CHAPTER - VII
ASSESSMENT OF SHELLEY
7.1 Introduction
Shelley came up from the class of landed aristocracy, but he did not inherit the defiant
waywardness of his class. He did not possess in him any seeds of empty pride and defiant high
handedness. Right from his childhood he was opposed to tyranny and exploitation. His heart went
out in sympathy for the downtrodden and helpless sections of society. Hence all his writings and
actions were for eradication of evils in society. His perception of a future society was to be free
from all exploitation and oppressions. He was humanistic in approach to all his fellowmen. At the
same time he was a fearless fighter against all types of tyranny.
7.1.1. Shelley as a Child of French Revolution
The ideals of French revolution shaped the outlook of Shelley. He was attracted by the
writings of the Enlightenment Movement.
The writings of Plato and the French authors
Rousseau, Voltaire and Didoret instilled a rebellious spirit in him. Shelley had read ‘Rights of
Man’ (1791) of Thomas Paine, “Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792) of Mary
Wollstonecraft and ‘Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’ of Godwin all of which were feeding
him with iconoclastic and utopian ideals. He developed a rebellious approach to every incident of
oppression or exploitation. In Eton school the student Shelley was provoked by the practice of
fagging and that made him to hate the system of religious, moral and social training imparted in
that school. This led to his inveterate hatred towards tyrannizing, established order of Church and
the state. As a poet there was close relationship between his inner personality and the expression
of his poetic thoughts. One specific feature that distinguished him from his contemporary poets is
that he was not only a poet but also a reformer. “Little interested in the past and mindful only of
the present, his eyes were fixed intensely on future. To renovate the world, to bring about Utopia
was his constant aim. For this reason we may regard Shelley as a poet of eager and sensitive
youth – a visionary and reformer.”1
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Encyclopaedia Britannica commends the merit of Shelley as a poet. “As remarked therein
he is unexcelled in his ideality and unexcelled in his importance. By importance it is meant that
the work discharged its controlling power over readers thought and feeling, the contagious fire of
its intellectual passion and the long reverberation of its appeal”.
7.2 ‘Shelley, the Rebel and the Reformer’- His Humanitarianism
Shelley was above all a humanitarian. Love was the root and basis of his nature. As
J.A.Symonds has pointed out, this love first developed as a domestic affection, next as friendship,
then as a youth’s passion and at last it began to shine with a steady lustre as an all embracing
devotion to his fellow men. There was an intense and glowing passion of unselfishness, which
throughout his life led Shelley to find his strongest interests in the joys and sorrows of his fellow
creatures which inflamed his imagination which visions of humanity made perfect and which
filled his days with sweet deeds of unnumbered charities.
Loving all mankind and wishing every human being to live a happy and free life, Shelley
was a great devotee of liberty and he hated all types of oppression which hamper the free and
proper growth of a man’s personality. These two important traits in Shelley’s character have been
pointed out in his biography by his friend Trelawney: “I never could discern in him any more than
two fixed principles. In the first was a strong irrepressible love of liberty, of liberty in the abstract
and somewhat after the pattern of ancient republics without reference to the English constitution,
respecting he knew little and cared nothing, heeding it not at all. The second was an equally
ardent love of toleration of all opinions but more especially of religious opinions toleration;
complete, entire, universal, unlimited and as a deduction and corollary from which latter
principle; he felt an intense abhorrence of persecution of every kind, public and private”.
Shelley’s humanitarianism is love of liberty and hatred for all oppressions, turned him into
a rebel against all those established institutions, political, religious and social which meant to
suppress mankind in any part of the world. Symonds has given a fine description of Shelley’s
rebellious nature which became manifest even while he was a student of Oxford from where he
was expelled for publishing a pamphlet, ‘The Necessity of Atheism’.
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The cardinal characteristics of his nature was an implacable antagonism to shams and
conventions which passed too easily into impatient rejection of established forms as worse than
useless.
7.3 Shelley as a Practical Politician and Reformer
Besides his Irish pamphlets, he published an essay in 1817 under the title of ‘A proposal
for putting reform to the vote throughout the Kingdom’.
He saw the House of Commons did not represent the country. Government is the servant
of the (people) governed. He sought means for ascertaining the real will of the nation with regard
to its Parliament and for bringing the collective opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers.
The plan proposed was that a huge network of Committees should be formed, and that by their
means, every individual man should be canvassed. We find here the same method of advancing
reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland.
His opinions with regard to franchise were moderate – only those who pay direct tax and
register themselves can be in electorate for election of Parliament Member, as it was in Ireland.
In the ‘Ode to the West Wind’, Shelley as a champion of social change, sees himself as a
prophet of rising wind which heralds destruction of an old world and a creation of a new one. He
raises his psalm to the glory of what is coming and as a celebration of much that departs. He sees
the autumnal tempests with hails and rains as signs of a creative destruction that would affect the
whole condition of man. His mention of the black rain has in it the hint of a revolution and
reminds us that the poet is heralding an overthrow of the despotic regimes in England and Europe.
7.4. Intellectual Background
During the 18th century, the attention of European philosophers was concentrated on two
main subjects. They are the nature and limits of man’s faculty of reason; and the basis and
sanction of authority in the state.
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Shelley was a keen reader of philosophy and in his prose and poetry he explored the
interaction of mind and the material world. A more positive metaphysical element in Shelley’s
work came from his interest in the ideas of Greek philosopher Plato (428-347 BC). Plato argued
that temporal world is a poor imitation of the real world of perfect, eternal forms.
Already in the successful revolt of the American colonists against British rule, Europeans
had seen the intoxicating force of the ideas of freedom and equality. They were able to argue that
old order was not inevitable and unchangeable fact but one system of power which could be
replaced by a redistribution of wealth and rights among the people was the need of the time.
Encyclopedia Britannica commends the merit of Shelley as a poet as following:
“If we except Goethe and leave out of count living writers whose ultimate value cannot at present
be assessed, we must consider Shelley to be a supreme poet of the new era, which, beginning with
French Revolution, is continuous in our day …. The grounds on which Shelley’s eminence is
based are mainly three. He is unexcelled in his ideality, unexcelled in his music and unexcelled in
his importance. By importance it is meant that the work discharged, its controlling power over
readers’ thought and feeling, the contagious fire of its intellectual passion and the long
reverberation of its appeal” (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
The Encyclopaedia further commends that Shelley is emphatically the poet of the future.
In his own day an icon in the world of mind and invention, and in our day but only a denizen of it,
he appears to become an informing presence in the innermost shrine of human thought. Shelley
appeared at the time when the sublime ideals of French Revolutionary movement….
