R520303A. Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. With an Introductory Essay, by Robert Browning.
The Guardian, 3 March 1852, p. 147.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 395–396.
It would be difficult to print any works of Shelley that should be wholly worthless; and we thank Mr. Moxon for his determination to complete as far as he can the collection of his letters and essays which he published some years ago. Mr. Browning’s essay, too, though unnecessarily long and affectedly obscure, saying at great length and in many words what might have been as well said shortly and in a few, is yet not without some striking thoughts and a good many striking expressions. There is, however, an air of pretence about it which so clever a man should have avoided, and especially there is an unreserved approbation of Shelley’s conduct, which, considering what that conduct was, is startling and offensive. It is true Mr. Browning speaks of him as imperfect, and insists (with much truth no doubt) upon the great temptations he was subject to, the gradual softening and improvement which took place in his character, and the noble and generous thoughts and actions which he was always capable of. He does not insist (perhaps from not knowing it) upon another extenuating circumstance, viz., the misery of his life at Eton, and the effect upon his heart and temper which the treatment he there underwent produced, at least for a time. All this is to be remembered; and there is no pleasure in judging such a man as Shelley, the purity of whose writings and their exquisite beauty having won him a place among England’s greatest poets, while the self-denial and highmindedness of his later years show us the many good and even Christian qualities with which he was gifted. Yet he was an infidel of the most daring kind; he yielded to temptations no doubt, but they were such only as other men were able to overcome; and in his treatment of his first wife it is impossible to acquit him of selfish and cruel profligacy. The rhetorical and mysterious fashion in which Mr. Browning thinks fit to write compels us to express a judgment, which otherwise would be best held in pitying and wondering silence.
[The balance of this review pertains to Shelley’s letters.]
Reviewed:
Introductory Essay. Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1852.
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