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 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 affinitiesno 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- The other, rosy as the morn Hath then the gloomy power Must then that peerless form, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Stealing o'er sensation, Which the breath of roseate morning Will Ianthe wake again, And give that faithful bosom joy, 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 existencecalls 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 any thing 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, All, indeed, is fantastical-nothing clear except that atheism, and 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 Ianthe 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. Marks of identity were there, Yet, Oh how different! One aspires to heaven, And ever changing, ever rising, still Wantons in endless being; The other for a time the unwilling sport 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 dogmas-when 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 development 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! Anon they move In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood I cannot proceed with this defence without | from Almighty justice with the graces of forfeeling that I move tremulously among sacred titude. Let it not be urged that the language things which should be approached only in which his Satan utters is merely to be regarded serene contemplation; that I am compelled to with reference to dramatic proprieties-it is solicit your attention to considerations more attributed to the being in whom the interest of fit to be weighed in the stillness of thought his poem centres; and on whom admiration than amidst the excitements of a public trial; and sympathy attend as on a sufferer in the and that I am able only to suggest reasonings eternal struggle of right against power. Omniwhich, if woven into a chain, no strength of potence becomes tyranny in the poet's vision, mine could utter, nor your kindest patience and resistance to its requisitions appears the follow. But the fault is not mine. I cannot more generous even because hopelessly vain. otherwise even hint the truth-the living truth Before I advert to that language, and ask you -of this case to your minds as it fills and to compare it with the expressions selected for struggles in my own, or protect my client and prosecution, let me call to your recollection friend from a prosecution without parallel in the grandeurs-nay, the luxuries of thought our legal history. If the prosecutor, in return with which the "Lost Archangel" is surfor his own conviction of publishing some rounded;-the magic by which even out of cheap and popular work of alleged blasphemy the materials of torture dusky magnificence is -prepared, calculated, and intended by the created in his place of exile, beyond "the author to shake the religious principles of the wealth of Ormus and of Ind;" and the faded uneducated and the young,-has attempted to glory and unconquerable spirit attributed to assail the efforts of genius, and to bring into those rebel legions who still sustain him in question the relations, the uses, the tendencies opposition to the Most High. Observe the of the divinest faculties, I must not shrink hosts, still angelic, as they march at his bidfrom entreating you to consider those bearings ding!— 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. 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 spacious as that which he has given you to decide. Shelley fancies himself irreligious, and everywhere 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 His Whether we listen to those who More mild, or those with whom the moral philosopher Sat on a hill retired or expatiate over the muster-roll of their chiefs, with a thousand beauties! His ponderous shield, And not only like the moon as seen to the up- - Like the moon whose orb "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 in- His spear (to equal which the tallest pine Now, having seen how the great Christian Poet has lavished all the glories of his art on the attendant hosts and personal investiture of the brave opponent of Almighty Power, let us attend to the language in which he addresses his comrade in enterprise and suffering. Into what pit thon seest, Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors, hail! but I dare only allude to the proposition made From what height fallen-so much the stronger proved introduced into this indictment-suppose that He with his thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those, Though changed in outward lustre, that fix'd mind, That durst dislike His reign, and, me preferring, Such is the force of the poet's enthusiastic sympathy with the speaker, that the reader almost thinks Omnipotence doubtful; or, if that is impossible, admires the more the courage that can resist it! The chief proceeds instead of the unintelligible lines beginning "They have three words, God, Hell, and Heaven,' we had these-Pe then His love accursed," with the innuendo, "Thereby meaning the love of Almighty God," how would you deal with the charge? How! but by looking at the object of the great poem of which those words are part; by observing how the poet, incapable of resting in a mere abstraction, had been led insensibly to clothe it from the armory of virtue and grandeur; by showing that although the names of the Almighty and Satan were retained, in truth, other ideas had usurped those names, as the theme itself had eluded even Milton's grasp! I will not ask you whether you agree with me in the defence which might be made for Milton; but I will ask, do you not feel with me that these are matters for another tribunal? Do you not feel with me that except that the boldness of Milton's thoughts comes softened to the ears by the exquisite beauty of Milton's language, I may find parallels in the passages I have quoted from the Paradise Lost, for those selected for prosecution from Queen Mab? Do you not feel with me that, as without a knowledge of the Paradise Lost, you could not absolve the publisher of Milton from the prosecution of "some mute This mighty representation of generous re- inglorious" Hetherington; so neither can you, sistance, of mind superior to fortune, of re- dare you, convict Mr. Moxon of a libel on God solution nobler than the conquest, concludes and religion, in publishing the works of Shelby proclaiming "eternal war" against Him-ley, without having read and studied them all? What though the field be lost? Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy, Surely, but for the exquisite grace of the language compared with the baldness of Shelley's, I might parallel from this speech all that the indictment charges about "an Almighty Fiend" and "Tyrannous Omnipotence." Listen again to the more composed determination and sedate self-reliance of the archangelic sufferer! "Is this the region? this the soil, the clime ?" Said then the lost archangel, "this the seat If rashly you assail the mighty masters of thought and fantasy, you will, indeed, assail them in vain, for the purpose of suppression, though not for the purpose of torture; all you can do is to make them suffer, as being human, they are liable to corporal suffering; but, like the wounded spirits of Milton, "they will soon close," "confounded, though immortal!" If, however, these are considerations affecting the exercise of human genius on themes beyond its grasp, which we cannot discuss in this place, however essential to the decision of the charge, there is one plain position which I That we must change for heaven? this mournful gloom will venture to assert: that the poetry which For that celestial light? Be it so, since he, Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid pretends to a denial of God or of an immortal life, MUST contain its own refutation in itself, and sustain what it would deny! A poet, though never one of the highest order, may Great God! I'd rather be "link vice to a radiant angel;" he may diffuse | years give birth to images of grace which, unluxurious indifference to virtue and to truth; touched by time, people the retreats which are but he cannot inculcate atheism. Let him sought by youthful toil, and make learning strive to do it, and like Balaam, who came to lovely. Why shall not these be brought, with curse, like him he must end in blessing! His the poetry of Shelley, within the range of cri art convicts him; for it is "Eternity revealing minal jurisdiction? Because, with all their itself in Time!" His fancies may be wayward, beauty, they do not belong to the passions of the his theories absurd, but they will prove, no less present time,-because they hold their domiin their failure than in their success, the divi- nion apart from the realities which form the nity of their origin, and the inadequacy of this business of life,—because they are presented world to give scope to his impulses. They are to the mind as creations of another sphere, to the beatings of the soul against the bars of its be admired, not believed. And yet, without clay tenement, which though they may ruffle prosecution-without offence-one of the greatand sadden it, prove that it is winged for a di-est and purest of our English poets, wearied viner sphere! Young has said, " An undevout with the selfishness which he saw pervading a astronomer is mad;" how much more truly Christian nation, has dared an ejaculating might he have said, an atheist poet is a con- wish for the return of those old palpable shapes tradiction in terms! Let the poet take what of divinity, when he exclaimed, range of associations he will-let him adopt what notions he may-he cannot dissolve his alliance with the Eternal. Let him strive to shut out the vistas of the future by encircling the present with images of exquisite beauty; his own forms of ideal grace will disappoint | him with eternal looks, and vindicate the immortality they were fashioned to veil! Let him rear temples, and consecrate them to fabled divinities, they will indicate in their enduring beauty" temples not made with hands, eternal in the heavens !" If he celebrates the delights of social intercourse, the festal reference to their fragility includes the sense of that which must endure; for the very sadness which tempers them speaks the longing after that "which prompts the eternal sigh." If he desires to bid the hearts of thousands beat as one man at the touch of tragic passion, he must present" the future in the instant,"-show in the death-grapple of contending emotions a strength which death cannot destroy-vindicate the immortality of affection at the moment when the warm passages of life are closed against it; and anticipate in the virtue which dares to die, the power by which "mortality shall be swallowed up of life!" The world is too narrow for us. Time is too short for man,-and the poet only feels the sphere more inadequate, and pants for the "all-hail hereafter," with more urgent sense of weakness than his fellows: Too-too contracted are these walls of flesh, . Of time and change disdaining, takes the range And the fantasies of Queen Mab, if not so compact of imagination, are as harmless now as those forms of Grecian deities which Wordsworth thus invokes! Pure-passionless-they were while their author lived; they have grown classic by that touch of death which stopped the generous heart and teeming fancy of their fated author. They have no more influence on living opinion, than that world of beauty to which Shelley adverts, when he exclaims in "Hellas," But Greece and her foundations are Having considered this charge chiefly as affecting poetry, I must not forget that the last passage selected by the Prosecutor is in prose, culled from the essay which was appended to the poem of "Queen Mab," disclaimed by the editor-disclaimed by Shelley long before he reached the prime of manhood-but rightly preserved, shocking as it is in itself, as essen tial to the just contemplation of his moral and intellectual nature. They form the dark ground of a picture of surpassing interest to the philosopher. There shall you see a poet whose fancies are most ethereal, struggling with a theory gross, material, shallow, imaging the great struggle by which the Spirit of the If this prosecution can succeed, on what Eternal seeks to subdue the material world to principle can the publishers of the great works its uses. His genius was pent up within the of ancient times, replete with the images of hard and bitter rind of his philosophy, as idolatrous faith, and with moralities only to be Ariel was in the rift of the cloven pine; and endured as historical, escape a similar doom? what wonder if a Spirit thus enthralled should These are the works which engage and reward send forth strange and discordant cries! the first labours of our English youth,-which, cause the words which those strange voices in spite of the objections raised to them, prac- syllabled are recorded here, will you say the tically teach lessons of beauty and wisdom-record is a crime? I recollect in the speech the sense of antiquity-the admiration of heroic daring and suffering; and refine and elevate their lives. It was destined in the education of the human race, that