7.5. Shelley's Life Sketch and His Writings
It is said that 'he breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm and preternatural
intelligence'.2 His early education was given at home and then he was sent to Scion School at
Brentford in 1802. Three years later he was admitted to Eton. His school experiences in Eton
were somewhat unfortunate. He hated the tyranny and brutal force. The system of fagging
practiced there was repugnant to the boy's love of freedom and independence. Shelley wrote
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“I will be wise,
And just and free and mild if in me lies
Such power for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check”3
Withal, he became a good scholar in Greek produced a considerable amount of Latin verse and
still with greater zest pursued experiments in chemistry and electricity.
From Eton, he carried very bitter feelings and hatred against the enforced discipline and
established order. From Eton he went up to University College, Oxford in 1808 with
revolutionary spirit and bitterly opposed to the existing state of society. He was a diligent student,
read widely and wrote independently and frankly. He wrote a pamphlet titled ' The Necessity of
Atheism' (1811). It caused enormous friction with the authorities. But with the courage of
conviction, he asked them to discuss the subject with him. His askance was met with indignant
refusal and he was asked to subscribe to the college rule of faith. As he refused, he along with his
fellow student Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who was partner to this literary work, was summarily
dismissed from the college. He left Oxford with the impression that the world was against him
and with a determination from henceforth to be against the world. His expulsion steeled his
revolutionary conviction and atheistic ideas.
Late in August 1811, Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook, the younger daughter of a
London tavern owner. By marrying her, he betrayed the acquisitive plans of his grandfather and
father who had larger plans for his future career. So they persuaded him to give up and tried to
starve him to submission. But it only drove the strong willed youth to rebel against the established
order.
Always remaining on the side of liberty, his attention was turned towards freedom of
Ireland and Catholic emancipation there in 1812. Along with his wife and her sister, he crossed
the channel and went to Dublin. He wrote and published a pamphlet, 'An Address to the Irish
People'. But his republican spirit did not evoke any warm response from the people of Ireland.
The police also started persecuting them. So he returned to Wales and thence to London.
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Shelley’s love for his children was well known. But for some reason his wife Harriet was an
indifferent mother and this is attributed to his developing coldness towards her. With William
Godwin and his family Shelley developed warm friendship and this led to the blossoming of his
love to the daughter of Godwins, Mary.
In the meanwhile the rift between Shelley and his wife widened and in June 1814, they
agreed to separate. Shelley left London with Mary Godwin. Two years later Harriet drowned
herself leaving two children to the care of her parents. Shelley married Mary in December 1816.
He claimed protector-ship for his two children left by Harriet. But law in the person of Lord
Eldon, then chancellor decided that he was 'unfitted for parental responsibilities'. His authorship
of Queen Mab (1813) and atheist pamphlet was attributed as reasons for this disqualification by
the establishment. Smarting with indignation, worried in mind, ill in body and socially ostracized,
Shelley and his wife left England in March 1818, with no prospect, as he wrote bitterly of
returning to a country where “I am regarded as a rare prodigy of crime and pollution, whose look
even might infect”.
The last four years of Shelley's life (1818-1822) spent mainly in Italy with his friends
Byron and Leigh Hunt were also most prolific in his work. He had believed thoroughly in his own
early work, frequently quoting Milton's words, “there is something in my writings that shall live
forever”3. While continuing his literary work in Lerinci in Italy, he sailed to nearby Leghorn to
meet Leigh Hunt and on his return voyage to Lerinci on July 8, 1822, Shelley and his friend
William were drowned in the stormy sea. Later the bodies washed ashore were identified and
cremated in the presence of the friends of Shelley.
7.6 Shelley’s writings
7.6.1 ‘Queen Mab’
‘Queen Mab’ is an astonishing debut poem for a twenty-year-old poet, - innovative in its
formal variety and bravely radical in content. Its creaky fairy machinery thinly masks the
forthright attacks on monarchy, religion, war and tyranny. Shelley acknowledges it to be a
product of his ‘constitutional enthusiasm’ (Jones. Vol.1, p.324). This aspect of his personality
also inspired two sonnets in the same year, which commemorate his launching of balloons and
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bottles containing copies of his ‘Declaration of Rights’, aerial and oceanic propaganda exercises
which were carefully observed by the Home Office spies.
Shelley’s campaign to promote radical thoughts is announced in the vehement opening
epigram from Enlightenment Rationalist Voltaire’s onslaught on Christianity, ‘crush the infamous
thing’ a clarion call for action also adopted by the revolutionary French Jacobins of the 1790s, the
Illuminists. This declaration is reinforced by the epigram, which follow, from Lucretius, who
asserted that he would ‘free men’s minds from the crippling bonds of superstition’; and from
Greek scientist Archimedes, who claimed he would be able to move the earth given the right point
of leverage.
From childhood he had developed hatred towards tyrannizing established order of the
Church and the State. He was attracted to the writings of Enlightenment Movement and grew into
a stout champion of individual liberty and developed a rebellious approach towards every incident
of oppression or exploitation.
As a poet, there was an intimate relationship between his inner personality and expression
of his poetic thoughts.
He felt sincerely and intensely and poetry was the medium of his
expression.
Quote: from Compton Rickett
“Shelley exhaled verse as a flower exhales fragrance …….
This distinguishes him at once from his contemporaries.”
The Hungarian Marxist writer Georg Lukacs sees a great writer in one who saw the
significant truth about what was happening in society however wrongly he may have interpreted
in his own personal political views.
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7.6.2. Ode to the West Wind
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Act III. Scene II ll: 89-90),
Mark Antony described the empathy of Caesar as following
‘When that the poor have cried, Caesar’s heart wept
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.’
This is empathy. This is a forerunner to Shelley’s empathy for poor. In Ode to the West
Wind he said (51-56) ll. 53-54
I would never have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need
Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed,
One too like thee; tameless and swift and proud.
If he had been any of these – a leaf, a cloud, a wave; or if he still had the strength of his
boyhood, he would never have made such an appeal to the West Wind. But unfortunately, he has
lost all that old vigour. The heavy weight of life has so much bowed him down that he earnestly
request the West Wind to lift him and endow him with its vitality and vigour, just as it lifts a dead
leaf, a cloud or a wave.
Behind the poem there is the profound sincerity of Shelley, who was wedded to great
ideals of liberty and who was devoutly interested in the freedom of mankind so that all the
shackles, which bind humanity may be broken.
