Stories of Authors, British and American Part 5

If one were to name ten of the greatest English poets beginning with Chaucer and ending with Tennyson, the name of Sh.e.l.ley would be included, although he died before he was thirty years old. Hogg, a friend of Sh.e.l.ley's, has given us an interesting account of their meeting when both were freshmen at Oxford.

"At the commencement of Michaelmas Term," writes Hogg, "that is, at the end of October in the year 1801, I happened one day to sit next a freshman at dinner; it was his first appearance in hall. His figure was slight, and his aspect remarkably youthful, even at our table, where all were very young. He seemed thoughtful and absent. He ate little and had no acquaintance with any one. I know not how we fell into conversation, for such familiarity was unusual, and, strange to say, much reserve prevailed in a society where there could not possibly be occasion for any." This conversation led into a heated discussion of the merits of German and Italian literature. When the time for leaving the dining hall had come, Hogg invited his new acquaintance over to his rooms. During the transit the thread of the argument was lost, and while Hogg was lighting the candles Sh.e.l.ley frankly said that he was not competent to argue the point, as he had little knowledge of either German or Italian literature. Then Hogg with equal ingenuousness confessed that he knew but little of Italian and nothing of German literature.

So the talk went merrily on. Sh.e.l.ley said it made little difference whether Italian or German literature were the more worthy, for all literature, what was it but vain trifling? What is the study of language but the study of words, of phrases, of the names of things?

How much better and wiser to study things themselves!

"I inquired," says Hogg, "a little bewildered, how this was to be effected. He answered, 'Through the physical sciences, and especially through chemistry,' and raising his voice, his face flus.h.i.+ng as he spoke, he discoursed, with a degree of animation that far outshone his zeal in defense of the Germans, of chemistry and chemical a.n.a.lysis."

While this is going on Hogg studies the youthful speaker. What manner of man is this brilliant guest? "It was a sum of many contradictions.

His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much that he seemed of low stature. His clothes were expensive and made after the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, having pa.s.sed the autumn, as he said, in shooting. His features, his whole face and particularly his head, were, in fact, unusually small, yet the last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (if I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands, or pa.s.sed his fingers quickly through his locks unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. In times when it was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as possible in costume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like that of our soldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features were not symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the intellectual, for there was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air of profound religious veneration that characterizes the best works, and chiefly the frescoes of the great masters of Florence and Rome."

The next day Hogg pays a visit to Sh.e.l.ley's rooms. The furniture was new and the walls were freshly papered, but everything in the room was in confusion. "Books, boots, papers, shoes, philosophical instruments, clothes, pistols, linen, crockery, ammunition, and phials innumerable, with money, stockings, prints, crucibles, bags, and boxes, were scattered on the floor in every place, as if the young chemist, in order to a.n.a.lyze the mystery of creation, had endeavored first to reconstruct the primeval chaos. The tables, and especially the carpet, were already stained with large spots of various hues, which frequently proclaimed the agency of fire. An electrical machine, an air pump, the galvanic trough, a solar microscope, and large gla.s.s jars were conspicuous amidst the ma.s.s of matter. Upon the table by his side were some books lying open, several letters, a bundle of new pens, and a bottle of j.a.pan ink, that served as an ink-stand, a piece of deal, lately part of the lid of a box, with many chips, and a handsome razor that had been used as a knife. There were bottles of soda-water, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage. Two piles of books supported the tongs, and these upheld a small gla.s.s retort above an argand lamp. I had not been seated many minutes before the liquor in the vessel boiled over, adding fresh stains to the table, and rising in fumes with a disagreeable odor.

Sh.e.l.ley s.n.a.t.c.hed the gla.s.s quickly, and das.h.i.+ng it in pieces among ashes under the grate, increased the unpleasant and penetrating effluvium."

