Appendix

Besides the ‘Philosophical View of Reform’ this MS. contains some other matter of interest to students of Shelley. On one page, otherwise blank, appear the words

On the punishment of Death

showing that Shelley contemplated an essay on that subject.

There are also three scraps of poetry, which are identifiable as jottings for passages in ‘Prometheus Unbound’, Act iv, viz.

Another page contains the interesting Note on the composition of the Ode to the West Wind which is attached to that poem in Mrs. Shelley’s edition. The text is the same as the printed version, except that the MS. reads ‘attended with that magnificent thunder . . .’ instead of ‘attended by . . .’

There are also a few rough sketches, including several of boats, and one of a group of buildings of oriental character embowered in foliage.

On pp. 60-65 of the ‘Philosophical View’ Shelley strongly urges a measure which has also been strongly urged, though not yet found practicable, in the present day—the confiscation for the needs of the State of fortunes acquired by unworthy or extortionate methods. It is interesting to note that he treated the same subject in a fragment gleaned by Mrs. Shelley from his relics of unpublished verse:

Perhaps an allusion to this work, among other matters. The whisper of the good genius was directed, it would appear, rather as a warning to Shelley not to entangle himself in a hopeless struggle in a field for which he was ill equipped, than to instil any misgivings about the fundamental soundness of his ideas.

Vol. ii, p. 291 et seq.

Here follows a passage which Shelley has scored out: ‘I am unwilling to attribute any great share in the improvement of a being so intellectual as man to a circumstance so entirely accidental and mechanical as the invention of printing. This was one among a multitude of causes radiating to a single centre.’—(Ed.)

Here, in a footnote, comes an unfinished sentence apparently intended to be worked into the above passage: ‘Regular and graduated systems of alternate slavery and tyranny, by which all except the lowest and the largest class were to be gainers in the materials of subsistence and ostentation at the expense of that class, the means being fraud and force, were established in the shape of feudal monarchies upon the ruins of the . . .’

Sic in the MS. The intention must have been to write ‘artificial’, unless by ‘inartificial’ Shelley meant badly designed.—(Ed.)

Its error consists not in the not representing the will of the people as it is, but in not providing for the full development and the most salutary condition of that will. For two conditions are necessary to a theoretically perfect government, and one of them alone is adequately fulfilled by the most perfect of practical governments, the Republic of the United States: to represent the will of the people as it is. To provide that that will should be as wise and just as possible. In a certain extent the mere representation of public will produces in itself a wholesome condition of it, and in this extent America fulfils imperfectly and indirectly the last and most important condition of perfect government.—(Author’s Note.)

The foregoing sentence was left by Shelley in a chaotic and indecipherable condition. The restoration I have attempted gives the sense intended, but is conjectural in some particulars.

‘Christiern’ is the king now commonly known as Christian II, perpetrator of the Massacre of Stockholm, 1520, and many other atrocities. Muley Ismael, who tortured one of his sons to death, was emperor of Morocco 1673-1727. Ezzelin or Eccelin de Romano, Lord of Padua in the thirteenth century, left a name which has become a byword for cruelty which struck even his own age with horror.—(Ed.)

Italics indicated in MS.—(Ed.)

Tacitus tells her story (Ann. xv. 57). She slew herself, fearing to reveal under renewed torture the names of her accomplices in a conspiracy against Nero:

After ‘insurrection’ in the MS. come the words, ‘the lean-looking prophets whispering fearful change’. The metaphor of the ‘ominous comets’ was evidently intended to be substituted for the lean prophets, but as the latter phrase was not struck out I record it here.—(Ed.)

Shelley has mingled, in his recollection, the above passage with another from Paradise Lost, Bk. I, where Milton speaks of the sun which

Across this passage is written the word caret, indicating that something was to be supplied later.—(Ed.)

This person sent his nephew to Lucca to study European learning, when his nephew asked with reference to some branch of study at enmity with Mahometanism whether he was permitted to engage in it, he replied, ‘You are at liberty to do anything which will not injure another’.—(Author’s Note.)

The rest of this passage about the Jews is missing.—(Ed.)

The negro Republic of Liberia was founded by manumitted American slaves in 1820. In Haiti the negro Dessalines proclaimed himself ‘emperor’ in 1804, and in Shelley’s day the monarchy was contested by several negro chiefs.—(Ed.)

The passage on contemporary English literature from this point to the end of the paragraph was used by Shelley with some verbal alterations in the conclusion of his essay, A Defence of Poetry.—(Ed.)

Across the page Shelley has here written the words, ‘In this sense Religion may be called Poetry; though distorted from the beautiful simplicity of its truth—Coleridge has said that every poet was religious, the converse, that every religious man must be a poet was more true’.—(Ed.)