To call him a melancholist is wrong. He has expressed his love and empathy to the
suffering humanity. Shelley saw the West Wind as the spirit of revolutionary turmoil embodying
the contradictory forces of history and as the spirit of inspiration. The last two lines in the poem
“if winter comes, can the spring be far behind” reveal his optimism of a revolutionary. This is
enough to disprove the accusation of his being a melancholist.4
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So here in this poem, we find Shelley the lyricist, the reformer, the idealist, the prophet of
golden age, uttering forth his ideas in a forceful musical manner.
7.6.3 ‘To a Skylark’
Shelley’s life and poetry are unmatched in their pursuit of the freedom of the spirit and
love in defiance of man-made institutions. Among Shelley’s great poems are Alastar (1815), The
Revolt of Islam (1815), Prometheus Unbound (1820) Epipsychidion (1821) and Adonais (1821).
‘To a Skylark’ is a splendid lyric, giving utterance to the mystical longings of the poet.
He is intensely aware of the divine unifying spirit that is at the heart of things. Yet the human
frame clogs his vision in spite of the highest flight of his imagination to apprehend the glory of
the divine essence. In the song ‘To a Skylark’, he experiences a hint of the divine rapture and
forthwith he compares the invisible bird with the unseen spirit and its song with the immortal
divine gladness. But he knows that unless the human frame is abandoned, he can never hope to
experience the free and clean spiritual radiance. It is this tragic dilemma which, with its aching
anguish, is at the heart of this sweet song. The poem is also incomparable because of this soaring
splendor of music and its surging rush of similes.
Among Shelley's friends at this stage were Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) the poet and radical
journalist, who with his brother edited the critical magazine, 'The Examiner' and Thomas Love
Peacock (1785-1866), the comic and satirical novelist. Shelley knew and admired the young poet
John Keats (1795-1866) but they never became close friends.
Because of his style of life and published ideas, Shelley was branded by a section of
British people as an immoralist, an atheist and a political subversive. His friendship with Lord
Byron did not help his reputation and he encountered considerable problems in having his work
published.
‘The Mask of Anarchy' was finished in 1819 but not published until ten years after his
death. His most sustained and closely argued essay on politics, ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’
was not published until 1920, a century after its composition.
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In the final four years of his life, Shelley wrote his most considerable poems. He finished
'Prometheus Unbound' in 1819 and saw it as his major achievement.
In 1821, he wrote 'Defence of Poetry’ to justify the central significance of poetry in
civilized life. On 8th July 1822 Shelley was drowned in sea while sailing in a boat on his return
voyage after having welcomed Leigh Hunt to Italy.
7.7. Personality of Shelly
In his personality, Shelley was charming, very passionate, of quick intelligence, moving
always towards speculation and seeking overall patterns which could make sense of particulars
around him, an idealist but bitterly sensitive to the imperfections in human behaviour, outraged by
cruelty and intolerance.
7.7.1. Queen Mab
Despite its faults ‘Queen Mab’ remained by far the most popular of his poems for many
years. It rose to the dignity of bowdlerized edition as early as 1830, and by 1840 at least fourteen
separate editions, most of them piratical, had appeared.5
The poem occupies a small but permanent niche in the history of radical thought. Robert
Owen, whom Shelley may have met at Godwin’s house, admired it and the Owenites publisher
twice reprinted it.
Bernard Shaw called ‘Queen Mab’ a perfectly original poem6and in one sense he was
right. It is the greatest revolutionary poem of the Age - a remarkable blend of diverse strands in
revolutionary thought (Ref: Hele – P.42). Bernard Shaw heard that it had been known as ‘the
Chartists’ bible’ and gave Karl Marx as his authority for the statement that ‘Shelley had inspired
the Chartist Movement a good deal’7
Reviewers thought Queen Mab very subversive and ‘the guardians of public morals’
denounced its author as a monster of depravity. One reviewer expected that the author would be a
monster in external appearance and a bitter enemy of mankind.
Reviews of this type did Shelley lasting harm.
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7.7.2 Summing Up Of Views On ‘Queen Mab’
The ‘Queen Mab’ often enough to succeed make it one of the best poems ever written by a
20 year old poet. Shelley’s ‘passion for reforming the world’ was at its fiercest when he wrote the
poem. Because he died so young it has won an unduly prominent place as a statement of his
political and social aims. No one judges Coleridge or Southey for their earlier writings professing
Godwinian pantisocracy. Shelley was 20 when ‘Queen Mab’ appeared and he too deserves a
generous discount for youth and high spirits.
Regarding the Notes to Queen Mab, as Sir Herbert Read remarked, showed a mastery of
exposition and dialectic which would be hard to match among the intellectual prodigies of the
world.8
An age of war and dictatorship, of exploitation and corruption, of crime, vice and
prostitution, of warping of the human spirit, of slums and poverty, cold hypocrisy and violent
hatreds, such is the picture in these cantos, and in its essence, it is a true picture. If at times the
language, in its revolutionary bluntness, short-circuits finer aesthetic transmutations, its cascading
sincerity gives it a rugged intensity of power unique in English poetry. In spite of the higher
harmonies and soaring visionariness of ‘Prometheus Unbound’, ‘Queen Mab’ dealing with the
same theme, cannot simply be regarded as a juvenile precursor. It is a great poem in its own right.
7.8. Shelley Recognized By Ensuing Generation of Social Thinkers
Shelley had been adopted (after his death at the very young age of 29) by the Chartist
Movement of England as their mentor and his ‘Queen Mab’ was hailed as their ‘Bible’. Shelley
was practical enough to identify himself with the cause of the working class as against the
possessing class. He identified clearly that the epic of the nineteenth century was the conflict
between the possessing and producing classes and he stood firmly with the producing (working)
class. Thus he differentiated himself from the Utopians and by coming openly as the stout
champion of the working people he established himself as a modern socialist. This is why George
Bernard Shaw, the great Socialist and an admirer of Shelley, gave Karl Marx his authority for the
statement that Shelley had inspired a good deal of Chartist Movement, which had linked him with
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Karl Marx, the greatest thinker of the Millennium (as adjudged by the British Broadcasting
Corporation in 1999). Karl Marx himself had acknowledged that had he lived his full life span,
Shelley would always have been one of the advanced guards of Socialism.
Knowing the greatness of Shelley as a revolutionary poet, the Indian revolutionary poet
and freedom fighter Mahakavi Subramaniya Bharathi had become Shelley’s admirer and took him
as his mentor. Bharathi called himself as “Shelleydasan” and released literary works under this
pseudonym. Shelley’s renown as a revolutionary poet will remain ever fresh in the minds of
English knowing people worldwide.
