REVOLT OF ISLAM.

199

in

perfect specimens of blank verse that the English language can boast, and full of that romantic scenery which his imagination had treasured up his Alpine excursions. But careless of pecuniary matters, and generous to excess, he soon exceeded his income; and, remaining still at variance with his family, he formed the resolution of quitting his native country, and in this resolution he was confirmed by his children being taken from him by the Lord Chancellor on the ground of his atheistical principles. Again crossing the Alps, he took up his residence at Venice, where he renewed his acquaintance with Lord Byron, and wrote his "Revolt of Islam," an allegorical poem in the Spenserian stanza; and also the "Loves of Laon and Cythra," in which he shows his belief of the perfectibility of human nature, and of the return of the golden age, when all the different creeds and systems of the human race would be assimilated, crime disappear, and the lion and the lamb lie down in peace together. Wild and visionary as this scheme may appear, as it evidently sprang from a mind zealous for the happiness of the species, there could be nothing objectionable in it. His next performance, "The Prometheus Unbound,” was a bold attempt to replace a lost play of Eschylus, and evinced an acquaintance with the Greek tragedy writers uncommon at the present day. He composed it at Rome, as also his next

200

HELLAS. MR. KEATS.

work "The Cenci," a tragedy, which, but for the prejudice that had been excited against every thing bearing his name, must have pleased, if not on the stage, at least in the closet. Lord Byron thought it the best attempt that had been made by any of the followers of Shakspeare.

Notwithstanding his apparent remissness at school, he was perhaps one of the best classical scholars in England. Plato and the Greek dramatists were his models. He was well versed too in the modern languages; Calderon in Spanish, Petrarch and Dantè in Italian, and Goethe and Schiller in German were his favourite authors. French he disliked, and could discern no beauties in Racine.

Scouted by the world, his writings proscribed by men of all parties, discarded by his family, and suffering under a painful complaint, his powerful mind sunk into torpor and dejection. After passing several months at Naples, he finally settled with his wife in Tuscany, where he passed the last four years of his life in retirement and study. He continued to write, although he had given up publishing; but his ardent love of liberty induced him to break through this resolve on one occasion, and private friendship on another. Hellas, or the Triumph of Geeece," a drama, which he inscribed to his friend Prince Mavrocordato, has been since translated into Greek; and his attachment to the late Mr. Keats drew from him an elegy, intitled " Adonais." In this last piece he

66

draws a forcible picture of himself, as one of the mourners at the funeral of his lost friend.

guess,

"'Mid others of less note came one frail form,—
A phantom among men-compassionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm,
Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I
Had gaz'd on nature's naked loveliness
Actæon-like; and now he fled astray
With feeble steps on the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts along that rugged way
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

"His head was bound with fancies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
And a light spear, topp'd with a cypress cone,
(Round whose rough stem dark ivy tresses shone,
Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew),
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart

Shook the weak hand that grasp'd it. Of that crew
He came the last, neglected and apart—

A herd-abandon'd deer, struck by the hunter's dart."

In this desponding state, he passed the last eighteen months of his life in constant intercourse with Lord Byron, to whom his amiable and elegant manners, and great acquirements, had endeared him. Like his friend, he always expressed a wish to die young, and he perished in the twenty-ninth year of his age, in the Mediterranean, between Leghorn and Lerici, by the upsetting of an open boat. Like Byron, too, the water was ever his favourite element; and as early as 1813, he appears

202

DEATH OF MR. SHELLEY;

to have anticipated that it would prove ing sheet:

"To morrow comes:

his wind

Cloud upon cloud with dark and deep'ning mass
Roll o'er the blacken'd waters; the deep roar
Of distant thunder mutters awfully;

Tempest unfolds its pinions o'er the gloom
That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend,
With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;
The torn deep yawns ;—the vessel finds a grave
Beneath its jagged jaws."

The body was not discovered for fifteen days after the loss of the vessel, and when found was not in a state to suffer removal to Rome, where Mr. Shelley had expressed his desire to be buried. In order to comply with this request, Lord Byron, faithful to his trust as executor and his duty as a friend, directed the body to be burned, that the inurned ashes might be conveyed to the destined spot. Lord Byron, Capt. Trelawny, Leigh Hunt, some other spectators and soldiers of the guard, were present at the mournful ceremony. Whilst the corpse was consuming on the pile, a curlew,* attracted by the scent, wheeled round, screaming shrilly, and in circles so close to the company,

* Lord Byron, in his poem of "The Island," has drawn a similar portrait of the sea-fowl hovering over the dead bodies of the mutineers, perhaps he took the idea from the above circumstance.

HIS REMAINS BURNT ON A PILE.

203

that it might have been touched by the hand, and so fearless that it could not be driven away. Scarcely was the ceremony ended, before Lord Byron, agitated by the spectacle he had witnessed, tried to dispel the gloomy impression it had left by having recourse to his favourite recreation. He stripped, plunged into the sea, and swam to his yacht, which was riding at a considerable distance from the shore. The sudden change from heat to cold brought on symptoms of a fever, but Byron applied to his usual remedy, the warm-bath, and prevented any ill effects from his indiscretion.

Thus ended the chequered life of a man who, as Lord Byron said of him, had more poetry in him than any man living; and if he were not so mystical, and would not create Utopias and set himself up as a reformer of the human race, would have ranked as one of the first poets of the age, and that the works he wrote at seventeen are much more extraordinary than Chatterton's were at the same age. Shelley's remains now rest beside tho se of his friend Keats at Rome in the burial ground near Caius Cestus pyramid, a spot so beautiful,' says he, as almost to make one in love with death.'

Lord Byron's establishment at Pisa was, like every thing else about him, somewhat singular; it consisted of a monkey,* a mastiff, a bull-dog,

* Overhearing Fletcher one day cheapening a monkey, for which the owner asked extravagantly dear, Lord Byron cried

out: