultuous numbers of his triumphant army, and the magistrates, and priests, and generals, and philosophers, dragged in chains beside his wheels. Behind him stands a Victory eagle-winged.

The arch is now mouldering into ruins, and the imagery almost erased by the lapse of fifty generations. Beyond this obscure monument of Hebrew desolation, is seen the tomb of the Destroyer’s family, now a mountain of ruins.

The Flavian amphitheatre has become a habitation for owls and dragons. The power, of whose possession it was once the type, and of whose departure it is now the emblem, is become a dream and a memory. Rome is no more than Jerusalem.

[53] From _The Shelley Papers_, 1833.

REMARKS ON “MANDEVILLE” AND MR. GODWIN.[54]

The author of “Mandeville” is one of the most illustrious examples of intellectual power of the present age. He has exhibited that variety and universality of talent which distinguishes him who is destined to inherit lasting renown, from the possessors of temporary celebrity. If his claims were to be measured solely by the accuracy of his researches into ethical and political science, still it would be difficult to name a contemporary competitor. Let us make a deduction of all those parts of his moral system which are liable to any possible controversy, and consider simply those which only to allege is to establish, and which belong to that most important class of truths which he that announces to mankind seems less to teach than to recall.

“Political Justice” is the first moral system explicitly founded upon the doctrine of the negativeness of rights and the positiveness of duties,--an obscure feeling of which has been the basis of all the political liberty and private virtue in the world. But he is also the author of “Caleb Williams”; and if we had no record of a mind, but simply some fragment containing the conception of the character of Falkland, doubtless we should say, “This is an extraordinary mind, and undoubtedly was capable of the very sublimest enterprises of thought.”

St. Leon and Fleetwood are moulded with somewhat inferior distinctness, in the same character of a union of delicacy and power. The Essay on Sepulchres has all the solemnity and depth of passion which belong to a mind that sympathises, as one man with his friend in the interest of future ages, in the concerns of the vanished generations of mankind.

It may be said with truth, that Godwin has been treated unjustly by those of his countrymen, upon whose favour temporary distinction depends. If he had devoted his high accomplishments to flatter the selfishness of the rich, or enforced those doctrines on which the powerful depend for power, they would, no doubt, have rewarded him with their countenance, and he might have been more fortunate in that sunshine than Mr. Malthus or Dr. Paley. But the difference would have been as wide as that which must for ever divide notoriety from fame. Godwin has been to the present age in moral philosophy what Wordsworth is in poetry. The personal interest of the latter would probably have suffered from his pursuit of the true principles of taste in poetry, as much as all that is temporary in the fame of Godwin has suffered from his daring to announce the true foundations of minds, if servility, and dependence, and superstition, had not been too easily reconcileable with his species of dissent from the opinions of the great and the prevailing. It is singular that the other nations of Europe should have anticipated, in this respect, the judgment of posterity; and that the name of Godwin and that of his late illustrious and admirable wife, should be pronounced, even by those who know but little of English literature, with reverence and admiration; and that the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft should have been translated, and universally read, in France and Germany, long after the bigotry of faction has stifled them in our own country.

“Mandeville” is Godwin’s last production. In interest it is perhaps inferior to “Caleb Williams.” There is no character like Falkland, whom the author, with that sublime casuistry which is the parent of toleration and forbearance, persuades us personally to love, whilst his actions must for ever remain the theme of our astonishment and abhorrence. Mandeville challenges our compassion, and no more. His errors arise from an immutable necessity of internal nature, and from much constitutional antipathy and suspicion, which soon spring up into hatred and contempt, and barren misanthropy, which, as it has no root in genius or virtue, produces no fruit uncongenial with the soil wherein it grew. Those of Falkland sprang from a high, though perverted conception of human nature, from a powerful sympathy with his species, and from a temper which led him to believe that the very reputation of excellence should walk among mankind unquestioned and unassailed. So far as it was a defect to link the interest of the tale with anything inferior to Falkland, so is Mandeville defective. But the varieties of human character, the depth and complexity of human motive,--those sources of the union of strength and weakness--those powerful sources of pleading for universal kindness and toleration,--are just subjects for illustration and development in a work of fiction; as such, “Mandeville” yields in interest and importance to none of the productions of the author. The events of the tale flow like the stream of fate, regular and irresistible, growing at once darker and swifter in their progress: there is no surprise, no shock: we are prepared for the worst from the very opening of the scene, though we wonder whence the author drew the shadows which render the moral darkness, every instant more fearful, at last so appalling and so complete. The interest is awfully deep and rapid. To struggle with it, would be the gossamer attempting to bear up against the tempest. In this respect it is more powerful than “Caleb Williams”; the interest of “Caleb Williams” being as rapid, but not so profound, as that of “Mandeville.” It is a wind that tears up the deepest waters of the ocean of mind.