7.9 Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ – A Tocsin Sound for Social Change
In his ‘Ode to the West Wind’, he allegorically invites a social revolution to sweep away
the festering old society and the despotic rules of England and continent and to usher in a new
republican rule. He requests the West Wind to drain out from the lyre of his mind, the prophetic
notes of unrealized ideas to bring about a regeneration of the society. He bubbles with optimism
over the idea of the advent of social change as inevitable as the arrival of spring closely on the
heels of winter. He allays the fears of the doubting minds regarding the certainty of a social
change, by boldly putting a posture, “O Wind, If winter comes, can the spring be far behind?” He
waxes optimistic on the arrival of a social revolution, a millennium with its thousand splendours.
7.10. Shelley – A Propagandist for Revolution
Shelley did not confine himself to the role of a dreamer of an idealistic society. More than
that, he played the role of a propagandist for a social revolution. Though he was living in Italy for
sometime, he keenly watched every development in England and elsewhere and went on writing
poems, articles and letters to exhort the people to go ahead in their onward march to overthrow
the oppressive social order.
When the Royal Guards in Manchester unleashed unprovoked
massacre on the working class who assembled at St. Peter’s Field in Manchester in 1819 (termed
as Peterloo Massacre) to press for improved living conditions and for political reforms, he wrote
the poem ‘‘The Mask of Anarchy’ exposing the atrocities of the ruling classes of England and
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calling upon the working class to rise in revolt against oppression and exploitation. The excerpts
from his ‘‘The Mask of Anarchy’ like,
‘Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many – they are few’
-II 368-372
are even now reverberating on the rostrums of the meetings of Working Class Movement. In the
‘Song to Men of England’ he gave a clarion call to the Working Class from which a few lines are:
“Sow seed but let no tyrant reap,
Find wealth – let no imposter heap
Weave robes-let not the idle wear
Forge arms, in your defence to bear”
-Song to the Men of England stanza 6
All these are only a few samples of innumerable expressions revealing the revolutionary
thinking of Shelley as a poet. These are the propagandist expressions of a revolutionary mind that
identifies itself with destiny of the working class of the world in conformity with its avowed
declaration ‘I am the friend of the unfriended poor’.
“And unrestrained but by the arm of power
That knows and dreads his enmity”
-V-123-125
The new industrialisation had brought with it the class war of Luddite riots and the barrack
system. But even more fragile is the stifling of the creative potential of the mass, both of country
and town:
How many a vulgar Cato has compelled
His energies, no longer tameless then,
To mould a pin or fabricate a nail!
V-140-142
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“It is indescribably painful to contemplate beings capable of soaring to the heights of
science, with Newton and Locke”, Shelley had written to Godwin from Dublin “without
attempting to waken them from a state of lethargy so opposite”.
The system has corrupted the society from top to bottom, breeding hypocrisy, perverting
every human instinct by the power of wealth until the intellectual and moral world has
degenerated to the status of a market:
All things are sold ------ even life itself
And the poor pittance which the law allows
Of liberty, the fellowship of man,
Those duties which his heart of human love
Should urge him to perform instinctively
Are bought and sold as in public mart
Of undisguising selfishness, that sets
On each its price, the stamp mark of her reign
Even love is sold; the solace of all woe
Is turned to deadliest agony……
Queen Mab. V ll– 178 -190
Shelley, even as a boy, exhibited an extreme susceptibility to emotions and feelings both
physical and spiritual. Finally the child Shelley-like the man Shelley later- was totally unable to
accept any sign of authority parental, scholastic or religious. With these peculiarities, the boy
went to Eton at the age of twelve. This shy and sensitive lad would naturally be a fair game for
the young barbarians of a thoroughly English school like Eton particularly as the then headmaster,
Dr. Goodall was not a very good disciplinarian. Shelley was hectored, bullied and subjected to
hazing or as it was called “fagging” which made every young boy the virtual slave of an older
boy. Shelley received this treatment with violent protests; his behavior at Eton was distinctly nonconformist in so many ways that he became known as mad Shelley and later as “Shelley, the
Atheist”.
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Eventually Shelley went up to oxford, had a particular friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg,
later a biographer of the poet, and plunged into the study of poetry, philosophy and the classics.
At Oxford along with Hogg published a pamphlet entitled “The Necessity of Atheism” and the
pair was expelled in March 1811, after Shelley had been at Oxford but a bare five months. The
college authorities forced him to own the authorship of the pamphlet. But he was stubborn in not
admitting his action. So he was expelled for contumacity. Hogg was also expelled for the same
reason. His missionary zeal for atheism continued with him.
It happened that Shelley had begun a correspondence with William Godwin, the English
disciple of Rousseau. They mutually met in London and Shelley fell in love with Godwin’s
daughter Mary.
The return to London in the fall of 1816 brought tragedy to Shelley. Harriet who had
found consolation of a sort elsewhere, committed suicide in Nov 1816. A court order in March
1817 took from Shelley his two children by Harriet and gave them custody to their grandfather.
Crushed by the laws of England, which he had flouted both in theory and in practice, Shelley like
Byron before him, left England in March 1818 for Italy never to return.
The ideas of Shelley are, moreover, important ideas and largely relevant today; for Shelley
living, as we do in an age of social ferment achieved a sharpness of perspective denied to those in
more quiescent times. Victorian misunderstandings have continued, anachronistically into the
present, from Arnold to Eliot, from the old to the new critics, until a real need exists for an
objective reanalysis, an analysis which if it is to possess relevance, must view these ideas in their
developmental relations to the social and ideological patterns of their age.9
7.11. Life at the Oxford
Shelley came up from Eton with a reputation as a classical scholar. At the University
College, Oxford, the depressing routine and intellectual narrowness that was typical of academic
Oxford in those days had little to offer him. He began to continue his activity as he did in the final
months at Eton as a budding author by publishing two books of verses including ‘The
Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson’. He championed the cause of persecuted Irish
journalist Peter Finnerty. These activities earned him reputation as a radical.
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Shelley’s fame had spread well beyond the walls of University College and brief though
his career at oxford was, he must have been recognized as one of its outstanding undergraduate
intellectuals, a radical in politics and religion, a promising author. This “Radical” reputation had
been borne out in the observations of others. Elizabeth Grant, the niece of the Master of
University College noted that Shelley was ‘the ring leader of every species of mischief within our
grave walls’, was ‘very insubordinate, always infringing some rule’ ‘proceeded so far to paste
atheistical squibs on the chapel doors’
C.J.Ridley, a fellow student of Shelley writes
“It was announced one morning at a breakfast party, towards the end of Lent term (March
25, 1811) that P.B.Shelley who had recently become member of University College was to be
called before a meeting of the common room for being the supposed author of a pamphlet called
‘The Necessity of Atheism’. The anonymous work had been studiously sent to most of the
dignitaries of the University.
