.... indisciplinable minds. . . . . Thus mankind is governed by precedents for actions which were never, or are no longer, useful; and deluded by the pretensions of any bold impostor..... Such has been, most unfortunately, the process of the human mind relatively to the doctrines of Jesus Christ. Their original promulgation was authorized by an appeal to the antiquity of the institutions of Judæa; and in vindication of superstitions professing to be founded on them,' it is asserted that nothing analogous to their tenor was ever before produced. The doctrines of Jesus Christ have scarcely the smallest resemblance to the Jewish law:3 nor have wisdom and benevolence and pity failed in whatsoever age of the world to generate such persuasions as those which are the basis of the moral system he announced. The most eminent philosophers of Greece had long been familiarized to the boldest and most sublime speculations on God, on the visible world, and on the moral and intellectual Nature of Man. The universality and unity of God, the omnipotence of the mind of man, the equality of human beings and the duty or internal purity, is either asserted by Pythagoras, Plato,' Diogenes, Zeno, and their followers, or may be directly inferred from their assertions. Nothing would be gained by the establishment of the originality of Jesus Christ's doctrines but the casting a suspicion upon its practicability. Let us beware therefore what we admit lest, as 1 Cancelled reading, a system professing to be founded on these doctrines. 2 Cancelled reading, Let us proceed to vindicate. 3 There is another erasure here, The Philosophers of Greece, and their imitators, the Romans, bear... 4 Cancelled reading, The doctrines were speculations of the most eminent, &c. 5 In the MS., The Platonists and Stoics is here struck out. 6 Cancelled passage, It promises, and again, would persuade man not to be tyrant of man. 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 tame spirit to imagine that such doctrines as Jesus Christ promulgated are destined to follow the fortunes and share the extinction of a popular religion. 1 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 enjoyments 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 Every one maintains the doctrine he maintained on do. 'Cancelled reading, even when the grave. |