XVII. To Percy Bysshe Shelley - Page 2

unconsciously inherited memory from cave-man. Speaking of cave-man reminds me
that you once spoke of deserting song for prose, and of producing a history of
the moral, intellectual, and political elements in human society, which, we
now agree, began, as Asia would fain have ended, in a cave.

Fortunately you gave us 'Adonai, and 'Hellas' instead of this treatise, and we
have now successfully written the natural history of Man for ourselves.
Science tells us that before becoming cave-dweller he was a brute; Experience
daily proclaims that he constantly reverts to his original condition.
_L'homme_est_un_me'chant_animal_, in spite of your boyish efforts to add
pretty girls 'to the list of the good, the disinterested, and the free.'

Ah, not in the wastes of Speculation, nor the sterile din of Politics, were
'the haunts meet for thee.' Watching the yellow bees in the ivy bloom, and the
reflected pine forest in the water-pools, watching the sunset as it faded, and
the dawn as it fired, and weaving all fair and fleeting things into a tissue
where light and music were at one, that was the task of Shelley! 'To ask you
for anything human,' you said, 'was like asking for a leg of mutton at a
gin-shop.' Nay, rather, like asking Apollo and Hebe, in the Olympian abodes,
to give us beef for ambrosia, and port for nectar. Each poet gives what he
has, and what he can offer; you spread before us fairy bread, and enchanted
wine, and shall we turn away, with a sneer, because, out of all the multitudes
of singers, one is spiritual and strange, one has seen Artemis unveiled? One,
like Anchises, has been beloved of the Goddess, and his eyes, when he looks on
the common works of common men, are, like the eyes of Anchises, blind with
excess of light. Let Shelley sing of what he saw, what none saw but Shelley!

Notwithstanding the popularity of your poems (the most romantic of things
didactic), our world is no better than the world you knew. This will
disappoint you, who had 'a passion for reforming it.' Kings and priests are
very much where you left them. True, we have a poet who assails them, at
large, frequently and fearlessly; yet Mr. Swinburne has never, like 'kind
Hunt,' been in prison, nor do we fear for him a charge of treason. Moreover,
chemical science has discovered new and ingenious ways of destroying
principalities and powers. You would be interested in the methods, but your
peaceful Revolutionism, which disdained physical force, would regret their
application.

Our foreign affairs are not in a state which even you would consider
satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of Islam, and we
still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you recognised and described.
We have a great statesman whose methods