Hogg and Sh.e.l.ley soon became fast friends and met every evening. "I was enabled," writes Hogg, "to continue my studies in the evening in consequence of a very remarkable peculiarity. My young and energetic friend was then overcome by extreme drowsiness, which speedily and completely vanquished him; he would sleep from two to four hours, often so soundly that his slumbers resembled a deep lethargy; he lay occasionally upon the sofa, but more commonly stretched upon the rug before a large fire, like a cat, and his little round head was exposed to such fierce heat, that I used to wonder how he was able to bear it. Sometimes I have interposed some shelter, but rarely with any permanent effect, for the sleeper usually contrived to turn himself, and to roll again into the spot where the fire glowed the brightest.

His torpor was generally profound, but he would sometimes discourse incoherently for a long while in his sleep. At six he would suddenly compose himself, even in the midst of an animated narrative or of earnest discussion, and he would lie buried in entire forgetfulness, in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when he would suddenly start up, and rubbing his eyes with great violence, and pa.s.sing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once into a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his own composition or from the works of others, with a rapidity and an energy that were often quite painful. During the period of his occultation I took tea, and read or wrote without interruption. He would sometimes sleep for a shorter time, for about two hours, postponing for the like period the commencement of his retreat to the rug, and rising with tolerable punctuality at ten, and sometimes, though rarely, he was able entirely to forego the accustomed refreshment."

After supper, which Sh.e.l.ley would take upon awaking at ten, the two friends would talk and read together until two o'clock.

XVI

THE DEATH OF Sh.e.l.lEY

In the Protestant cemetery at Rome one can find in an obscure place a plain stone bearing record of Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley, and these lines from Shakspere's Tempest:

Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.

And this is the story of how Sh.e.l.ley happens to have a memorial in the Roman cemetery:

Sh.e.l.ley was a revolutionist in religion and politics, and revolutionists are seldom popular at home. Sh.e.l.ley's lyric poetry is unsurpa.s.sed, but his theories in some respects will never meet with the approval of common-sense humanity. England proved uncomfortable and so he left his country to live in other lands. In 1822 we find him with his family and a Mr. and Mrs. Williams in Casa Magni, a Roman villa in a cove on the bay of Spezzia. Here the poet and his friends became very fond of sailing in a boat which had been made for them.

The boat, which they called the Ariel, was twenty-eight feet long and eight feet broad, and this with the a.s.sistance of a lad they learned to manage fairly well. To Sh.e.l.ley, whose health had been failing, the out-of-door life gave renewed vigor.

On the eighth of July, Sh.e.l.ley and Williams, accompanied by a sailor-lad, left the harbor of Leghorn to go home to their wives, from whom they had been absent for several days. They had gone to Pisa to welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy, to meet other friends (among the number was Byron), and to do some business. Neither Sh.e.l.ley, Williams, nor the lad, was ever seen alive after that day. As we are indebted to Hogg for the best pen-pictures of the boy Sh.e.l.ley, so we are indebted to Trelawney for the best description of the closing scene. So we shall follow Trelawney's account in the main.

Trelawney was in Leghorn and intended to accompany his friends out of the harbor in a separate boat, but owing to the refusal of the health officer of the harbor he was not allowed to go. As from his own vessel he watched the Ariel, containing the small party happy in the thought that in seven short hours they should be at home with their loved ones, his Genoese mate turned to him and said: "They are standing too much in-sh.o.r.e; the current will set them there." "They will soon have the land-breeze," replied Trelawney. "Maybe," said the mate, "she will soon have too much breeze; that gaff topsail is foolish in a boat with no deck and no sailor on board." Then he added as he pointed to the southwest, "Look at those black lines and dirty rags hanging on them out of the sky; look at the smoke on the water; the devil is brewing mischief."

"Although the sun was obscured by mists," Trelawney writes, "it was oppressively sultry. There was not a breath of air in the harbor. The heaviness of the atmosphere and an unwonted stillness benumbed my senses. I went down into the cabin and sank into a slumber. I was roused up by a noise overhead, and went on deck. The men were getting up another chain-cable to let go another anchor. There was a general stir amongst the s.h.i.+pping; s.h.i.+fting berths, getting down yards and masts, veering out cables, hauling in of hawsers, letting go anchors, hailing from the s.h.i.+ps and quays, boats sculling rapidly to and fro.

