He sank into the chair that speedily ordered. For one brief Matthews had pushed forward. moment came the temptation The extraordinary combina- to vent his fury by sweeping tion of circumstances was over- it off the tray. Then happily whelming. All those marches the ice tinkled again. He was in the midst of the heat and very hot. The perspiration was the desert and the flies for streaming off his forehead. He nothing. He and his men had was very tired, and surely come on a fool's errand. The nothing very much mattered little expedition that might now. As he stretched out his have furnished so much glory hand to take the drink, for the turned into a laughing-stock. first time the humour of the He glared round again at the situation dimly struck him. three men who had been the He raised the glass, and, first unwitting cause of it all. looking at it lovingly as only a really tired and thirsty man can look, he glanced round with something of a smile at the three men he had so lately frowned upon. Then beside him in the silence of utter collapse, he heard the sound that is balm to the soul of the hot and tired Englishman in the East-the tinkle of ice on glass. At his elbow stood a kitmatghar with a long full tumbler of foaming beer that Matthews with wisdom had "Well, as you are alive and well, confound you," he said, raising the glass to his lips, "here's to you." VOL. CCXV.-NO. MCCCII. U SHELLEY. BY MOIRA O'NEILL. have almost the sanction of national traditions. But why does M. Maurois say that "Official England, which was the soul of the ANY book written by the author of 'The Silence of Colonel Bramble' is sure of commanding attention. We know beforehand that it will have style and form, the move- Holy Alliance, believed that ment of life, and a certain shrewd penetration; that the moment of pathos will not be prolonged by an unnecessary word, and that an agreeable dry humour will lighten the general aspect. It is always interesting to see ourselves as strangers see us, and we are not likely to be viewed by any foreigner with more leniency than by M. Maurois, "un étranger qui nous connait mieux que personne," one might almost say, remembering the compliment paid to Matthew Arnold by the critic he revered, M. Sainte Beuve. Even the friendly M. Maurois, however, does not spare us the familiar accusation of "hypocrisy." England, he avers, "required from her public schools a generation of smooth-tongued hypocrites." But we are so thoroughly accustomed to this charge that we hardly resent any more than we attempt to understand it. Probably the Frenchman has the same puzzled indifference to our ingrained conviction of his "frivolity." Both qualities, if imaginary, in combating Napoleon she was combating liberalism in the purple " ! The Czar Alexander I. was the author of the Holy Alliance, to which England alone among the Allies refused official adherence, Lord Castlereagh having warned the Regent against putting his signature to a bond that was all "mysticism and stuff." Lord Castlereagh was a very plain-spoken, unsentimental, and sometimes overbearing, Minister; but one fails to see how he can be charged with hypocrisy simply because he distrusted the professions of celestial disinterestedness made by a man whose character was a problem to him, a man whose contemporaries believed him to have been cognisant of the plot for the assassination of his own father. The character of Alexander I. remains something of a problem to this day; but Lord Castlereagh's caution was justified by subsequent events. fictitious. The events of Shelley's life, its main events, at least, are recorded; and never was there a life in which the main events appear so ugly, dark, and deplorable, while yet we know that the human creature thus tragically entangled in his own errors was not a son of darkness, but of light. M. Maurois gives us all the events of the poet's life, except those which concerned him as a poet. His 'Ariel' has nothing to do with poetry, except nominally. He is only the subject of a skilfully-woven tale, told by a writer equipped with balanced judgment, a mocking kind of sympathy, and undeniable wit. There is nothing of Romance here. But for wit it would be hard to better the little paragraph about Shelley's reception in Ireland, where he had gone at the mature age of nineteen to preach wisdom to the natives, and the need for Catholic Emancipation to their rulers. so light and sharply pointed, is no common gift, and his style, which runs runs smoothly, without emphasis, and with an easy finish and simplicity, is admirable in its way. Why are we not more grateful for this accomplished little book! Why do we find its "easy humour hard to bear" Perhaps it is written a little too much "de haut en bas." Perhaps we are conscious that the writer takes too easily-in his stride, as it were the stumbling-blocks and pitfalls that lay in the poet's way, and have caused wiser men to fall. The spectacle of his life, however presented, is a tragedy so desolating that we do not care to peruse it in the form of an entertaining novel, of more brilliancy than feeling. This is a matter of taste, it may be objected. Yes, it is; and so is the presence of a skeleton at the feast! Very different is the case of Mrs Campbell's 'Shelley, and the Unromantics,' a book with an awkward name, and of a seriously interesting nature. Mrs Campbell does not write smoothly or swiftly; her style has sincerity and character rather than distinction. Sometimes she writes impulsively, and then it is a case of hit or miss; she may occasionally bring out