The same year and mood produced the great sonnet, 'England in 1819'--"An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king, Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring."and to the same group belongs that not quite successful essay in sinister humour, 'Swellfoot the Tyrant' (1820), suggested by the grunting of pigs at an Italian fair, and burlesquing the quarrel between the Prince Regent and his wife.When the Princess of Wales (Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel), after having left her husband and perambulated Europe with a paramour, returned, soon after the Prince's accession as George IV, to claim her position as Queen, the royal differences became an affair of high national importance.The divorce case which followed was like a gangrenous eruption symptomatic of the distempers of the age.Shelley felt that sort of disgust which makes a man rave and curse under the attacks of some loathsome disease; if he laughs, it is the laugh of frenzy.In the slight Aristophanic drama of 'Swellfoot', which was sent home, published, and at once suppressed, he represents the men of England as starving pigs content to lap up such diluted hog's-wash as their tyrant, the priests, and the soldiers will allow them.At the end, when the pigs, rollicking after the triumphant Princess, hunt down their oppressors, we cannot help feeling a little sorry that he does not glide from the insistent note of piggishness into some gentler mood: their is a rasping quality in his humour, even though it is always on the side of right.He wrote one good satire though.This is 'Peter Bell the Third' (1819), an attack on Wordsworth, partly literary for the dulness of his writing since he had been sunk in clerical respectability, partly political for his renegade flunkyism.
In 1820 the pall which still hung over northern Europe began to lift in the south.After Napoleon's downfall the Congress of Vienna (1814-16) had parcelled Europe out on the principle of disregarding national aspirations and restoring the legitimate rulers.This system, which could not last, was first shaken by revolutions that set up constitutional governments in Spain and Naples.Shelley hailed these streaks of dawn with joy, and uttered his enthusiasm in two odes--the 'Ode to Liberty' and the 'Ode to Naples'--the most splendid of those cries of hope and prophecy with which a long line of English poets has encouraged the insurrection of the nations.Such cries, however, have no visible effect on the course of events.
Byron's jingles could change the face of the world, while all Shelley's pure and lofty aspirations left no mark on history.
And so it was, not with his republican ardours alone, but with all he undertook.Nothing he did influenced his contemporaries outside his immediate circle; the public only noticed him to execrate the atheist, the fiend, and the monster.He felt that "his name was writ on water," and languished for want of recognition.His life, a lightning-flash across the storm-cloud of the age, was a brief but crowded record of mistakes and disasters, the classical example of the rule that genius is an infinite capacity for getting into trouble.
Though poets must "learn in suffering what they teach in song,"there is often a vein of comedy in their lives.If we could transport ourselves to Miller's Hotel, Westminster Bridge, on a certain afternoon in the early spring of 1811, we should behold a scene apparently swayed entirely by the Comic Muse.The member for Shoreham, Mr.Timothy Shelley, a handsome, consequential gentleman of middle age, who piques himself on his enlightened opinions, is expecting two guests to dinner--his eldest son, and his son's friend, T.J.Hogg, who have just been sent down from Oxford for a scandalous affair of an aesthetical squib.When the young men arrive at five o'clock, Mr.Shelley receives Hogg, an observant and cool-headed person, with graciousness, and an hour is spent in conversation.Mr.Shelley runs on strangely, "in an odd, unconnected manner, scolding, crying, swearing, and then weeping again." After dinner, his son being out of the room, he expresses his surprise to Hogg at finding him such a sensible fellow, and asks him what is to be done with the scapegoat."Let him be married to a girl who will sober him."The wine moves briskly round, and Mr.Shelley becomes maudlin and tearful again.He is a model magistrate, the terror and the idol of poachers; he is highly respected in the House of Commons, and the Speaker could not get through the session without him.Then he drifts to religion.God exists, no one can deny it; in fact, he has the proof in his pocket.Out comes a piece of paper, and arguments are read aloud, which his son recognises as Palley's."Yes, they are Palley's arguments, but he had them from me; almost everything in Palley's book he had taken from me." The boy of nineteen, who listens fuming to this folly, takes it all with fatal seriousness.In appearance he is no ordinary being.A shock of dark brown hair makes his small round head look larger than it really is; from beneath a pale, freckled forehead, deep blue eyes, large and mild as a stag's, beam an earnestness which easily flashes into enthusiasm; the nose is small and turn-up, the beardless lips girlish and sensitive.He is tall, but stoops, and has an air of feminine fragility, though his bones and joints are large.
Hands and feet, exquisitely shaped, are expressive of high breeding.His expensive, handsome clothes are disordered and dusty, and bulging with books.When he speaks, it is in a strident peacock voice, and there is an abrupt clumsiness in his gestures, especially in drawing-rooms, where he is ill at ease, liable to trip in the carpet and upset furniture.
Complete absence of self-consciousness, perfect disinterestedness, are evident in every tone; it is clear that he is an aristocrat, but it is also clear that he is a saint.