The language is more rich and various, and the expressions more eloquently sweet, without losing that energy and distinctness which characterize “Political Justice” and “Caleb Williams.” The moral speculations have a strength, and consistency, and boldness, which has been less clearly aimed at in his other works of fiction. The pleadings of Henrietta to Mandeville, after his recovery from madness, in favour of virtue and of benevolent energy, compose, in every respect, the most perfect and beautiful piece of writing of modern times. It is the genuine doctrine of “Political Justice,” presented in one perspicacious and impressive river, and clothed in such enchanting melody of language, as seems, not less than the writings of Plato, to realize those lines of Milton:

How charming is divine philosophy--
Not harsh and crabbed--
But musical as is Apollo’s lute!

Clifford’s talk, too, about wealth, has a beautiful, and readily to be disentangled intermixture of truth and error. Clifford is a person, who, without those characteristics which usually constitute the sublime, is sublime from the mere excess of loveliness and innocence. Henrietta’s first appearance to Mandeville, at Mandeville House, is an occurrence resplendent with the sunrise of life; it recalls to the memory many a vision--or perhaps but one--which the delusive exhalations of unbaffled hope have invested with a rose-like lustre as of morning, yet unlike morning--a light which, once extinguished, never can return. Henrietta seems at first to be all that a susceptible heart imagines in the object of its earliest passion. We scarcely can see her, she is so beautiful. There is a mist of dazzling loveliness which encircles her, and shuts out from the sight all that is mortal in her transcendent charms. But the veil is gradually undrawn, and she “fades into the light of common day.” Her actions, and even her sentiments, do not correspond to the elevation of her speculative opinions, and the fearless sincerity which should be the accompaniment of truth and virtue. But she has a divided affection, and she is faithful there only where infidelity would have been self-sacrifice. Could the spotless Henrietta have subjected her love to Clifford, to the vain and insulting accident of wealth and reputation, and the babbling of a miserable old woman, and yet have proceeded unshrinking to her nuptial feast from the expostulations of Mandeville’s impassioned and pathetic madness? It might be well in the author to show the foundations of human hope thus overthrown, for his picture might otherwise have been illumined with one gleam of light. It was his skill to enforce the moral, “that all things are vanity,” and “that the house of mourning is better than the house of feasting”; and we are indebted to those who make us feel the instability of our nature, that we may lay the knowledge (which is its foundation) deep, and make the affections (which are its cement) strong. But one regrets that Henrietta,--who soared far beyond her contemporaries in her opinions, who was so beautiful that she seemed a spirit among mankind,--should act and feel no otherwise than the least exalted of her sex; and still more, that the author, capable of conceiving something so admirable and lovely, should have been withheld, by the tenour of the fiction which he chose, from executing it in its full extent. It almost seems in the original conception of the character of Henrietta, that something was imagined too vast and too uncommon to be realized; and the feeling weighs like disappointment on the mind. But these objections, considered with reference to the close of the story, are extrinsical.

The reader’s mind is hurried on as he approaches the end with breathless and accelerated impulse. The noun _smorfia_ comes at last, and touches some nerve which jars the inmost soul, and grates, as it were, along the blood; and we can scarcely believe that that grin which must accompany Mandeville to his grave, is not stamped upon our own visage.