It was almost dusk, although only half-past six o'clock. The sea was of the color and looked as solid and smooth as a sheet of lead, and covered with an oily sc.u.m. Gusts of wind swept over without ruffling it, and big drops of rain fell on its surface, rebounding, as if they could not penetrate it. There was a commotion in the air, made up of many threatening sounds, coming upon us from the sea. Fis.h.i.+ng craft and coasting vessels, under bare poles, rushed by us in shoals, running foul of the s.h.i.+ps in the harbor. As yet the din and hubbub was that made by men, but their shrill pipings were suddenly silenced by the cras.h.i.+ng voice of a thunder-squall that burst right over our heads. For some time no other sounds were to be heard than the thunder, wind, and rain. When the fury of the storm, which did not last for more than twenty minutes, had abated and the horizon was in some degree cleared, I looked to sea anxiously, in the hope of descrying Sh.e.l.ley's boat amongst the many small craft scattered about.

I watched every speck that loomed on the horizon, thinking that they would have borne up on their return to the port, as all the other boats that had gone out in the same direction had done."

Then followed a period of painful suspense. Were they safe or had they gone down? On the third day Trelawney went to Pisa to ascertain whether any one had heard anything of Sh.e.l.ley. "I told my fears to Hunt," he writes, "and then went upstairs to Byron. When I told him his lip quivered, and his voice faltered as he questioned me."

And what of the wives at Casa Magni awaiting the return of their husbands? Let one of the two tell the story. Mary is the wife of Sh.e.l.ley, and Jane is Mrs. Williams.

"Yet I thought when he, when my Sh.e.l.ley returns, I shall be happy--he will comfort me; if my boy be ill, he will restore him and encourage me.... Thus a week pa.s.sed. On Monday, 8th, Jane had a letter from Edward dated Sat.u.r.day; he said that he waited at Leghorn for Sh.e.l.ley, who was at Pisa; that Sh.e.l.ley's return was certain; 'but,' he continued, 'if I should not come by Monday, I will come in a felucca, and you may expect me on Thursday evening at furthest.'

"This was Monday, the fatal Monday, but with us it was stormy all day, and we did not at all suppose that they could put to sea. At twelve at night we had a thunder-storm. Tuesday it rained all day and was calm--the sky wept on their graves. On Wednesday, the wind was fair from Leghorn, and in the evening several feluccas arrived thence. One brought word they had sailed Monday, but we did not believe them.

Thursday was another day of fair wind, and when twelve at night came, and we did not see the tall sails of the little boat double the promontory before us, we began to fear, not the truth, but some illness, some disagreeable news for their detention."

"Jane got so uneasy that she determined to proceed the next day to Leghorn in a boat to see what was the matter. Friday came and with it a heavy sea and bad wind. Jane, however, resolved to be rowed to Leghorn, since no boat could sail, and busied herself in preparation.

I wished her to wait for letters, since Friday was letter-day. She would not, but the sea detained her; the swell rose so that no boat would endure out. At twelve at noon our letters came; there was one from Hunt to Sh.e.l.ley; it said, 'Pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say that you had bad weather after you sailed on Monday and we are anxious.' The paper fell from me. I trembled all over. Jane read it. 'Then it is all over,' she said. 'No, my dear Jane,' I cried, 'it is not all over, but this suspense is dreadful. Come with me--we will go to Leghorn, we will post, to be swift and learn our fate.'

"We crossed to Lerici ... we posted to Pisa. It must have been fearful to see us--two poor, wild, aghast creatures, driving (like Matilda) towards the sea to learn if we were to be forever doomed to misery. I knew that Hunt was at Pisa, at Lord Byron's house, but I thought that Lord Byron was at Leghorn. I settled that we should drive to Casa Lanfranchi, that I should get out and ask the fearful question of Hunt, 'Do you know anything of Sh.e.l.ley?' On entering Pisa, the idea of seeing Hunt for the first time for four years under such circ.u.mstances and asking him such a question was so terrific to me that it was with difficulty that I prevented myself from going into convulsions. My struggles were dreadful. They knocked at the door and some one called out, 'Chi e?' It was the Guiccioli's maid. Lord Byron was in Pisa.

