Letters to Dead Authors [37]
a history of the moral, intellectual, and political elements in human society, which, we now agree, began, as Asia would fain have ended, in a cave.
Fortunately you gave us "Adonais" and "Hellas" instead of this treatise, and we have now successfully written the natural history of Man for ourselves. Science tells us that before becoming a cave- dweller he was a Brute; Experience daily proclaims that he constantly reverts to his original condition. L'homme est un mechant animal, in spite of your boyish efforts to add pretty girls "to the list of the good, the disinterested, and the free."
Ah, not in the wastes of Speculation, nor the sterile din of Politics, were "the haunts meet for thee." Watching the yellow bees in the ivy bloom, and the reflected pine forest in the water-pools, watching the sunset as it faded, and the dawn as it fired, and weaving all fair and fleeting things into a tissue where light and music were at one, that was the task of Shelley! "To ask you for anything human," you said, "was like asking for a leg of mutton at a gin-shop." Nay, rather, like asking Apollo and Hebe, in the Olympian abodes, to give us beef for ambrosia, and port for nectar. Each poet gives what he has, and what he can offer; you spread before us fairy bread, and enchanted wine, and shall we turn away, with a sneer, because, out of all the multitudes of singers, one is spiritual and strange, one has seen Artemis unveiled? One, like Anchises, has been beloved of the Goddess, and his eyes, when he looks on the common world of common men, are, like the eyes of Anchises, blind with excess of light. Let Shelley sing of what he saw, what none saw but Shelley!
Notwithstanding the popularity of your poems (the most romantic of things didactic), our world is no better than the world you knew. This will disappoint you, who had "a passion for reforming it." Kings and priests are very much where you left them. True, we have a poet who assails them, at large, frequently and fearlessly; yet Mr. Swinburne has never, like "kind Hunt," been in prison, nor do we fear for him a charge of treason. Moreover, chemical science has discovered new and ingenious ways of destroying principalities and powers. You would be interested in the methods, but your peaceful Revolutionism, which disdained physical force, would regret their application.
Our foreign affairs are not in a state which even you would consider satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of Islam, and we still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you recognised and described. We have a great statesman whose methods and eloquence somewhat resemble those you attribute to Laon and Prince Athanase. Alas! he is a youth of more than seventy summers; and not in his time will Prometheus retire to a cavern and pass a peaceful millennium in twining buds and beams.
In domestic affairs most of the Reforms you desired to see have been carried. Ireland has received Emancipation, and almost everything else she can ask for. I regret to say that she is still unhappy; her wounds unstanched, her wrongs unforgiven. At home we have enfranchised the paupers, and expect the most happy results. Paupers (as Mr. Gladstone says) are "our own flesh and blood," and, as we compel them to be vaccinated, so we should permit them to vote. Is it a dream that Mr. Jesse Collings (how you would have loved that man!) has a Bill for extending the priceless boon of the vote to inmates of Pauper Lunatic Asylums? This may prove that last element in the Elixir of political happiness which we have long sought in vain. Atheists, you will regret to hear, are still unpopular; but the new Parliament has done something for Mr. Bradlaugh. You should have known our Charles while you were in the "Queen Mab" stage. I fear you wandered, later, from his robust condition of intellectual development.
As to your private life, many biographers contrive to make public as much of it as possible. Your name, even in life, was, alas! a kind of ducdame to bring people of no very great sense into
Fortunately you gave us "Adonais" and "Hellas" instead of this treatise, and we have now successfully written the natural history of Man for ourselves. Science tells us that before becoming a cave- dweller he was a Brute; Experience daily proclaims that he constantly reverts to his original condition. L'homme est un mechant animal, in spite of your boyish efforts to add pretty girls "to the list of the good, the disinterested, and the free."
Ah, not in the wastes of Speculation, nor the sterile din of Politics, were "the haunts meet for thee." Watching the yellow bees in the ivy bloom, and the reflected pine forest in the water-pools, watching the sunset as it faded, and the dawn as it fired, and weaving all fair and fleeting things into a tissue where light and music were at one, that was the task of Shelley! "To ask you for anything human," you said, "was like asking for a leg of mutton at a gin-shop." Nay, rather, like asking Apollo and Hebe, in the Olympian abodes, to give us beef for ambrosia, and port for nectar. Each poet gives what he has, and what he can offer; you spread before us fairy bread, and enchanted wine, and shall we turn away, with a sneer, because, out of all the multitudes of singers, one is spiritual and strange, one has seen Artemis unveiled? One, like Anchises, has been beloved of the Goddess, and his eyes, when he looks on the common world of common men, are, like the eyes of Anchises, blind with excess of light. Let Shelley sing of what he saw, what none saw but Shelley!
Notwithstanding the popularity of your poems (the most romantic of things didactic), our world is no better than the world you knew. This will disappoint you, who had "a passion for reforming it." Kings and priests are very much where you left them. True, we have a poet who assails them, at large, frequently and fearlessly; yet Mr. Swinburne has never, like "kind Hunt," been in prison, nor do we fear for him a charge of treason. Moreover, chemical science has discovered new and ingenious ways of destroying principalities and powers. You would be interested in the methods, but your peaceful Revolutionism, which disdained physical force, would regret their application.
Our foreign affairs are not in a state which even you would consider satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of Islam, and we still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you recognised and described. We have a great statesman whose methods and eloquence somewhat resemble those you attribute to Laon and Prince Athanase. Alas! he is a youth of more than seventy summers; and not in his time will Prometheus retire to a cavern and pass a peaceful millennium in twining buds and beams.
In domestic affairs most of the Reforms you desired to see have been carried. Ireland has received Emancipation, and almost everything else she can ask for. I regret to say that she is still unhappy; her wounds unstanched, her wrongs unforgiven. At home we have enfranchised the paupers, and expect the most happy results. Paupers (as Mr. Gladstone says) are "our own flesh and blood," and, as we compel them to be vaccinated, so we should permit them to vote. Is it a dream that Mr. Jesse Collings (how you would have loved that man!) has a Bill for extending the priceless boon of the vote to inmates of Pauper Lunatic Asylums? This may prove that last element in the Elixir of political happiness which we have long sought in vain. Atheists, you will regret to hear, are still unpopular; but the new Parliament has done something for Mr. Bradlaugh. You should have known our Charles while you were in the "Queen Mab" stage. I fear you wandered, later, from his robust condition of intellectual development.
As to your private life, many biographers contrive to make public as much of it as possible. Your name, even in life, was, alas! a kind of ducdame to bring people of no very great sense into