[54] From _The Shelley Papers_, 1833.

ON “FRANKENSTEIN.”[55]

The novel of “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,” is undoubtedly, as a mere story, one of the most original and complete productions of the day. We debate with ourselves in wonder, as we read it, what could have been the series of thoughts--what could have been the peculiar experiences that awakened them--which conduced, in the author’s mind, to the astonishing combinations of motives and incidents, and the startling catastrophe, which compose this tale. There are, perhaps, some points of subordinate importance, which prove that it is the author’s first attempt. But in this judgment, which requires a very nice discrimination, we may be mistaken; for it is conducted throughout with a firm and steady hand. The interest gradually accumulates and advances towards the conclusion with the accelerated rapidity of a rock rolled down a mountain. We are led breathless with suspense and sympathy, and the heaping up of incident on incident, and the working of passion out of passion. We cry “hold, hold! enough!”--but there is yet something to come; and, like the victim whose history it relates, we think we can bear no more, and yet more is to be borne. Pelion is heaped on Ossa, and Ossa on Olympus. We climb Alp after Alp, until the horizon is seen blank, vacant, and limitless; and the head turns giddy, and the ground seems to fail under our feet.

This novel rests its claim on being a source of powerful and profound emotion. The elementary feelings of the human mind are exposed to view; and those who are accustomed to reason deeply on their origin and tendency will, perhaps, be the only persons who can sympathize, to the full extent, in the interest of the actions which are their result. But, founded on nature as they are, there is perhaps no reader, who can endure anything beside a new love-story, who will not feel a responsive string touched in his inmost soul. The sentiments are so affectionate and so innocent--the characters of the subordinate agents in this strange drama are clothed in the light of such a mild and gentle mind--the pictures of domestic manners are of the most simple and attaching character: the father’s is irresistible and deep. Nor are the crimes and malevolence of the single Being, though indeed withering and tremendous, the offspring of any unaccountable propensity to evil, but flow irresistibly from certain causes fully adequate to their production. They are the children, as it were, of Necessity and Human Nature. In this the direct moral of the book consists; and it is perhaps the most important, and of the most universal application, of any moral that can be enforced by example. Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked. Requite affection with scorn;--let one being be selected, for whatever cause, as the refuse of his kind--divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations--malevolence and selfishness. It is thus that, too often in society, those who are best qualified to be its benefactors and its ornaments, are branded by some accident with scorn, and changed, by neglect and solitude of heart, into a scourge and a curse.

The Being in “Frankenstein” is, no doubt, a tremendous creature. It was impossible that he should not have received among men that treatment which led to the consequences of his being a social nature. He was an abortion and an anomaly; and though his mind was such as its first impressions framed it, affectionate and full of moral sensibility, yet the circumstances of his existence are so monstrous and uncommon, that, when the consequences of them became developed in action, his original goodness was gradually turned into inextinguishable misanthropy and revenge. The scene between the Being and the blind De Lacey in the cottage, is one of the most profound and extraordinary instances of pathos that we ever recollect. It is impossible to read this dialogue,--and indeed many others of a somewhat similar character,--without feeling the heart suspend its pulsations with wonder, and the “tears stream down the cheeks.” The encounter and argument between Frankenstein and the Being on the sea of ice, almost approaches, in effect, to the expostulation of Caleb Williams with Falkland. It reminds us, indeed, somewhat of the style and character of that admirable writer, to whom the author has dedicated his work, and whose productions he seems to have studied.

There is only one instance, however, in which we detect the least approach to imitation; and that is the conduct of the incident of Frankenstein’s landing in Ireland. The general character of the tale, indeed, resembles nothing that ever preceded it. After the death of Elizabeth, the story, like a stream which grows at once more rapid and profound as it proceeds, assumes an irresistible solemnity, and the magnificent energy and swiftness of a tempest.