Hunt was in bed, so I was to see Lord Byron instead of him. This was a great relief to me. I staggered upstairs; the Guicciola came to meet me smiling, while I could hardly say, 'Where is he--Sapete alcuna cosa di Sh.e.l.ley?' They knew nothing; he had left Pisa on Sunday; on Monday he had sailed; there had been bad weather Monday afternoon; more they knew not."

XVII

THE SCHOOL-DAYS OF JOHN KEATS

In the village of Enfield, in Middles.e.x, ten miles on the North Road from London, my father, John Clarke, says Charles Cowden Clarke in _The Gentleman's Magazine_, kept a school. The house had been built by a West India merchant in the latter end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century. It was of the better character of the domestic architecture of that period, the whole front being of the purest red brick, wrought by means of molds into rich designs of flowers and pomegranates, with heads of cherubim over niches in the center of the building. The elegance of the design and the perfect finish of the structure were such as to procure its protection when a branch railway was brought from the Ware and Cambridge line to Enfield....

Here it was that John Keats all but commenced, and did complete, his school education. He was born on the twenty-ninth of October, 1795, and he was one of the little fellows who had not wholly emerged from the child's costume upon being placed under my father's care. It will be readily conceived that it is difficult to recall from the "dark backward and abysm" of seventy-odd years the general acts of perhaps the youngest individual in a corporation of between seventy and eighty youngsters; and very little more of Keats's child-life can I remember than that he had a brisk, winning face, and was a favorite with all, particularly my mother....

Keats's father was the princ.i.p.al servant at the Swan and Hoop stables--a man of so remarkably fine a common-sense, and native respectability, that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his demeanor used to be canva.s.sed by my parents after he had been to visit his boys. John was the only one resembling him in person and feature, with brown hair and dark hazel eyes. The father was killed by a fall from his horse in returning from a visit to the school. This detail may be deemed requisite when we see in the last memoir of the poet the statement that "John Keats was born on the twenty-ninth of October, 1795, in the upper rank of the middle cla.s.s." His two brothers--George, older, and Thomas, younger than himself--were like the mother, who was tall, of good figure, with large oval face and sensible deportment. The last of the family was a sister--f.a.n.n.y, I think, much younger than all,--and I hope still living (in 1874)--of whom I remember, when once walking in the garden with her brothers, my mother speaking of her with much fondness for her pretty and simple manners....

In the early part of his school-life John gave no extraordinary indications of intellectual character; but it was remembered of him afterwards, that there was ever present a determined and steady spirit in all his undertakings: I never knew it misdirected in his required pursuit of study. He was a most orderly scholar. The future ramifications of that n.o.ble genius were then closely shut in the seed, which was greedily drinking in the moisture which made it afterwards burst forth so kindly into luxuriance and beauty.

My father was in the habit, at each half-year's vacation, of bestowing prizes upon those pupils who had performed the greatest quant.i.ty of voluntary work; and such was Keats's indefatigable energy for the last two or three successive half-years of his remaining at school, that, upon each occasion he took the first prize by a considerable distance.

He was at work before the first school hour began, and that was at seven o'clock, almost all the intervening times of recreation were so devoted, and during the afternoon holidays, when all were at play, he would be in the school--almost the only one--at his Latin or French translation, and so unconscious and regardless was he of the consequences of so close and persevering an application that he never would have taken the necessary exercise had he not been sometimes driven out for the purpose by one of his masters.

It has just been said that he was a favorite with all. Not the less beloved was he for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of the most picturesque exhibitions--off the stage--I ever saw. One of the transports of that marvelous actor, Edmund Kean--whom, by the way, he idolized--was its nearest resemblance; and the two were not very dissimilar in face and figure. Upon one occasion, when an usher, on account of some impertinent behavior, had boxed his brother Tom's ears, John rushed up, put himself in the received posture of offense, and, it was said, struck the usher--who could, so to say, have put him into his pocket. His pa.s.sion at times was almost ungovernable, and his brother George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to hold him down by main force, laughing when John was in "one of his moods," and was endeavoring to beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw conflagration, for he had an intensely tender affection for his brothers and proved it upon the most trying occasions. He was not merely the "favorite of all," like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive, his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in his behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one, superior or equal, who had known him.