The pamphlet and some notes supposed to have been written by PBS were placed before
him. He was asked if he could or would deny the obnoxious production as his. No direct reply
was given either in affirmative or negative. Shelley having quitted the room, J.F.Hogg was called.
He also did the same reply.
On the same day University authorities notified that the two offenders were ‘publicly
expelled from the college for contumacy in refusing to answer certain questions put to them’. No
one regretted their departure for there were but few.
Behind these formal charges, however the picture is pretty clear that a group of
conservative administrators were interested in getting rid of a couple of radicals. No doubt,
Shelley’s radical poetry in Margaret Nicholson volume had disturbed the authorities. Those
poems were used by Shelley and his friends as implied criticism of King George III and his
ministers as the instigators of the war with France.10 Also, his championing the cause of Irish
radical, Peter Finnerty was a national issue challenging the political authorities. All these have
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been viewed with displeasure in high places of political power. Also Hogg’s hint that political
motives of the then Tory Government were behind the expulsion, probably had foundation.
7.12. John Addington Symonds’ observations on Shelley's miseries
On the refusal of Mr. Westbrook to deliver up the custody of his grand children to Shelley,
a chancery suit was instituted, at the conclusion of which, in March 1817, Lord Eldon deprived
Shelley of his son and daughter on the double ground of his opinions expressed in Queen Mab
and of his conduct towards his first wife. The children were placed in the hands of Dr.Hume to be
educated in accordance with principles diametrically opposed to their parents, while Shelley's
income was mulcted in a sum of 200 pounds for their maintenance.
His overweening confidence in his own strength to move the weight of the world's opinion
had brought him to this tragic pass – to the suicide of the woman who had loved him and to the
sequestration of the offspring whom he loved.
7.13. Tragedy in Shelley’s Life
His life was a tragedy and like some protagonist of Greek drama, he was capable of erring
and suffering greatly. He had kicked against the altar of justice as established in the daily
sanctities of human life and now he has to bear the penalty.
The conventions he despised and treated like the dust beneath his feet were found in this
most cruel crisis to be a rock on which his very heart was broken.
From this rude trial of his moral nature he arose a stronger being; and if longer life had
been granted him, he would undoubtedly have presented the ennobling spectacle of one who had
been lessoned by his own audacity and by its bitter fruits into harmony with the immutable laws
which he was ever seeking to obey. It is just this conflict between the innate rectitude of Shelley's
over-daring nature and the circumstances of ordinary existence which makes his history so tragic:
and we may justly wonder whether, when he read the Sophoclean tragedies of Oedipus, he did not
apply their doctrine of self will and Nemesis to his own fortunes.
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The suffocating social conditions and sufferings of humanity around made Shelley to
think of a social transformation to end all the miseries of mankind. He was quite aware of the
distortions and diversions given to French society after the revolution defeating the objectives of
its initiators. But he was quite firm in his belief in the objective slogans of the revolution namely
Equality, Liberty and Fraternity. He expected that the productive forces in the society should lead
the struggle for this transformation. The running theme of his poetical works and prose works
propagate the ideals of a social revolution to eliminate social inequalities, exploitation and
oppressions. His call to people of England was to throw away the oppressive, exploitative society.
His call to 'men of England' was to rise in revolt against all the evils of the exploitative society –
rise like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number- was a call for massive peoples' struggle.
'The mask of Anarchy' ends with a call of armed resistance. Shelley's perception of Peoples'
Struggle is establishing a socialistic society.11
Shelley was born in 1792, the year in which the radical writer and activist Tom Paine and
his works were outlawed and French Revolution entered the phase of Terror.
His early life
coincided with a period of repression during which the English government did its best to stamp
out radicalism, suppressing popular dissent and framing laws which left writers in fear of
prosecution for treason.
As a result, the first generation of Romantics, many of whom like Wordsworth and
Coleridge had been supporters of the French Revolution, but retreated into various forms of self
justifying idealism. They turned to mythology, nature, fantasy, the subjective life asserting the
visionary importance of the poet and along with this escape from direct social engagement went a
sense of guilt, betrayal and self-accusation.
Many of Shelley’s generation felt betrayed by the increasing conservatism of the great
writers they admired, particularly Wordsworth. Both Byron and Shelley wrote bitter satirical
critiques of him, Byron in ‘Vision of Judgment and Don Juan’ and Shelley in his parody, ‘Peter
Bell the Third’ (P.410-419).
Hogg states, ‘I never could discern in him any more than two fixed principles
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The first was his strong love for liberty; of liberty in the abstract, and somewhat after the
pattern of ancient republics without reference to the English Constitution, respecting which he
know little and cared nothing, heeding it not at all.
The second was an equally ardent love of toleration, complete, entire, universal, unlimited
and as a deduction and corollary from which, latter principle he felt an intense abhorrence of
persecution of every kind public or private.
The following lines give us a glimpse of his love for liberty:
“…………………. Obedience
Base of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth
Makes slaves of men and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
-(Queen Mab)
And here is reflected his great dislike for war and its instruments:
“As a statesman’s game; the priests delight
The lawyers jest, the hired assassins trade
And to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones
Are bought by crime of treachery and gone
The bread they eat, the stuff on which they lean”
(Queen Mab)
He was equally against the use of force and power. He held the view that
“Power as like a devastating pestilence
Pollutes whatever it touches”
Shelley had a great passion for reforming the world, and passion blazed out again and
again in his poetry. He wanted to create a world of his own dreams and ideals, a world in which
there would be no king, no tyranny, no exploitation, no wars, no sorrows – a world where:
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“The Kingly glare
Will lose its power to dazzle, its authority
Will silently pass by the gorgeous throne
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall
Fast falling to decay while falsehood’s trade
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable
As that of truth now”
(Queen Mab)
Thus, we can see Shelley as a great champion of socialistic thought. In Queen Mab, The
Revolt of Islam, The Mask of Anarchy, Hellas, The Ode to Liberty and Ode to Naples, the voice
is that of the apostle of Liberty.
In these poems Shelley has directly transmuted to melodies the ideas of William Godwin’s
‘Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’. He played the role of poetic prophet of faith and hope in a
world which, for a moment had lost both.
His genius was essentially lyrical. He was born with a gift of song. Shelley has no equal
among the lyric poets of his country12.
