186 



DISCOVERY 



the}- could hardly walk, but Edward was the weakest 

 and Jane was supporting him. Edward said, ' Get 

 up, Shelley ; the sea is flooding the house, and it is all 

 coming down.' Shelley got up, he thought, and went 

 to the window that looked on the terrace and the sea, 

 and thought he saw the sea rushing in. Suddenly his 

 vision changed, and he saw the figure of himself 

 strangling me [Mary Shelley], that had made him rush 

 into m\' room ; yet fearful of frightening me he dared 

 not approach the bed, when my jumping out awoke 

 him, or, as he phrased it, caused his vision to vanish." 

 Another vision which he experienced about this time 

 was that of meeting a figure of himself on the terrace 

 of Casa Magni, which said to him, " How long do you 

 mean to be content ? " ^ 



On June i8th we find the poet writing to Trelawny,^ 

 who was still at Pisa, " should you meet with any 

 scientific person capable of preparing the prussic acid, 

 or essential oil of bitter almonds, I should regard it as 

 a great kindness if you could procure me a small 

 quantity. ... I need not tell you I have no intention 

 of suicide at present, but I confess it would be a comfort 

 to me to hold in my possession that golden key to the 

 chamber of perpetual rest." There lay something 

 more than a gesture, too, in the poet's suggestion to 

 Jane Williams, who had, one afternoon, entrusted herself 

 and her two babies very rashlj- to Shelley's handling 

 of a skiff, when they were some way out from land, 

 " Xow let us together solve the great mystery." ^ 



From early days Shelley had possessed a passionate 

 love for water and the sea. Torrents dash down to 

 mingle their waters in the ocean, storms rage, or silver 

 boats float over placid seas in nearly all of his long poems. 

 References to the sea creep into his most beautiful 

 lyrics — the Ode to the West Wind, the ode To Night, 

 The Cloud, etc. But the poems of 1821 and 1822 show 

 an almost morbid concentration on the sea. Before 

 examining this development further, we must consider 

 the allegorical purport of The Triumph of Life, which 

 has been admirably expressed by Professor Dowden.* 



" The poem," he says, " contains the promise for 

 Shelley's poetry, and perhaps for Shelley's life, of a 

 reconcilement between his pursuit of the ideal and his 

 dealings with actual events and living men and women. 

 The triumphal car of life rolls forward in Shelley's 

 vision amid the mad troop of those who hasten they 

 know not whither ; while, bound to the conqueror's 

 chariot, are the world-renowned captives, who, for 

 any lure that life can offer, had yielded up their free- 

 dom, or, having fought a vain fight, had been defeated. 

 But all are not there, either in that fierce and obscene 



' Ref. IV. Pp. 560-561, which contain Mary Shelley's 

 account. 



2 Ref. XIII. P. 84. 



« Ref. VIII. Pp. 90-91. '■ Ref. IV. Pp. 553-554. 



crowd or among those mclancholv captives. Socrates 

 is not there ; nor is Jesus. To know one's self, and to 

 know the Highest, this and this alone makes it impos- 

 sible that life should ever defeat us or deceive. I-'or, 

 knowing these, we shall know the world, and temper 

 our hearts to its object, loving well, yet wisely, not 

 with the self-abandoning passion of Rousseau, not even 

 with the purer and loftier error of Plato. . . . Hence- 

 forth he would be on his guard against the errors of 

 love — against identifying any mortal object with that 

 for which alone man's being is made : he would love 

 what he had found best and truest in life ; but even 

 this with a knowledge that it is not the absolute, and 

 with a touch of renoimcement in his adhesion." 



I think that it must be fairly obvious to anyone 

 acquainted with Shelley's biography and work that 

 his attitude to life during 1821 and 1S22 was changing 

 from a destructive, anarchistic one to one that was 

 more human and constructive. He was tending to 

 accept life more philosophically, he was beginning to 

 trust instead of distrust that elan vital, as Bergson has 

 called it, that seems to guide the world and the indi- 

 vidual. But he was only beginning to do this, and the 

 struggle against giving up his old self was very violent 

 and had reached its crisis just about the time of his 

 death. I laid emphasis a short way back on the almost 

 morbid fascination which the sea was beginning to 

 exercise upon him. This was not entirely due to his 

 close proximity to it ; a great part of his life had been 

 spent near the sea. Now recent psychological research 

 has revealed the fact that some individuals experience 

 marked changes in personality at certain periods of 

 life. The first changes come, of course, during adoles- 

 cence ; the second usually in the early thirties ; and 

 so on. During such a change the individual has, 

 so to speak, to die and to be reborn. Frequent 

 phenomena connected with the change are dreams of 

 putting out to sea, or difficulties experienced in doing 

 so. When the dream occurs in which the individual 

 finally puts out to sea, leaving all the ties of his old 

 self behind him, it is fairly certain that he has at 

 last trusted himself to his new self and to the changed 

 currents of his life. We are here faced with a problem 

 in the case of Shelley which only a trained psychologist 

 could successfully tackle in full detail. Yet here we 

 have a man in his thirtieth year, mentally more mature 

 than his age in certain respects, experiencing dreams 

 in which he is both attracted to the sea and at the same 

 time afraid that it will overwhelm him, and in which 

 he meets the figure of himself, asking him, " How long 

 do you mean to be content ? " I do not wish to force 

 conclusions, but for further evidence I would refer 

 the reader to the fragments written in 1821 — A 

 Wanderer, Life Rounded with Sleep, Great Spirit — and 

 to the poems of 1822, expressive of an intensifying 