The churchyard scene, in which Frankenstein visits the tombs of his family, his quitting Geneva, and his journey through Tartary to the shores of the Frozen Ocean, resemble at once the terrible reanimation of a corpse and the supernatural career of a spirit. The scene in the cabin of Walton’s ship--the more than mortal enthusiasm and grandeur of the Being’s speech over the dead body of his victim--is an exhibition of intellectual and imaginative power, which we think the reader will acknowledge has seldom been surpassed.

[55] From _The Shelley Papers_, 1833.

ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE.[56]

In the fifteenth century of the Christian era, a new and extraordinary event roused Europe from her lethargic state, and paved the way to her present greatness. The writings of Dante in the thirteenth, and of Petrarch in the fourteenth, were the bright luminaries which had afforded glimmerings of literary knowledge to the almost benighted traveller toiling up the hill of Fame. But on the taking of Constantinople, a new and sudden light appeared: the dark clouds of ignorance rolled into distance, and Europe was inundated by learned monks, and still more by the quantity of learned manuscripts which they brought with them from the scene of devastation. The Turks settled themselves in Constantinople, where they adopted nothing but the vicious habits of the Greeks: they neglected even the small remains of its ancient learning, which, filtered and degenerated as it was by the absurd mixture of Pagan and Christian philosophy, proved, on its retirement to Europe, the spark which spread gradually and successfully the light of knowledge over the world.

Italy, France, and England,--for Germany still remained many centuries less civilized than the surrounding countries,--swarmed with monks and cloisters. Superstition, of whatever kind, whether earthly or divine, has hitherto been the weight which clogged man to earth, and prevented his genius from soaring aloft amid its native skies. The enterprises, and the effects of the human mind, are something more than stupendous: the works of nature are material and tangible: we have a half insight into their kind, and in many instances we predict their effects with certainty. But mind seems to govern the world without visible or substantial means. Its birth is unknown; its action and influence unperceived; and its being seems eternal. To the mind both humane and philosophical, there cannot exist a greater subject of grief, than the reflection of how much superstition has retarded the progress of intellect, and consequently the happiness of man.

The monks in their cloisters were engaged in trifling and ridiculous disputes: they contented themselves with teaching the dogmas of their religion, and rushed impatiently forth to the colleges and halls, where they disputed with an acrimony and meanness little befitting the resemblance of their pretended holiness. But the situation of a monk is a situation the most unnatural that bigotry, proud in the invention of cruelty, could conceive; and their vices may be pardoned as resulting from the wills and devices of a few proud and selfish bishops, who enslaved the world that they might live at ease.

The disputes of the schools were mostly scholastical; it was the discussion of words, and had no relation to morality. Morality,--the great means and end of man,--was contained, as they affirmed, in the extent of a few hundred pages of a certain book, which others have since contended were but scraps of martyrs’ last dying words, collected together and imposed on the world. In the refinements of the scholastic philosophy, the world seemed in danger of losing the little real wisdom that still remained as her portion; and the only valuable part of their disputes was such as tended to develop the system of the Peripatetic Philosophers. Plato, the wisest, the profoundest, and Epicurus, the most humane and gentle among the ancients, were entirely neglected by them. Plato interfered with their peculiar mode of thinking concerning heavenly matters; and Epicurus, maintaining the rights of man to pleasure and happiness, would have afforded a seducing contrast to their dark and miserable code of morals. It has been asserted, that these holy men solaced their lighter moments in a contraband worship of Epicurus and profaned the philosophy which maintained the rights of all by a selfish indulgence of the rights of a few. Thus it is: the laws of nature are invariable, and man sets them aside that he may have the pleasure of travelling through a labyrinth in search of them again.

Pleasure, in an open and innocent garb, by some strange process of reasoning, is called vice; yet man (so closely is he linked to the chains of necessity--so irresistibly is he impelled to fulfil the end of his being,) must seek her at whatever price: he becomes a hypocrite, and braves damnation with all its pains.

