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incidentally exhibited, had less power to charm. How far it is possible that such a miserable dogma, dexterously insinuated into a perplexed understanding or a corrupted heart, may find reception, I will not venture to speculate,—but I venture to affirm that thus nakedly presented, as the dream of a wild fancy, it can at most only glare for a moment, a bloodless phantom, and pass into kindred nothing! Or do the words rather import a belief in a God-the ruling Power of the universe-yet an insane hatred of his attributes? Is it possible to contemplate the creature of a day standing up amidst countless ages -like a shadowy film among the confused grandeur of the universe— thus propelled, with any other feelings than those of wonder and pity? Or do these words merely import that the name and attributes of the Supreme Being have been abused and perverted by the oppressors of mankind,' for their own purposes, to the misery of the oppressed? Or do they vibrate and oscillate between all these meanings, so as to leave the mind in a state of perplexity,-balancing and destroying each other? In either case, they are powerless for evil. Unlike that seductive infidelity which flatters the pride of the understanding, by glittering sophistry, or that still more dangerous infidelity, which gratifies its love of power by bitter sarcasm,-or that most dangerous of all, which perverts the sensibilities, and corrupts the affections,-it resembles that evil of which Milton speaks, when, with a boldness which the fastidious might deem profane, he exclaims,

Evil into the mind of God or man

May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind.'

"If, regarded in themselves, these passages were endowed with any power of mischief, the manner in which they are introduced in the poem-or rather phantasm of a poem-of Queen Mab' must surely neutralize them. It has no human interest-no local affinities-no machinery familiar even to thought. It opens in a lyrical measure, wanting even the accomplishment of rhyme, with an apostrophe uttered, no one knows by whom or where, on a sleeping nymph;-whether human or divine-the creature of what mythology-on earth or in some other sphere-is unexplained; all we know is, that the lady or spirit is called Ianthe. Thus it begins :

'How wonderful is Death-
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;

The other, rosy as the morn
When, throned in Ocean's wave,
It blushes o'er the world;
Yet both so passing wonderful!

Hath then the gloomy power
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres
Seized on her sinless soul?

Must then that peerless form,

Which love and admiration cannot view
Without a beating heart-those azure veins
Which steal like streams along a field of snow-
That lovely outline which is fair
As breathing marble, perish?
Must putrefaction's breath

Leave nothing for this heavenly sight
But loathsomeness and ruin?
Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,
On which the lightest heart might moralize?
Or is it only a sweet slumber
Stealing o'er sensation,

Which the breath of roseate morning
Chaseth into darkness?

Will Ianthe wake again,

And give that faithful bosom joy,
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch

Light, life, and rapture from her smile?'

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"The answer to the last question is, that Ianthe will awake,-which is expressed in terms appropriately elaborate and mystical. But while she is thus sleeping, the Fairy Mab descends-invites the soul of the nymph to quit her form-and conveys it through systems, suns, and worlds to the temple of The Spirit of Nature,' where the Fairy and the Soul enter The Hall of Spells,' and a kind of phantasmagoria passes before them, in which are dimly seen representations of the miseries, oppressions, and hopes of mankind. Few, indeed, are the readers who will ever enter the dreary portals of that fane, or gaze on the wild intermixture of half-formed visions and theories which gleam through the hazy prospects seen from its battlements. The discourse of the Fairy-to the few who have followed that dizzy career-is an extraordinary mixture of wild rhapsody on the miseries attendant on humanity, and the supposed errors of its faith, and of fancies of the moonshine's watery beams.' After the obstinate questioning' respecting the existence of a God, this Fairy-who is supposed to deny all supernatural existence-calls forth a shape of one whose imaginary being is entirely derived from Christian tradition-Ahasuerus, the Jew -who is said to have scoffed at our Saviour as he bore his cross to Calvary, and to have been doomed by Him to wander on the earth until His second coming. Of this phantom the question is asked, 'Is there a God?' and to him are the words ascribed in answer which form the second and third portions of the prosecutor's charge. Can anything be conceived more inconsistent-more completely self-refuted -and therefore more harmless? The whole machinery, indeed, answers to the description of the Fairy,

'The matter of which dreams are made,

Not more endow'd with actual life

Than this phantasmal portraiture
Of wandering human thought.'

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"All, indeed, is fantastical-nothing clear except that atheism and

N. 5.-VOL. VI.

2 D

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the materialism, on which alone atheism can rest, are refuted in every page. If the being of God is in terms denied-which I deny-it is confessed in substance; and what injury can an author do, who one moment deprecates the deifying the Spirit of the universe,' and the next himself deifies the spirit of Nature,'-speaks of her 'eternal breath,' and fashions for her a fitting temple?' Nay, in this strange poem, the spiritual immunities of the soul and its immortal destinies are distinctly asserted amidst all its visionary splendours. The Spirit of lanthe is supposed to arise from the slumbering body, and to stand beside it; while the poet thus represents each :—

• "Twas a sight

Of wonder to behold the body and soul.
The self-same lineaments, the same

Marks of identity were there,

Yet, O how different! One aspires to heaven,
Pants for its sempiternal heritage,

And ever changing, ever rising, still

Wantons in endless being;

The other, for a time the unwilling sport
Of circumstance and passion, struggles on,
Fleets through its sad duration rapidly;
Then, like a useless and worn-out machine,
Rots, perishes, and passes.'