As a lyrical genius,
“From rainbow clouds, there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody”
-‘To a Skylark’,
What Shelley said of the Skylark is even more applicable to Shelley himself. To use his
favourite image, he was like ‘an Aeolian harp which vibrated with the sweetest and the most
liquid harmonies every time a faint breeze of thought or emotion passed over it. There is in
Shelley’s poetry the undeniable quality of sheer music. Only Milton, Tennyson and Swinburne
have had such a consummate command of rhythm, harmony and clear flowing melody.13
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7.14. Shelley as a Practical Politician
One can compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817 under the title of
‘A proposal for putting reform to the vote throughout the kingdom’.
He saw the House of
Commons did not represent the country. Government is the servant of the people governed. He
sought means for ascertaining the real will of the nation with regard to its Parliament and for
bringing the Collective opinion of the population to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was
that a huge network of committees should be formed and that by their means every individual
man should be canvassed. We find here the same method of advancing reform by peaceable
associations as in Ireland of that time.
His opinion with regard to franchise were moderate – only those who paid direct tax and
registered themselves could be in electorate for election of Parliament member – as it was in
Ireland.
7.15. Championing the Cause of Women
Moreover, Shelley correctly perceived woman’s real position in society and real cause of
that position. He understood that women’s social condition is a question of economics, not if
religion or of sentiment. The woman is to the man as the producing class is to the possessing
class. Her “inferiority” in its actuality and in its assumed existence is the outcome of the holding
of economic power by man to her exclusion. Shelley understood its applicability not only to the
unfortunate of women, but its application to every woman. So in Queen Mab, he states
“All things are sold: the very light of Heaven
Is venal: earth’s unsparing gifts of love
---------------------------------------------Are bought and sold as in a public mart
----------------------------------------------Even love is sold, the solace of all woe
Is turned to deadliest agony, old age
Shivers in selfish beauty’s loathing arms”
(“Queen Mab” Canto ii, 463,64 Ibid 177-191)
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7.16.His Reaction to Tyranny and Liberty
With these in the abstract, the poets have always been busy. They have denounced tyranny
in measured language and unmeasured terms. But faced with reality to condemn an action of
tyranny, they hesitated and even refused. In praising liberty in foreign land, they have sung
paeans. But Shelley was outspoken and forthright in condemnation of tyranny anywhere and
especially in England. As he himself said, he was not physically strong enough to fight openheartedly with the society, though mentally he was terribly strong. He was
‘A pard like spirit beautiful and swift –
A love in desolation masked: - a Power
Girt round with weakness’ – Adonais
The ideas and perception of Shelley found resonance in the ideology conceived by Karl
Marx subsequently. Marx propounded concepts of philosophy, history, economics and politics
ushering in a new current of thought and action in the world. He did not stop at giving the call.
He translated his perceived plan into action by forming the International Workingmen’s
Association which was pioneer to a number of working class organizations and communist
parties. These organizations have led a number of great revolutions in the days to come
1) The Socialist Revolution in Russia,
2) The Anti-feudal and anti-colonial Revolution of China,
3) The Anti feudal and anti-colonial Revolution in Vietnam,
4) The Revolutions against Banana Republics in Latin America,
Cuba and
Venezuela.
All these revolutions are the products of Marxian thought and ideological concept
formulated by Marx.
7.17. Unreserved and Impulsive Shelley
Shelley unlike his compeers gave himself up most unreservedly to the impulse and
indiscretion of the romantic spirit. He followed it blindly wherever it led: in ‘Alastor’, in ‘The
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Revolt of Islam’, in the ‘Prometheus Unbound’, the piercing elfins melody led him along heights
and hollows; through bogs and swamps and deserts, along foaming rivers and tempestuous seas
and hidden underground caves on the icebound aridities of Caucasian cliffs in a phantomagoric
visions in which the elements of life dissolve and reform themselves like bubbles on a rushing
torrent and whole of human existence is thrown into the melting pot to crystallize a fresh round a
new centre. Through all these mazy and even dizzy wanderings the poet holds to a steadfast
central clue: the imperative need of rebuilding life on a new foundation. He repudiates all past
history and traditions of accumulated wisdom of experience in his uncompromising search for a
new synthesis.
He is not afraid of disintegrating life into its component atoms, so that he may group them
anew and make them revolve around a new axis. He has imbibed most deeply the explosive force
of the French Revolution – its iconoclastic fury, its doctrinaire obsession, its visionary
clairvoyance and distilled its essence in his poetry.
Through the conflagration of the burning towers of Troy he has a radiant vision of the
unbuilt city to be resurrected out of the ashes. That crude and clumsy business of reforming the
world, which the politicians find it so hard to tackle, filled him with the ecstasy of a creative spirit
at work upon a chaos.
The age in which Shelley grew up was one of significant contradictions with regard to the
ardent optimism of the earlier Romantic Writing. Yet, from the outset, Shelley himself was full
of ardour and had the spark of a progressive and revolutionary outlook. From a very young age he
was fascinated by modern science, particularly physics and chemistry.
Three qualities permeate Shelley’s poetry. The first of these is revolutionism. Shelley had
an iconoclastic spirit and a martyr’s soul- unquestionably there was in him more than a spark of
the fantastic and a great deal of the purely visionary. ‘Queen Mab’ and ‘Revolt of Islam’ preach
revolution - the first of a violent and the second a bloodless one. Prometheus Unbound tells of a
Prometheus(man) chained to the rock by Zeus(tyranny) and freed by Asia (Nature and Love) and
Demogorgan (the spirit of necessity) “Hellas” is an elaborate allegory of revolution written in the
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form of a beautiful lyric drama inspired by the Greek struggle for Independence- the same
struggle that cost Byron his life in 1824. (From Revolution in English Literature By $$ P.240)
Shelley’s own time passed a severe moral condemnation on him even though everyone
who knew him well spoke of his character as noble. He was generous, kind and naive, one cannot
call him, in all fairness, immoral, but simply unmoral. And still he was constructive enough in his
criticism. The atheist Shelley could, in “Prometheus Unbound” preach a gospel of love far closer
to the teachings of Christ than the utterances of many devotional writers. None the less, he was
essentially pagan and a nature worshipping pagan at that, for nature even in its cruel forms was to
him a promise if immortality and beauty.
Of his prose, it is clear, direct and has an exceedingly finished style. It is usually devoted
to a defense of his revolutionary ideas. His position as a lyric poet is secure; he is purely
romantic, a great visionary, and a great singer of vision both large and small.
Shelley, as George Bernard Shaw pointed out in a brilliant but forgotten essay, was not
only a poet but a thinker, and not only a thinker but a radical thinker: in politics, in religion, in
morals. The foundation of his thinking were laid down in the years 1809-1813, the years covered
in this study, and in some of his works of this period, notably “Queen Mab” this thinking is
transmuted into powerful creative expressions. But Shelley was not born a radical thinker; he
developed into one and it is in watching the unfolding of this development that one gets insight
into his works – the later as well as earlier works.