Grecian literature,--the finest the world has ever produced,--was at length restored: its form and mode we obtained from the manuscripts which the ravages of time, of the Goths, and of the still more savage Turks, had spared. The burning of the library at Alexandria was an evil of importance. This library is said to have contained volumes of the choicest Greek authors.

[56] From _The Shelley Papers_, 1833.

A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT BY JURIES.

A FRAGMENT.[57]

Government, as it now subsists, is perhaps an engine at once the most expensive and inartificial that could have been devised as a remedy for the imperfections of society. Immense masses of the product of labour are committed to the discretion of certain individuals for the purpose of executing its intentions, or interpreting its meaning. These have not been consumed, but wasted, in the principal part of the past history of political society.

Government may be distributed into two parts:--First, the fundamental--that is, the permanent forms, which regulate the deliberation or the action of the whole; from which it results that a state is democratical, or aristocratical, or despotic, or a combination of all these principles.

And Secondly--the necessary or accidental--that is, those that determine, _not_ the forms according to which the deliberation or the action of the mass of the community is to be regulated, but the opinions or moral principles which are to govern the particular instances of such action or deliberation. These may be called, with little violence to the popular acceptation of those terms, Constitution, and Law: understanding by the former, the collection of those written institutions or traditions which determine the individuals who are to exercise, in a nation, the discretionary right of peace and war, of death or imprisonment, fines and penalties, and the imposition and collection of taxes, and their application, thus vested in a king, or an hereditary senate, or in a representative assembly, or in a combination of all; and by the latter, the mode of determining those opinions, according to which the constituted authorities are to decide on any action; for law is either a collection of opinions expressed by individuals without constitutional authority, or the decision of a constitutional body of men, the opinion of some or all of whom it expresses--and no more.

To the former, or constitutional topics, this treatise has no direct reference. Law may be considered, simply--an opinion regulating political power. It may be divided into two parts--General Law, or that which relates to the external and integral concerns of a nation, and decides on the competency of a particular person or collection of persons to discretion in matters of war and peace--the assembling of the representative body--the time, place, manner, form, of holding judicial courts, and other concerns enumerated before, and in reference to which this community is considered as a whole;--and Particular Law, or that which decides upon contested claims of property, which punishes or restrains violence and fraud, which enforces compacts, and preserves to every man that degree of liberty and security, the enjoyment of which is judged not to be inconsistent with the liberty and security of another.

To the former, or what is here called general law, this treatise has no direct reference. How far law, in its general form or constitution, as it at present exists in the greater part of the nations of Europe, may be affected by inferences from the ensuing reasonings, it is foreign to the present purpose to inquire--let us confine our attention to particular law, or law strictly so termed.

The only defensible intention of law, like that of every other human institution, is very simple and clear--the good of the whole. If law is found to accomplish this object very imperfectly, that imperfection makes no part of the design with which men submit to its institution. Any reasonings which tend to throw light on a subject hitherto so dark and intricate, cannot fail, if distinctly stated, to impress mankind very deeply, because it is a question in which the life and property and liberty and reputation of every man are vitally involved.

For the sake of intelligible method, let us assume the ordinary distinctions of law, those of civil and criminal law, and of the objects of it, private and public wrongs. The author of these pages ought not to suppress his conviction, that the principles on which punishment is usually inflicted are essentially erroneous; and that, in general, ten times more is apportioned to the victims of law, than is demanded by the welfare of society, under the shape of reformation or example. He believes that, although universally disowned, the execrable passion of vengeance, exasperated by fear, exists as a chief source among the secret causes of this exercise of criminal justice. He believes also, that in questions of property, there is a vague but most effective favouritism in courts of law and among lawyers, against the poor to the advantage of the rich--against the tenant in favour of the landlord--against the creditor in favour of the debtor; thus enforcing and illustrating that celebrated maxim, against which moral science is a perpetual effort: _To whom much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more._

But the present purpose is, not the exposure of such mistakes as actually exist in public opinion, but an attempt to give to public opinion its legitimate dominion, and an uniform and unimpeded influence to each particular case which is its object.