"Now, when it is found that this poem, thus containing the doctrine of immortality, is presented with the distinct statement that Shelley himself in maturer life departed from its offensive dogmaswhen it is accompanied by his own letter, in which he expresses his wish for its suppression-when, therefore, it is not given even as containing his deliberate assertions, but only as a feature in the developement of his intellectual character-surely all sting is taken out of the rash and uncertain passages which have been selected as indicating blasphemy! But is it not antidote enough to the poison of a pretended atheism, that the poet who is supposed to-day to deny Deity, finds Deity in all things!

"I cannot proceed with this defence without feeling that I move tremulously among sacred things which should be approached only in serene contemplation; that I am compelled to solicit your attention to considerations more fit to be weighed in the stillness of thought than amidst the excitements of a public trial; and that I am able only to suggest reasonings which, if woven into a chain, no strength of mine could utter, nor your kindest patience follow. But the fault is not mine! I cannot otherwise even hint the truth-the living truth -of this case to your minds as it fills and struggles in my own, or pro tect my client and friend from a prosecution without parallel in our legal history. If the prosecutor, in return for his own conviction of publishing some cheap and popular work of alleged blasphemyprepared, calculated, and intended by the author to shake the religious principles of the uneducated and the young,—has attempted to assail the efforts of genius, and to bring into question the re

lations, the uses, the tendencies of the divinest faculties, I must not shrink from entreating you to consider those bearings of the question which are essential to its justice. And if you feel unable fully to examine them within the limits of a trial, and in the atmosphere of a court of justice, yet if you feel with me that they are necessary to a just decision, you cannot doubt what your duty to the defendant and to justice is, on a criminal charge! Pardon me, therefore, if I now seek to show you, by a great example, how unjustly you would deal with so vast and so divine a thing as the imagination of a poet, if you were to take his isolated passages which may seem to deal too boldly with sacred things, and-without regard to the process of the faculty by which they are educed-to brand them as the effusions of a blasphemous mind, or as tending to evil issues. That example will also show you how a poet-devoting the noblest powers to the loftiest themes-when he ventures to grapple with the spiritual existences revealed by the Christian faith, in the very purpose of vindicating the ways of God to men,' may seem to incur a charge like the present, and with as much justice; and may be absolved from it only by nice regard to the tendencies of the divine faculty he exerts. I speak not of a 'marvellous boy,' as Shelley was at eighteen, but of Milton, in the maturity of his powers, when he brought all the spoils of time,' and the clustered beauty hoarded through a long life, to the deliberate construction of a work which should never die. His case is the converse of that of Shelley-he begins from an opposite point; he falls into an opposite error; but he expatiates in language and imagery out of which Mr. Hetherington might shape a charge as specious as that which he has given you to decide. Shelley fancies himself irreligious, and every where falters or trembles into piety; Milton, believing himself engaged in a most pious work, is led by the tendencies of his imagination to individualize—to adorn-to enthrone-the Enemy of God; and to invest his struggles against Omnipotence with all the nobleness of a patriotic resistance to tyranny, and his suffering from Almighty justice with the graces of fortitude. Let it not be urged that the language which his Satan utters is merely to be regarded with reference to dramatic proprieties-it is attributed to the being in whom the interest of his poem centres; and on whom admiration and sympathy attend as on a sufferer in the eternal struggle of right against power. Omnipotence becomes tyranny in the poet's vision, and resistance to its requisitions appears the more generous even because hopelessly vain. Before I advert to that language, and ask you to compare it with the expressions selected for prosecution, let me call to your recollection the grandeurs-nay, the luxuries of thought, with which the Lost Archangel' is surrounded;-the magic by which even out of the materials of torture dusky magnificence is created in his place of exile, beyond the wealth of Ormus and of Ind;' and the faded glory and unconquerable spirit attributed to those rebel legions who still sustain him in opposition to the Most High. Observe the hosts, still angelic, as they march at his bidding!—

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Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised
To height of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle; and, instead of rage,
Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved
With dread of death, to flight or foul retreat;

Nor wanting power to mitigate and 'suage

With solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain,
From mortal or immortal minds.'

"Whether we listen to those who

• More mild,

Retreated in a silent valley, sing,

With notes angelical, to many a harp

Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall
By doom of battle-'

or those with whom the moral philosopher sympathises yet more—who 'Sat on a hill retired,

In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,

Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute—'

or expatiate over the muster-roll of their chiefs, in which all the splendours of the East, the gigantic mysteries of Egypt, and the chastest forms of Grecian beauty gleam on us-all reflect back the greatness of Him who surveys them with tears such as angels weep.' His very armour and accoutrements glisten on us with a thousand beauties!

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His ponderous shield,

Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon-'

and not only like the moon as seen to the upturned gaze of ordinary men, but as associated with Italian art, and discerned from places whose names are music—

Like the moon whose orb

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesolè,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,

Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe.'

"His spear' is not only likened to a pine hewn in the depth of mountain forests, but, as if the sublimest references to nature were insufficient to accumulate glories for the bearer, is consecrated by allusions to the thousand storms and thousand thunders which the mast of an imperial ship withstands.

'His spear (to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand)
He walk'd with to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marle; not like those steps
On Heaven's azure.'

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