imperfect and faint suggestions of truth, combined with exquisite perceptions of beauty, shouid in a few teeming Be of that great ornament of our profession, Mr. Erskine, an illustration of the injustice of selecting part of a conversation or of a book, and because singly considered it is shocking, charging a criminal intent on the utterer or the publisher; which, if, at first, it may not indicted volume conveys! What can the telescope disclose of worlds and suns and systems in the heavens above us, or the microscope detect in the descending scale of various life, endowed with a speech and a language like that with which Shelley, being dead, here speaks? Not even do the most serene productions of poets, whose faculties in this world have attained comparative harmony-strongly as they plead for the immortality of the mind which produced them-afford so unanswerable a proof of a life to come, as the mighty embryo which this book exhibits;-as the course, the frailty, the imperfection, with the dark curtain dropped on all! It is, indeed, when best surveyed, but the infancy of an eternal being; an infancy wayward but gigantic; an infancy which we shall never fully understand, till we behold its development "when time shall be no more"-when doubt shall be dissolved in vision-" when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and when this mortal shall have put on immortality!" seem applicable to this case, will be found essentially to govern it. He refers to the passage in the Bible, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God," and shows how the publisher of the Book of God itself might be charged with atheism, by the insertion only of the latter division of the sentence. It is not surely by the division of a sentence only that the context may be judged; but by the general intent of him who publishes what is in itself offensive, for the purpose of curious recordof controversy-of evidence of example. The publisher of Shelley has not indeed said "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" but he has in effect said, The poet has tried to say with his lips "There is no God," but his genius and his heart belie his words! What indeed does the publisher of Shelley's works virtually say, where he thus presents to his readers this record of the poet's life and death? He says-Behold! Here is a spectacle which angels may admire and weep over! Here is a poet of fancy the most ethereal-feelings the most devout-charity the most Christian-enthralled by opinions the most cold, hollow, and debasing! Here is a youth endowed with that sensibility to the beautiful and the grand which peoples his minutes with the perceptions of years-who, with a spirit of self-sacrifice which the eldest Christianity might exult in if found in one of its martyrs, is ready to lay down that intellectual being-to be lost in loss itself -if by annihilation he could multiply the enBut this attempt to retaliate on joyments and hasten the progress of his spe- one who is a stranger to the evil suffered-this cies-and yet, with strange wilfulness, reject- infliction of misery for doing that which the ing that religion in form to which in essence prosecutor has maintained within these works he is imperishably allied! Observe these the right of all men to do-has no claim to the radiant fancies-pure and cold as frostwork- savage plea of wild justice; but is poor, cruel, how would they be kindled by the warmth of paltry injustice; as bare of excuse as ever Christian love! Track those "thoughts that tyrant, above or below the opinion of the wise wander through eternity," and think how they and good, ever ventured to threaten. Admit would repose in their proper home! And its power in this case-grant its right to select trace the inspired, yet erring youth, poem after for the punishment of blasphemy the exhibipoem-year after year, month after month-tion of an anomaly as harmless as the stuffed how shall you see the icy fetters which encircle his genius gradually dissolve; the wreaths of mist ascend from his path; and the distance spread out before him peopled with human affections, and skirted by angel wings! See how this seeming atheist begins to adorehow the divine image of suffering and love presented at Calvary, never unfelt, begins to be seen and in its contemplation the softened, not yet convinced poet exclaims, in his Prometheus, of the followers of Christ Let me, before I sit down, entreat you to ask yourselves where the course of prosecution will stop if you crown with success Mr. Hetherington's revenge. Revenge, did I say? I recall the word. Revenge means the returning of injury for injury-an emotion most unwise and unchristian, but still human;-the satisfaction of a feeling of ill-regulated justice cherished by a heart which judges bitterly in its own cause. aspic in a museum, or as its image on the passionless bosom of a pictured Cleopatraand what ancient, what modern history, shall be lent unchallenged to our friends? If the thousand booksellers who sell the "Paradise Lost"-from the greatest publisher in London or Edinburgh down to the proprietor of the little book-stall, where the poor wayfarer snatches a hasty glance at the grandeur and beauty of the poet, and goes on his way refreshed-may hope that genius will render to the name of Milton what they deny to that of The wise, the pure, the lofty, and the just, Whom thy slaves hate-for being like to thee! Shelley; what can they who sell "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" And thus he proceeds with light shining hope from the prosecutor of "Queen Mab?" more and more towards the perfect day, which In that work are two celebrated chapters, ne was not permitted to realize in this world. sparkling with all the meretricious felicities As you trace this progress, alas! Death veils of epigrammatic style, which, full of polished it-veils it, not stops it and this perturbed, sarcasm against infant Christianity, are elaboimperfect, but glorious being is hidden from rately directed to wither the fame of its Martyrs us-Till the sea shall give up its dead!" and Confessors with bitterest scorn-two What say you now to the book which exhibits this spectacle, and stops with this catastrophe ? Is it a libel on religion and God? Talk of proofs of Divine existence in the wonders of the material universe, there is nothing in anynor in all-compared to the proof which this chapters which, if published at a penny each, would do more mischief than thousands of metaphysical poems; but which, retained in their apppropriate place, to be sought only by the readers of history, may serve the cause of truth by proving the poverty of the spite by |