When law is once understood to be no more than the recorded opinion of men, no more than the apprehensions of individuals on the reasoning of a particular case, we may expect that the sanguinary or stupid mistakes which disgrace the civil and criminal jurisprudence of civilized nations will speedily disappear. How long, under its present sanctions, do not the most exploded violations of humanity maintain their ground in courts of law, after public opinion has branded them with reprobation; sometimes even until by constantly maintaining their post under the shelter of venerable names, they out-weary the very scorn and abhorrence of mankind, or subsist unrepealed and silent, until some check, in the progress of human improvement, awakens them, and that public opinion, from which they should have received their reversal, is infected by their influence. Public opinion would never long stagnate in error, were it not fenced about and frozen over by forms and superstitions. If men were accustomed to reason, and to hear the arguments of others, upon each particular case that concerned the life, or liberty, or property, or reputation of their peers, those mistakes, which at present render these possessions so insecure to all but those who enjoy enormous wealth, never could subsist. If the administration of law ceased to appeal from the common sense, or the enlightened minds of twelve contemporary _good and true men_, who should be the peers of the accused, or, in cases of property, of the claimant, to the obscure records of dark and barbarous epochs, or the precedents of what venal and enslaved judges might have decreed to please their tyrants, or the opinion of any man or set of men who lived when bigotry was virtue, and passive obedience that discretion which is the better part of valour,--all those mistakes now fastened in the public opinion, would be brought at each new case to the * * * * *

[57] From _The Shelley Papers_, 1833.

ON LOVE.[58]

What is Love? Ask him who lives what is life; ask him who adores what is God.

I know not the internal constitution of other men, nor even of thine whom I now address. I see that in some external attributes they resemble me, but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought to appeal to something in common and unburthen my inmost soul to them, I have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a spirit ill-fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought, and have found only repulse and disappointment.

_Thou_ demandest what is Love. It is that powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason we would be understood; if we imagine we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another’s; if we feel we would that another’s nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart’s best blood:--this is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with every thing which exists. We are born into the world, and there is something within us, which from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness. It is probably in correspondence with this law that the infant drains milk from the bosom of its mother; this propensity develops itself with the development of our nature. We dimly see within our intellectual nature, a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise, the ideal prototype of every thing excellent and lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed[59]: a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness: a soul within our own soul that describes a circle around its proper Paradise, which pain and sorrow and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble and correspond with it. The discovery of its antitype; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own; an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret, with a frame, whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and a combination of all these in such proportion as the type within demands: this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends; and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the possession of which, there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul awaken the spirits to dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that if he were in a desert he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, man becomes a living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] Printed in The Keepsake, Lond. 1829.

[59] These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are so,--no help!

INDEX.

Addison, his _Cato_, ii. 16

Æschylus, quoted, ii. 340

Alfieri, ii. 390

Alps, the, i. 119, 120, 348

Anacreon’s swallow, ii. 359

_Anastasius_, ii. 341

Annual Parliaments, i. 364, 365

Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, ii. 49

Apollonius Rhodius, i. 410

Ariosto, tomb of, ii. 245;
his arm-chair, 246;
handwriting of, 247

Aristotle, ii. 49

Aspasia, ii. 134, 135

Bacon, quoted, ii. 4;
a poet, 8, 49

Barthélemi, ii. 44

Bisham wood, ii. 278

Blackstone, quoted, i. 254

Boccaccio, ii. 294, 295

Buffon, his sublime but gloomy theory respecting the future of this
globe, i. 352

Byron, Lord, his _Hours of Idleness_, quotations or plagiarisms from?
i. 132, 174;
visit to, at Ravenna, 390, 391;
his meeting with “Monk” Lewis, ii. 208;
at Venice, 226;
a gondoliere’s opinion of, 236;
Shelley’s visit to, at Venice, 237;
his _Don Juan_, 241;
his _Childe Harold_, 259;
his low debauchery, _ib._;
a great poet, 260;
visit to, at Ravenna, 332-345;
his Letter to Bowles, 342;
his _Cain_, 355;
at Leghorn, 362, 364

