CHAPTER IX.

The "Revolt of Islam"-Mode of its composition-Its character" Prince Athanase"-Rosalind and Helen -Pamphlet on Reform-Bad state of the Poet's health -He proposes to visit Italy-The feeling against him in England-Marlow reminiscences.

MOST conspicuous among Shelley's literary efforts at Marlow stands the "Revolt of Islam," published originally under the title of "Laon and Cythna, or the Revolution of the Golden City," and described in the title-page of the first edition as "a Vision of the Nineteenth Century."

This poem bears internal evidence of having had great care bestowed upon it, and from its peculiar nature must have tasked his powers to the utmost.

Shelley seems to have summoned up all his rare faculties, and to have concentrated his best energies, for its composition. In a letter to a he says: 66 It grew as it were from the agony friend, and bloody sweat of intellectual travail."

Such indeed is the great characteristic of all his larger productions; and however the gifted spirit of the poet may, for a time, fall short in its aspirations to produce something eternal, such is the surest and the brightest promise of ultimate

success.

The "Revolt of Islam" is a remarkable instance of the rapidity with which he wrote; for great as was this effort, it occupied the poet but little more than six months, though he says the thoughts therein arranged were slowly gathered in as many years.

During this period he devoted himself entirely to his work, and the thoughts which he strove to weave into harmonious verse, filled his mind with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm.

He thoroughly resigned himself to all the poetic impulses of his nature, and passed his life in almost perfect seclusion and solitary musings, either wandering amidst the rich woody scenery

near and about Marlow, or on the river in his boat, or in some little green island where the swan only inhabits; and it is said that not only whole days, but whole nights were frequently absorbed in this manner, when some small inn down the river would supply his simple wants or afford him an occasional abode.*

In thus endeavouring to separate himself from the world around him, to build up an ideal one of his own, and to walk apart with the pure and perfect images that came welling forth from the depths of his own ardent imagination, we may understand how this poem should reflect the spiritual hues of his own nature, and that it should in many respects be a genuine picture of his own mind.

In the letter just quoted, he says:

"I felt the precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this task, resolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume contains was written with the same feeling, as real, though not so prophetic, as the communications of a dying man."

Doubtless, the extreme delicacy of his health,

*Medwin's Life.

which had been much impaired by the circumstances which had tended to embitter his existence, and the light diet which he adhered to, often with too great austerity, served to subtilize his intellectual faculties, and to render more vivid and clear his naturally keen perceptions.

Specimens of exquisite thought might be turned up at almost every page, but the time had not yet arrived for Shelley to give to the world a worthy record of himself, and the "Revolt of Islam" bears all the marks of a feverish attempt, rather than the mature dignity and calm serenity of an object accomplished; though, at the same time, there is that in it which renders its failure, as a whole, far superior to the success of less ambitious performances.

It is replete with beautiful images, and exhibits a perfect mastery of the Spenserian stanza, in which it is written; the descriptive parts, and all those passages which belong only to the lofty ideal of an exalted imagination, are produced in the most vivid and glowing colours, and the ideas it would inculcate are always expressed in elegant and harmonious language, though these are often sufficiently vague and indefinite to give

great plausibility to the gross misconstructions. of an ungenerous critic.

Never, perhaps, did beings of more perfect purity and loveliness emanate from poet's brain than Laon and Cythna. They are altogether too spiritual, too unearthly, to be true to human nature, though they are such as Shelley ever loved to paint. But, as regards the general design of the poem, its ultimate aim, or the means of accomplishing it, it must be allowed that it is wrapped in considerable obscurity; and here it is the poet fails.

Taken only as the bright and glittering daydream of a mind thirsting after celestial happiness, it serves to delight and to elevate the imagination of its readers; and, probably, this is all that Shelley desired; but, taken as the exemplification of any particular state of existence, it must for ever fall far short of our expectations.

دو

Besides the "Revolt of Islam," Shelley wrote this year the fragment of "Prince Athanase, the greater part of "Rosalind and Helen," the least successful of any of his works, and a few minor poems.

In prose he also wrote a pamphlet, which