In the latter part of the time--perhaps eighteen months--that he remained at school, he occupied the hours during meals in reading.

Thus, his whole time was engrossed. He had a tolerably retentive memory, and the quant.i.ty that he read was surprising. He must in those last months have exhausted the school library, which consisted princ.i.p.ally of abridgments of all the voyages and travels of any note; Mavor's collection, also his _Universal History_; Robertson's histories of Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss Edgeworth's productions, together with many other works equally well calculated for youth. The books, however, that were his constantly recurring sources of attraction were Tooke's _Pantheon_, Lempriere's _Cla.s.sical Dictionary_, which he appeared to _learn_, and Spence's _Polymetis_. This was the store whence he acquired his intimacy with the Greek mythology; here was he "suckled in that creed outworn;" for his amount of cla.s.sical attainment extended no farther than the _aeneid_, with which epic, indeed, he was so fascinated that before leaving school he had _voluntarily_ translated in writing a considerable portion. And yet I remember that at that early age--mayhap under fourteen--notwithstanding, and through all its incidental attractiveness, he hazarded the opinion to me (and the expression riveted my surprise), that there was feebleness in the structure of the work. He must have gone through all the better publications in the school library, for he asked me to lend him some of my books, and, in my "mind's eye" I now see him at supper (we had our meals in the school-room), sitting back on the form, from the table, holding the folio volume of Burnet's _History of His Own Time_ between himself and the table, eating his meal from beyond it. This work, and Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_--which my father took in, and I used to lend to Keats--no doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil and religious liberty. He once told me, smiling, that one of his guardians, being informed what books I had lent him to read, declared that if he had fifty children he would not send one of them to that school. Bless his patriot head!

When he left Enfield at fourteen years of age, he was apprenticed to Mr. Thomas Hammond, a medical man, residing in Church Street, Edmonton, and exactly two miles from Enfield. This arrangement evidently gave him satisfaction, and I fear it was the most placid period of his painful life; for now, with the exception of the duty he had to perform in the surgery--by no means an onerous one--his whole leisure hours were employed in indulging his pa.s.sion for reading and translating. During his apprentices.h.i.+p he finished the _aeneid_.

The distance between our residences being so short, I gladly encouraged his inclination to come over when he could claim a leisure hour; and in consequence I saw him about five or six times a month on my own leisure afternoons. He rarely came empty-handed; either he had a book to read, or brought one to be exchanged. When the weather permitted, we always sat in an arbor at the end of a s.p.a.cious garden, and--in Boswellian dialect--"we had a good talk." ...

XVIII

THE HEROISM OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

When Carlyle wrote and lectured on _Heroes and Hero Wors.h.i.+p_, he would have made no mistake in selecting one of his contemporary countrymen as a fine example of the man of letters as hero. But it is one of the characteristics of human nature to see the heroic in the remote in time and place rather than in the near. Carlyle, had he closely examined the life of his Scotch neighbor, would have been forced to acknowledge that no knight battling with chivalric valor in the fiction of Sir Walter ever displayed more n.o.bility of soul than that displayed by Walter Scott in his adversity. Critics may find flaws in Scott's style, but as time reveals more fully the character of the man they are unable to find fault with the man himself. Some years ago was published Scott's journal. Parts of this had been published before, but, owing to the nature of some of the information, much of this had been suppressed until sixty years after the death of the writer. To quote from this journal is, perhaps, the best method of giving a first-hand impression of the real man. He is his own revealer. Scott called the big book in which he from time to time records for several years his thoughts his "Gurnal," because his daughter Sophia had once spelled the word in that way. This book could be closed with a lock and key. On the t.i.tle-page was written:

As I walked by myself, I talked to myself, And thus myself said to me.

(Old Song.)