Calderon, i. 388, ii. 14, 305, 306;
his _Magico Prodigioso_, 353, 354

Calvin and Servetus, i. 229

Castlereagh, ii. 268

Catholic emancipation, i. 242 _sqq._

Charlotte, Princess, death of, i. 369

Chaucer, ii. 27

Chesterfield, Lord, his distinction between simulation and
dissimulation, ii. 394

Chillon, castle of, i. 340

Cicero, ii. 8, 49

Clarens, i. 341

Cobbett, William, on Annual Parliaments, i. 365; ii. 276, 289

Coleridge, S. T., his tragedy of _Remorse_, ii. 292, 353, 354

Coliseum, the, i. 394; ii. 260

Como, ii. 223-225

Comyns, Lord Chief Baron, his definition of libel, i. 254

Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, atrocities of, i. 306;
arch of, ii. 261, 280, 281

Correggio, two pictures of, ii. 249, 250

Dante, i. 385; ii. 24;
the first religious reformer, 27, 40;
tomb of, 344

Danube, the, i. 15, 32

Democritus, i. 400

Diotima, the prophetess, ii. 88, 89

Dowden, Professor, ii. 387

Drummond, Sir William, his _Academical Questions_, i. 327; ii. 176

Eaton, Daniel Isaac, sentence on, for publishing Paine’s _Age of
Reason_, ii. 369-386

Ellenborough, Lord, Shelley’s letter to, ii. 369-386

Epicurus, i. 421

Evian, town of, i. 335, 336

Finnerty, Mr. Peter, i. 255; ii. 399

Fitzwilliam, Lord, recall of, ii. 303

Fletcher, John, his _Two Noble Kinsmen_, ii. 255

Forsyth’s Travels in Italy, ii. 285

Fox, Charles James, i. 238

Franceschini, pictures of, ii. 251, 252

Fust, specimens of his press, ii. 344

Genoa, i. 153

George III., i. 237

George IV., i. 238

Gibbon, his house at Lausanne, i. 343

Gisborne, Mr. and Mrs., letters to, ii. 229-231, 290-291, 296-299,
301-309, 312-319, 326-330, 350-356

Gisborne, Mrs., ii. 228, 229

Godwin, William, his novels, i. 412-416;
letter to, ii. 231-233, 317;
his answer to Malthus, 352;
his law-suit and pecuniary embarrassments, 360, 361

Goethe, his _Faust_, ii. 353

Guercino, pictures by, ii. 253

Guiccioli, Contessa, Byron’s liaison with, ii. 333, 337, 340;
her letter to Shelley, 343, 350, 351

Guido, his picture of the Rape of Proserpine, ii. 249;
his Samson, 250;
his Murder of the Innocents, 250, 251;
his “Fortune,” 251;
his “Madonna Lattante,” _ib._;
his picture of Beatrice Cenci, 293

Heraclitus, i. 400

Hermance, village of, described, i. 333

Hesiod, quoted, ii. 61

Heyne, on the opinions entertained of the Jews by ancient poets and
philosophers, i. 301

Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, his _Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff_, ii.
387-396

Homer, quoted, ii. 56, 62;
on Calamity, 80, 81;
the most admirable of all poets, 115;
quoted, 124, 126, 127

Horace, quoted, i. 105; ii. 275

Hume, on causation, i. 327

Hunt, Leigh, letters to, i. 381-391;
invited by Lord Byron to Italy, ii. 268;
letter to, 294-296, 317, 362, 364