a memorable saying, and occasionally she may relapse into a spurt of temper. Both impulses are genuine, for she is engrossed in her subject, and not seeking for effects. Incidentally, it must be admitted that to write of the people he exemplified Wordsworth's who formed Shelley's circle and sad conception of the influences around him, without ever losing temper, would From Nature's way by outward accirequire either a saint or a cynic. Mrs Campbell's charge against those whom she calls the Unromantics is stated thus: "The poets of the Victorian era were true poets, in one sense or another, but not one was whole-hearted. In almost all the English writers, since the voices of of Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley were in their different ways silenced, the failure has been a failure of the Romantic spirit-the belief in man. On some such faith depends everything in human life that can be called romance. But this faith must be induced-for faith, as Shelley said, is not voluntary; it is a passion,-and, most of all, it must be justified. A scientific age like the present is suspicious of the Romantic attitude; it does not ask of its art that it should nourish a Faith in Man; and it manifestly does not believe that any can be instrumental in justifying that faith. It might do well to set aside the Victorian interpretation of the Romantic Age, and study again in a new spirit not only the poetical achievement, but the personal beliefs, the hard-fought battles and artistic aims, of Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley." Her main concern is with Shelley, his life, faith, and poetry. From the beginning "a heart that had been turned aside dents." Except in personal beauty, he had no resemblance to any of his family; and not one of them, except his sister Elizabeth, seems to have been capable of understanding him. Whoever may have given him his first instruction in the Christian religion managed to convey to him the idea of a darkly jealous and vindictive Tyrant as the arbiter of human destinies, and the child Shelley, who had a strong instinct for liberty and justice, very rightly refused allegiance to such a Deity. It was really in loyalty to the Christian ideal, although he did not understand it, that he rashly called himself an atheist; and the name stuck to him for life, and longer. Had he lived to-day, he would have been called an idealist, a Socialist, a spiritualist, and all kinds of pet names. But those were not the days of compromise, and the lad Shelley had the most unfortunate habit of adopting opinions he did not understand; the more unpopular they were, the better he liked them. A kind friend lent him, while still at Eton, Godwin's 'Political Justice.' A more unhappy loan was never made, even by the kindest friend; for Shelley adopted, in deadly earnest, all the fine-spun theories which Godwin merely wrote about, sitting in his chair. One of his theories was the Immorality of Marriage; it was deeply impressed upon the boy's mind at the age of sixteen. How could he know that Godwin was twice married? How could he know that the day was coming when he would earn Godwin's hatred by carrying out his own theory with Godwin's daughter? He pamphlet, along with his friend Hogg; and then began the long hopeless conflict with his father, who shut him out from home, left him lonely and almost penniless in London, and was filled with rage and astonishment when he heard that his hopeful son of nineteen had run away with a schoolgirl, a publican's daughter, and married her in Scotland. It was Shelley's fate in life that his best actions should shock his friends as much as his worst actions should gratify his enemies. This foolish elopement with poor little Harriet Westbrook was much to his credit, but not at all accordant to his wishes. He was successfully manœuvred into it by the girl's relations, who were triumphant over getting her married at sixteen to the eldest son of a baronet, and heir to an entailed estate. The helpless fury of his father was in due proportion to the satisfaction of his father-in-law; but eventually they made an allowance to the young couple, who started thus in life, wonderfully good-looking, entirely inexperienced and deeply ignorant. All through his life these things happened with Shelley. He would act in strict accordance with the very latest principle ardently embraced by him, and he was pained and surprised at being called a wicked wretch in consequence. never quite grasped the melancholy idea that in other people's minds principles were not usually supposed to be carried out to inconvenient lengths in practice; and that this, as George Eliot once remarked, "is the great safeguard of society." But then he never realised clearly what was in other people's minds, his own was so much excited. They surprised him as much as he surprised them, and pained him a good deal more. He was a born rebel, an angel-faced Jacobin, a sensitive, affectionate, thoroughly disinterested revolutionary-and all before he was eighteen. This precocious development was a real misfortune, but what can be done with a boy who will do nothing but read and write, walk and talk It ended in his being summarily expelled from Oxford, for a miserable atheistical a former friend of his own, a Nothing could prove the ignorance of Harriet better than her insisting on having her elder sister Eliza to live with them from the beginning. Perhaps it was Eliza who insisted most effectively, for Harriet was not a strong-willed character. On the other hand, Shelley was anxious to induce |