For, Shelley did not, contrary to the widely held opinion, change fundamentally in his later
period. The theme of “Queen Mab” is the theme of “Prometheus Unbound” the revolutionary
spirit of ‘A letter to Lord Ellenborough’ is the spirit of ‘Hellas’.
For, one cannot as is so often done, view Shelley as a unique phenomenon. He was the
product of a school of thought, its most penetrative creative thinker, in fact stretching from
Jefferson to Cobbett from Diderot to Godwin, a school arising out of the American and French
Revolutions and the English Reform Movement. If at times Shelley states his and their views with
a startlingly iconoclastic directness, the function of the critics is not apology but interpretation.
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Shelley has suffered, too, in popular biographies. His life, replete, as it was, with the
romantic and dramatic incidents, has provided a happy hunting ground for the sentimentalists and
humourists.
And the most common view of him held for sometime today, is expressed in Andre
Maurois’ ‘Ariel’ with its skillfully caricatured distortion of motive and personality, a picture
duplicated, ad infinitum, in text books and other shorter accounts.
The examination of Shelley’s personality must proceed, as with that of his works, in
relation to formative forces and must attempt to ascertain the basic patterns of behavior. Shelley is
essentially important not for his life, but for his works. And a predominantly biographic approach
leads of itself, to false perspectives.
7.23. Byron and Shelley: Relations
The lives of Byron and Shelley during the next six years (1816-1822) were destined to be
curiously blent. Both were to seek Italy as exile-home. While their friendship was to become one
of the most interesting facts of English literary history,
…..Shelley stimulated Byron’s productive faculty to nobler efforts, raised his moral tone
and infused into Byron’s less subtle intellect something of his own philosophical depth and
earnestness, much as he enjoyed Byron’s society and admired his writing. At the same time
Shelley was not blind to the imperfections of his nature.
Byron, for his part recognized in Shelley the purest nature he had ever known. To quote
Byron “He was the most gentle, the most amiable and least worldly-minded person, I ever met;
full of delicacy, disinterested beyond all other men and possessing a degree of genius joined to
simplicity, as rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau ideal of all that is fine,
high-minded and noble and he acted up to this ideal even to the very letter”14.
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‘What is left of Harriet’s history may be briefly told. She remained in correspondence with
her husband, who showed himself always anxious for her material and moral welfare.
‘At Bath, upon 30th of November 1814, she gave birth to Shelley’s second child, Charles
Byshe (who eventually died in 1826). She seems to have formed other connections at a late date,
which proved unfortunate and on 9th November 1816, she committed suicide by drowning in the
Serpentine. It should be added that, until just before the end, she continued to live under her
father’s protection.
“The distance of time between July 1814 and November 1816 and the new ties formed by
Harriet in the interval, prove that there was no immediate relation between Shelley’s
abandonment of his wife and her suicide. She had always entertained the thought of self
destruction, as Hogg who is no adverse witness to her case, has amply recorded. It may indeed be
permitted to us to suppose that, finding herself for the second time unhappy in her love; she
reverted to a long since cherished scheme and cut the knot of life and all its troubles”. These were
the observation of J.A.Symonds on the reasons for death of Harriet15.
7.24.The Commitment and Sincerity of Shelley
Mary Shelley commented that Shelley's fearless enthusiasm in the cause, which he
considered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement in the moral and physical state of
mankind, was the chief reason, why he, like other illustrious reformers, was pursued by hatred
and calumny. No man was ever devoted than he to the endeavour of making those around him
happy, no man ever possessed friends more unfeignedly attached to him. The ungrateful world
did not feel his loss and the gap it made seemed to close as quickly over his memory as the
murderous sea above his living fame. Hereafter men will lament that his transcendent powers of
intellect were extinguished before they had bestowed on them, their choicest treasures.16
To his friends his loss irremediable: the wise, the brave, the gentle is gone for ever! He is
to them as a bright vision, whose radiant track, left behind in memory, is worth all realities that
society can afford. Before the critics contradict me, let them appeal to anyone who had ever
known him. To see him was to love him and his presence, like Ithuriel's spear, was alone
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sufficient to disclose the falsehood of the tale which his enemies whispered in the ear of the
ignorant world.17
“Shelley in his lifetime bound those who knew him with a chain of loyal affection,
impressing observers so essentially different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, Leigh Hunt, Trelawney,
Medwin, Williams, with the conviction that he was the gentlest, purest, bravest and most spiritual
being they had ever met. During his last four years this lovable of men was becoming gradually
riper, wiser, truer to his highest instincts.
The imperfections of is youth were being rapidly absorbed. His self knowledge was
expanding, his character mellowing and his genius growing daily stronger. Without losing the fire
that burned in him, he had lessoned by experience into tempering its fervor and when he reached
the age of twenty nine, he stood upon the height of his most glorious achievement, ready to unfold
his wings for a yet sublimer flight. At that moment when life at last seemed about to offer him
rest, unimpeded activity and happiness, death robbed the world of his maturity.
Posterity has but the product of his cruder years, the assurance that he had already outlived
them into something nobler and the tragedy of his untimely end.18
If a final word were needed to utter the unutterable sense of waste excited in us by
Shelley's premature absorption into the mystery of the unknown, we might find it in the last lines
of his own “Alastar”:
“.....................Art and eloquence
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade
It is a woe 'too deep for tears' when all
Is left at once, when some surpassing spirit
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain nor sobs nor grooms
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquility,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things
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Birth and the grave, that are not as they were”.19
“Such is the conflict- when mankind doth service
With its oppressors in a strife of blood,
Or when free thoughts, like lightnings are alive,
And in each bossom of the multitude
Justice and truth with custom's hydra brood,
Wage silent war; - when priests and kings – dissemble
In smiles or frowns their fierce disquietitude
When round pure hearts, a host of hopes assemble
The snake and eagle meet – the world's foundation tremble” - P. B. Shelley
As if in repetition of Shakespeare (on craze for gold), Shelley writes;
“Kings, priests and statesmen blast the human flower
Even in the tender bud, their influence darts
Like sudden poison through the bloodless veins
Of desolate poetry”
Queen Mab – Shelley
Then he continues,
“Commerce has set the mark of selfishness
The signet of its all – enslaving power
Upon a shining ore and called it gold.
------------------------------------------Fold is a living God and rules in scorn
All earthly things but virtue”,
Queen Mab
“Men of England wherefore plough
For the lord who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes yarn tyrants wear?