Kean, Edmund, ii. 293

Keats, John, his _Endymion_, ii. 322-324;
his sufferings, 323;
death of, 327

Lafayette, words of, i. 262

Lamb, Charles, i. 384; ii. 295

Laplace, demonstration of, i. 319

Lausanne, i. 343

Lear, King, ii. 14

Lewis, M. G., his ghost stories, ii. 208-212

Livy, ii. 9;
description by, 256

Lloyd, Charles, ii. 295

Locke, on sensation, i. 327

Lucretius, quoted, i. 296

Luther, ii. 27

Lyttelton, Lord, ii. 210, 211, 212

_Macbeth_, quoted, i. 47, 93, 273; ii. 21, 31, 375

Macchiavelli, on political institutions, ii. 17

Malthus, i. 280, 281;
Godwin’s answer to, ii. 232, 352;
a very clever man, 243

Marlow, ii. 223;
Shelley’s house at, 226

Marsyas, ii. 106, 107

Mellerie, i. 336, 337

Michael Angelo, i. 384, 385;
his Bacchus, 409

Milan Cathedral, ii. 225

Milton, death of, i. 370

Milton, his _Paradise Lost_ quoted, i. 146, 415;
stood alone, ii. 16;
his _Paradise Lost_, 25, 33;
quoted, 35

Mirabaud’s _Système de la Nature_, i. 326

Mont Blanc, i. 348

Moore, Thomas, ii. 339, 357, 358, 361

Music, ii. 70, 71

Nerni, village of, described, i. 334

Newton, Sir Isaac, ii. 374

Obscenity, blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, ii. 17

O’Neill, Miss, part of Beatrice Cenci fitted for, ii. 293

Oxford, reminiscence of, ii. 193

Paine, Thomas, i. 278

Peacock, Thomas Love, letters to, ii. 221-229, 241-290, 291-293

Petrarch, ii. 40

Petronius, poetical description of, ii. 265

Plato, i. 421;
essentially a poet, ii. 7, 22, 24;
the greatest among the Greek philosophers, 48;
his Symposium, 232

Pliny quoted, i. 294

Pompeii, ii. 270-275

_Queen Mab_, piratical republication of, ii. 328, 350

Raphael, i. 384;
his St. Cecilia, ii. 252, 253

Ravenna, ii. 338

Reveley, Henry, letters to, ii. 299-301, 309-312, 325, 326

Richardson, Samuel, his _Grandison_ quoted, ii. 237

Rome, a city of the dead, ii. 261;
English burying-place at, 262

Rousseau, his _Julie_, i. 333, 337, 339-341, 343;
essentially a poet, ii. 30

Schiller, his _Jungfrau von Orleans_, ii. 352

Scott’s _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ quoted, i. 47, 212;
_Marmion_ quoted, 100

Shakespeare, quoted, i. 384;
the greatest individual mind, ii. 40;
attribution to him of part of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, 255

Shelley, Mrs., her _Frankenstein_, i. 417-419

Socrates, ii. 53-135, 381

Sophocles, ii. 317

Southey, Robert, Shelley’s visit to, at Keswick, ii. 295

Spinosa, quoted, i. 328

St. Gingoux, village of, i. 338

St. Peter’s, Rome, ii. 282, 283

Suetonius, quoted, i. 294

Tasso, bold and true words of, ii. 35, 175;
manuscripts of, 246, 247

Terence, i. 409

Theocritus, ii. 19;
quoted, 291

Thomson, quoted, i. 77

Translation, vanity of, ii. 7

Tuberose, odour of the, ii. 17

Vallière, Madame de la, ii. 214

Velino, cataract of the, ii. 257

Venice, i. 87, 88; ii. 241

Vesuvius, ii. 263, 265-267

Vevai, i. 343

Virgil, quoted, ii. 25;
his Sixth Æneid, 264

Wellesley, Marquis, quotation from a speech of, ii. 369

Wieland, his novels, ii. 44

Wollstonecraft, Mary, her writings, i. 413

Wordsworth, i. 413;
quoted, ii. 206, 263, 353

Yvoire, village of, i. 335

END OF VOL. I.

_Printed by_ Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
_Edinburgh and London_

Transcriber’s Notes

A number of typographical errors were corrected silently.

Cover image is in the public domain.

The chapter number jump from VIII(8) to X(10) in the Zastrossi section is in the original text.

Index was copied from Vol II of this work.