VIII.

LETTER OF MESSRS. JOHN BALLANTYNE & Co. CONCERNING "THE WANDering Jew.'

SIR,

Edinburgh, September 24th, 1810.

The delay which occurred in our reply to you, respecting the poem you have obligingly offered us for publication, has arisen from our literary friends and advisers (at least such as we have confidence in) being in the country at this season, as is usual, and the time they have bestowed on its perusal.

We are extremely sorry at length, after the most mature deliberation, to be under the necessity of declining the honour of being the publishers of the present poem; -not that we doubt its success, but that it is perhaps, better suited to the character, and liberal feelings of the English, than the bigoted spirit, which yet pervades

This is the letter referred to in Shelley's letter to Stockdale, dated the 28th of September, 1810, and printed at p. 332 of the present volume. Mr. Garnett makes the following very pertinent remarks on this letter (Macmillan's Magazine, June, 1860, pp. 103-4):—

"Now, had Shelley told any of his friends that the Lady of the Lake' had been assailed in Scotland on the ground of atheism, and professed to have derived his information from the Ballantynes, the circumstance would ere this have made its appearance in print as a proof of his irresistible tend

ency to 'hallucinations,' and his 'inability to relate anything exactly as it happened.' Here, however, we see that he would not have spoken without authority. It is, of course, quite possible that the Ballantynes may themselves have been mystified or mystificators-otherwise it would appear that it had, in that fortunate age, been vouchsafed to certain Scotch clergymen to attain the ne plus ultra of absurdity—

'Topmost stars of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane'

or insane, whichever may be the

many cultivated minds in this country. Even Walter Scott, is assailed on all hands at present by our Scotch spiritual, and Evangelical magazines, and instructors, for having promulgated atheistical doctrines in the Lady of the Lake.

We beg you will have the goodness to advise us how it should be returned, and we think its being consigned to the care of some person in London, would be more likely to ensure its safety than addressing it to Horsham. We are, sir,

Your most obedient humble servants,

correct reading. It is needless to add that the Wandering Jew' is quite guiltless of atheism, or any ism' but an occasional solecism. Whatever precautions may have been taken to ensure the safety of the MS., they failed to bring it into Stockdale's hands. He never received it, and it seems to have remained peaceably at Edinburgh till its discovery in 1831, when a portion of it appeared in Fraser's Magazine, and has since been reprinted in one of the many unauthorised editions of Shelley's works. According to Captain Medwin, indeed, Shelley left it at his lodgings in Edinburgh in 1811. But the Captain evidently knew nothing of the negotiation with the Ballantynes, which affords a much more plausible explanation

JOHN BALLANTYNE & Co.

of the discovery of the MS. in the Scotch metropolis. He adds, indeed, that the young authors were induced to lay aside all thoughts of publication by the adverse judgment of Campbell, who returned the MS. submitted for his inspection with the remark that there were only two good lines in the whole, naming a pair of exceedingly commonplace ones. Whatever the effect on his coadjutor, it is now clear that Shelley was not to be daunted by the condemnation even of a poet he admired, though, doubtless, he would have himself admitted in after life that the quest after tolerable lines in the Wandering Jew' might scarcely be more hopeful than that undertaken of old after righteous men in the Cities of the Plain."

IX.

LETTERS TO STOCKDALE FROM SIR TIMOTHY SHELLEY

AND THOMAS JEFFERSON HOGG.'

SIR,

1. Letter from Sir Timothy Shelley.

Field Place, 23rd December, 1810.

I take the earliest opportunity of expressing to you my best thanks for the very liberal and handsome manner in which you imparted to me the sentiments you hold towards my son, and the open and friendly communication. I shall ever esteem it, and hold it in remembrance. will take an opportunity of calling on you again, when the call at St. Stephen's Chapel enforces my attendance by a call of the House.

My son begs to make his compliments to you.

I have the honour to be, sir,

Your very obedient humble servant,

1 These letters are from Stockdale's Budget (See note at p. 328 of the present volume). Stockdale printed them in connexion with his Memoirs of Shelley's relations with him as a publisher. The publisher affects to have been alarmed at the heterodox views of the young poet, and to have com

T. SHELLEY.

I

municated his alarm to Shelley's father. Mr. Garnett's notes on this subject (Macmillan's Magazine, June, 1860, pp. 106 et seq.) are indispensable; and I make no apology for extracting them :

"Sir (then Mr.) Timothy Shelley, the poet's uncongenial father, now appears upon the scene. At the date

2. Letter from Thomas Jefferson Hogg.

Univ. Coll., Oxford, Jan. 21st, 1811.

SIR,

I have just heard from a friend to my great surprize that you have made very free with my character to Mr. Shelley. I feel it my duty as a gentleman closely to investigate this extraordinary conduct. I ask what there was in my behaviour to you contrary to the strictest politeness, what there was to justify such an infamous proceeding?

I insist Sir upon knowing the precise nature the very words of your conversation with Mr. S.

I insist upon being informed upon what authority you spoke thus of me. I demand a full, a perfect apology from yourself. desire that you should immediately write in order to contradict whatever you may have told Mr. Shelley or any one else.

I

When I am informed of the exact nature of the offence I can judge of the necessary apology.

The bare mention of the MS. with which I entrusted

of the next letter, he had already several times called at Stockdale's shop in the company of his son, and thus afforded the publisher an opportunity of contributing the result of his own observation to the universal testimony respecting the dispositions of the two, and the relation in which they stood to each other. Percy Shelley capti

vated all hearts; the roughest were subdued by his sweetness, the most reserved won by his affectionate candour. No man ever made more strange or unsympathetic friends, and they who may seem to have dealt most hardly with his memory since his death are chiefly the well-meaning people whose error it has been

you to any one was an unparallelled breach of confidence. -There have been instances of booksellers who have honourably refused to betray the authors whose works they have published altho actions were brought against them. I believe that one gentleman had honor enough to submit to the pillory rather than disgrace himself by giving up the name of one who had confided in him however unworthy he might be of such generous treatment. Altho I might be disposed to pardon this offence against myself I feel it my duty to caution the world against such flagrant violation of principle.

I shall consequently insert in the public newspapers an anonymous advertisement containing a plain statement of the manner in which you have acted. An immediate answer to this letter is desired by Sir

to mistake an accidental intimacy with a remarkable character for the power of appreciating it. Among these, Stockdale cannot be refused a place, for it would be unjust not to recognise, amid all his pomposity and blundering, traces of a sincere affection for the young author whose acquaintance was certainly anything but advantageous to him in a pecuniary point of view. An equal unanimity of sentiment prevails respecting Sir Timothy; he undoubtedly meant well, but had scarcely a single prominent trait of character which would not of itself have unfitted him to be the father of such a son. Stockdale had frequent opportunities of observing the uneasy terms on which the two stood towards each other, and unhesitatingly throws the entire blame upon the father, whom he represents as

Yours, &c., &c.,

T. JEFFERSON HOGG.

narrow-minded and wrong-headed, behaving with extreme niggardliness in money matters, and at the same time continually fretting Shelley by harsh and unnecessary interference with his most indifferent actions. According to the bookseller, he ineffectually tried his best at once to dispose Sir Timothy to a more judicious line of conduct, and to put him on his guard against his son's speculative rashness. The following note [that of the 23rd of December, 1810], is probably in answer to some communication of this character."

Stockdale appears to have represented to Shelley's father that Hogg was at the bottom of the young poet's heterodoxy; and the publisher's wife (I follow Mr. Garnett's narrative) "chancing to have relations in the part of Buckinghamshire where Mr. Hogg