some have made a trade of its imagined mysteries, we lose the inestimable advantages of its simplicity. Let us beware, if we love liberty and truth,' if we loathe tyranny and imposture, if, imperfect ourselves, we still aspire to the freedom of internal purity, and cherish the elevated hope that mankind may not be everlastingly condemned to the bondage of their own passions and the passions of their fellow beings, let us beware. An established religion turns to deathlike apathy the sublimest ebullitions of most exalted genius, and the spirit-stirring truths of a mind inflamed with the desire of benefiting mankind. It is the characteristic of a cold and tane spirit to imagine that such doctrines as Jesus Christ promulgated are destined to follow the fortunes and share the extinction of a popular religion. In the MS., our fellow men is here struck out in favour of liberty and truth. 2 Cancelled reading, men. 3 Cancelled reading, It is a cold and palsying tame thought. 4 In the MS. the words share the fate originally stood here. [The Elysian Fields is printed from a MS. in Shelley's writing, so headed, in my possession: I presume it belongs to about the same period as the Marlow Pamphlets. In a letter dated the 20th of January, 1821 (Shelley Memorials, page 136), Shelley thus refers to a paper by Archdeacon Hare in Ollier's Literary Miscellany: "I was immeasurably amused by the quotation from Schlegel, about the way in which the popular faith is destroyed—first the Devil, then the Holy Ghost, then God the Father. I had written a Lucianic essay to prove the same thing." Mr. Rossetti (Poetical Works, 1878, Vol. I, page 150) thinks the reference is to the Essay on Devils, withdrawn after being prepared for publication with the Essays, Letters &c. (1840), and never yet published It does not seem to me certain that Shelley alludes to that essay; but I feel pretty confident that The Elysian Fields is a portion of a Lucianic epistle from some Englishman of political eminence, dead before 1820, to, perhaps, the Princess Charlotte. The exposition foreshadowed in the final paragraph might well have included a view of the decay of popular belief. Those who are intimately familiar with the political history and literature of England will probably be able to identify the person represented. It is not unlikely to be Charles Fox, judging from the juxtaposition of his name, in the Address to the Irish People, with sentiments much the same as those set forth in the third paragraph of The Elysian Fields. Compare that paragraph with the relative passage in the Address, Vol. I, page 332.—H. B. F.] THE ELYSIAN FIELDS. I AM not forgetful in this dreary scene of the country which whilst I lived in the upper air, it was my whole aim to illustrate and render happy. Indeed, although immortal, we are not exempted from the enjoy→ ments and the sufferings of mortality. We sympathize in all the proceedings of mankind, and we experience joy or grief in all intelligence from them, according to our various opinions and views. Nor do we resign those opinions, even those which the grave' has utterly refuted. Frederic of Prussia has lately arrived amongst us, and persists in maintaining that "death is an eternal sleep," to the great discomfiture of Philip the Second of Spain; who on the furies refusing to apply the torture, expects the roof of Tartarus to fall upon his head, and laments that at least in his particular instance the doctrine should be false. Religion is more frequently the subject of discussion among the departed dead, than any other topic, for we know as little which mode of faith is true as you do. Every one maintains the doctrine he maintained on 'Cancelled reading, even when the grave. Earth, and accommodates the appearances which surround us to his peculiar tenets. I am one of those who esteeming political science capable of certain conclusions, have ever preferred it to these airy speculations, which when they assume an empire over the passions of mankind render them so mischievous and unextinguishable, that they subsist even among the dead. The art of employing the power entrusted to you for the benefit of those who entrust it, is something more definite, and subject as all its details must ever be to innumerable limitations and exceptions arising out of the change in the habits, opinions of mankind, is the noblest, and the greatest, and the most universal of all. It is not as a queen, but as a human being that this science must be learned; the same discipline which contributes to domestic happiness and individual distinction secures true welfare and genuine glory to a nation. You will start, I do not doubt, to hear the language of philosophy. You will have been informed that those who approach sovereigns with warnings that they have duties to perform, that they are elevated above the rest of mankind simply to prevent their tearing one another to pieces, and for the purpose of putting into effect all practical equality and justice, are insidious traitors who devise their ruin. But if the character which I bore on earth should not reassure you,' it would be well to recollect the circumstances under which you will ascend the throne of England, and what is the spirit of the times. After reassure you there is a cancelled reading in the MS.-you recollect yourself, & if the preju dices of the age have not deprived you of all that learning... |