At this point come the words, ‘Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’. Shelley afterwards closed the paragraph with this fine sentence, forgetting, however, to strike it out here.—(Ed.)

We have here an intercalation of a few jottings on themes to be expanded later: ‘Before the F. R. a bitter state of public mind—The panic-giving arrows—All the great writers full of hope—Not necessary to debate here on the grounds of Reform—that to come in next chap.’—(Ed.)

Shelley has here inadvertently written ‘4th’.—(Ed.)

The words ‘I meant the government party’ are here intercalated.—(Ed.)

At this point the following passage, enclosed in lines to indicate that its exact position was not yet determined, is intercalated: ‘But for want of just regulations for the distribution of these materials—which is indeed the great problem of government—the elements of prosperity and power became when combined the sources of despotism and misery.’ Where I have supplied ‘these materials’ Shelley wrote ‘these elements’, but crossed it out without supplying any alternative.—(Ed.)

The words italicized were crossed out by Shelley, but as he did not supply anything to take their place I restore them.—(Ed.)

Artizan.

Caetera desunt. A passage marked out from the text by enclosing lines is here introduced: ‘In a treatise devoted to general considerations it would be superfluous to enter into the mode in which this has been done; those who desire to see a full elucidation of that made may read Cobbett’s Paper against Gold. Our present business is with consequences. I would awaken, from a consideration that the present miseries of our country are nothing necessarily inherent in the stage of civilization at which we have arrived, foresight and hope.’—(Ed.)

The following passage occurs here, marked off from the text by enclosing lines: ‘The first persons described are those who are the instruments of the fraud, and the merchants and the country gentlemen may be excused for believing that their existence is connected with the permanence of the best practicable forms of social order.’—(Ed.)

Shelley first wrote ‘assured of their necessities’. The last two words were then crossed out, and above them is written ‘many necessit things’.—(Ed.)

Shelley wrote ‘until’ instead of ‘for’, but finished his sentence confusedly without providing a verb for ‘advantage’.—(Ed.)

Shelley does not make it clear whether the tithes were to be merely abolished, or appropriated by the State. The yield of tithe rent charge for England and Wales is at present about £2,800,000.—(Ed.)

This sum could not have amounted to less than two thousand millions. It would be a curious problem in political economy to calculate the precise degree of comfort and of ornament represented by it.—(Author’s Note.)

After due reductions had been made so as to make an equal value, taking corn for the standard, be given as was received.—(Author’s Note.)

Shelley inadvertently wrote ‘latter’ for ‘former’ and vice versa throughout the passage, forgetting apparently that he named the creditor first and then the debtor. I have altered the order of ‘creditor’ and ‘debtor’ to square with the context. ‘Former’ throughout the whole confused passage means ‘debtor’ and ‘latter’ ‘creditor’, the labourers being the ‘third class’. The argument is that the wealthy and privileged class who lend money to the State are practically the same people upon whom both principal and interest are spent. (Ed.)

Struck out in MS. but no alternative phrases provided.—(Ed.)

A paragraph which has no apparent connexion with the text is here intercalated: ‘There are three sets of people, one who can place a thing to another in an intelligible light, another who can understand it when so communicated, and a third who can neither discover or understand it.’—(Ed.)

A blank page follows here.—(Ed.)

The word ‘gather’ is struck out but nothing substituted for it.—(Ed.)

A blank page follows here.—(Ed.)

This is impossible in great nations and the most enlightened theorists have therefore proposed dividing them into a great multiplicity of federated republics.—(Pencilled note by the author.)

Referring to the ‘Peterloo’ massacre of 1819.—(Ed.)

Shelley was not better informed about the East than most Europeans of his day. The philosophy and the art of India, China, and Japan have, in spite of their despotisms, contributed a wonderful chapter to the spiritual history of mankind.—(Ed.)

Crossed out in the MS. but no substitute provided.—(Ed.)

Crossed out, and ‘calamity’ substituted, but the latter was also crossed out, and the intention was apparently to revert to ‘mischief’.—(Ed.)

‘Practiced’ is an odd word. We should have expected ‘planted’; but Shelley perhaps had in his mind the Elizabethan sense of the verb to ‘practice’, meaning to do something treacherous and malignant.—(Ed.)

‘Pernicious to one touch’ is a reminiscence of Milton’s lines in Paradise Lost, Book VI:

This sentence, which is interlined in the text, seems obscure in form, but the intention is clearly to represent the ‘crisis’, i.e. the explosion of the mischief, as better than a disease made chronic by delay in treatment. For the word ‘utmost’ Shelley first wrote ‘worst’.—(Ed.)

Two blank pages follow this unfinished sentence.—(Ed.)