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The seed ye leisure comfort and calm
The wealth ye find another keeps
The robe ye weave another wears
The arm ye forge another bears”.
Sukumal Sen's book “Manifesto etc.” chapter iii
7.25. Assessment of Shelly
The poems and prose writings of Shelley had been challenged and championed by various
critics. They are discussed and analyzed until nearly every page is a battlefield of opinions. Just
one thing is common to all and it knows no date. This is the charm of his creations.
Shelley emerged not merely as a child of French Revolution – but also he was in many
things far ahead of his age. Shelley contended that, the existing ruling classes had to co-operate in
reforming the existing system in order to avoid the horrors of a revolution and civil war.
Otherwise anarchy would only be the last flash before despotism. Shelley wanted a radical and
lasting change and he feared anarchy because it is counterproductive and leads to despotism as the
Jacobians led to Napoleon. Shelley opposed revolution because he doubted its efficacy to promote
his revolutionary ideals. But these ideals were totally revolutionary aiming at massive struggles of
people for a social revolution.
He rejected the standards and ideals of his own class and became what Prof. Harold Perkin
has called him a
“social crank, a self-appointed spokesman for the excluded classes. His
aristocratic background gave him considerable critical insight into the way English society was
structured by the power of the aristocracy”.20
Mahakavi Subramania Bharathi echoed the revolutionary ideas of Shelley. Bharathi was
writing Tamil poems nearly a century after the writings of Shelley. He applied Shelley’s
revolutionary ideas suitable to national liberation struggles of Indian masses. Bharathi aroused the
awakening of Indian masses against British Imperialism and championed the cause of
downtrodden people of India. Like Shelley he longed for the formation of a socialist society
warding off all inequalities among mankind.
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It is in fitness of things, that a University is established in the name of Bharathiyar to
impart education and create mass awareness among the children of the downtrodden families in
this part of the country. It is a matter of pride that this University is inculcating the noble ideals of
equality, freedom and liberty in this part of the country.
Consequent on French Revolution, the entire Europe plunged into despotic reaction. In
England, there were trials for blasphemy, trials for treason, suspension of Habeas Corpus Act,
misery everywhere: Shelley saw in the French Revolution an incident of movement towards a
reconstruction of society. He flung himself into politics and yet he never ceased singing.
7.26. Shelley’s Self Portrait
With modest self-consciousness, he has written lines that are word-portraits of himself.
Among these,
‘He was one of
The sacred few who could not tame
Their spirits of the conquerors’ – (Triumph of Life)
In (introduction to) Laon and Cythna he described himself:
“And from that hour did I with earnest thought
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
I cared to learn but from secret store
Wrought linked armour for myself, before
It might walk forth to war among mankind;
Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more
Within me…………”
In another example he writes in ‘Prince Athanase’
“Yet even in youth did he not ever abuse
The strength of wealth or thought to consecrate
Those false opinions which the harsh rich use
To blind the world they famish for their pride
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Nor did he hold from any man his dues
But like a steward in honest dealings tried
With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise
His riches and his cares he did divide.”
The above are some of the examples for the many sided splendours of his personality
which is dominated by a true spirit of dedication to society and social wellbeing.
7.27. His Political Stand on Peoples’ Struggles
Mary Shelley's words may be quoted as summing up his position: “Shelley loved the
people and respected them as often more virtuous, as always more suffering and therefore more
deserving of sympathy than the great. He believed that a clash between the two classes of society
was inevitable and he eagerly ranged himself on the people's side” (critical notes, F1, ixxx)
7.28. Conclusion
Educated from Enlightenment movement of French and English authors, Shelley grew up
as a child of French Revolution. He grew up as the champion of the ideals of Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity. As a poet, inspired by the spirit of humanism, he longed for a society free from all
social evils. His advocacy for vegetable diet was one aspect of his humanism. Universal love was
the theme of his writings. At the same timed he did not hesitate to condemn the oppressors, like
king, statesman and priests. There was an intense and glowing passion of selflessness, which
throughout his led Shelley to find his strongest interests in the joys and sorrows of his fellow
creatures which inflamed his imagination which filled his days with sweet deeds of unnumbered
charities. Loving all mankind and wishing every human being to live a happy and free life,
Shelley was a great devotee of liberty.
His ‘Song to men of England’ and ‘Mask of anarchy’ gave a clarion call to the people to
rise in revolt against oppressors. This reveals his militant thinking and perception of a peoples’
struggle.
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Notes
1) Rickett, Arthur Compton, ‘A History of English Literature’, New Delhi, Universal Book
Stall, 1981, p.337
2) Rickett, Arthur Compton, ‘A History of English Literature, Universal Book Stall’, New
Delhi-1987.
3) Rickett, Arthur Compton, ‘A History of English Literature’, New Delhi, Universal Book
Stall, 1981, p.337
4) Introductory remarks by editor of Wordsworth Poetry
Library page XXXIV
5) Anderson,J.P’s Bibliography in W. Sharp’s ‘Life of Shelley’ and Foreman Buxton, ‘Note
book of the Shelley Society’ part 1 pp. 25-30.
6) ‘Note Book of the Shelley Society’, part I P. 31
7) Shah Bernard, ‘Pen Portraits and Reviews’ P 244 - from Desmond King Hele. P 47
8) Read,H. ‘True Voice of Feeling’ – p.268 -Source Hele
9) Cameron, Kenneth Neil ‘The Young Shelley – Genesis of a Radical’, Macmillan P.10
10) Cameron, Kenneth Neil ‘The Young Shelley – Genesis of a Radical’, Macmillan P.54
11) Woodcock, Bruce-Editor, ‘The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley’, Wordsworth Poetry
Library, Wordsworth Editions, London, 2002 From Introduction page vi / xxxii).
12) Gwynn Stephen, ‘Masters of English Literature’ P.369
13) Banerjee Srikumar and Mukerji Amul Yadhan- Edrs, ‘Leaves from English Poetry’
Editor’s notes, Orient Longman
14) J.A.Symonds,J.A,’Shelley’ P.88
15) Symonds J.A,’Shelley’ p.193
16) Shelley Mary, (Preface to the volume of ‘Posthumous Poems of Shelley’ 1824
17) Hatchinson Thomas, Ed ., 'Shelley – Poetical Works’ Oxford paperbacks: OUP Delhi,
1971 P.xxv
18) Symonds J.A (biographer), ‘on Shelley’, published in Feb 1887
19) Dowden Prof., ‘Life of P. B. Shelley’ published in 1886
20) The Origins of Modern English Society – 1780 to 1880 (1969) page 220.8.2.1
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