SIR,

LETTER XIII.

To MR. J. J. STOCKDALE.

Cwmelan, Rhayader, Radnorshire, August 1st, 1811.

Your letter has at length reached me: the remoteness of my present situation must apologize for my apparent neglect. I am sorry to say, in answer to your requisition, that the state of my finances render immediate payment perfectly impossible. It is my intention at the earliest period in my power to do so, to discharge your account. I am aware of the imprudence of publishing a book so ill-digested as St. Irvyne; but are there no expectations on the profits of its sale? My studies have since my writing it been of a more serious nature. I am at present engaged in completing a series of moral and metaphysical essays-perhaps their copy-right would be accepted in lieu of part of my debt?

Sir, I have the honour to be,
Your very humble servant,

1 It will be remembered that the edition was still unsold in 1822, so

PERCY B. SHELLEY.

that the "profits" in 1811 were probably very difficult to find.

SIR,

LETTER XIV.

To HAMILTON ROWAN.

7, Lower Sackville Street, [Dublin,] Feb. 25th, 1812.

Although I have not the pleasure of being personally known to you, I consider the motives which actuated me in writing the inclosed' sufficiently introductory to authorize me in sending you some copies, and waiving ceremonials in a case where public benefit is concerned. Sir, although an Englishman, I feel for Ireland; and I have left the country in which the chance of birth placed me for the sole purpose of adding my little stock of usefulness to the fund which I hope that Ireland possesses to aid me in the unequal yet sacred combat in which she is engaged. In the course of a few days more I shall print another small pamphlet, which shall be sent to you. I have intentionally vulgarized the language of the inclosed. I have printed 1500 copies, and am now distributing them throughout Dublin.

Sir, with respect,

I am your obedient humble servant,

P. B. SHELLEY.

The Address to the Irish People.

LETTER XV.

To T. C. MEDWIN

(HORSHAM).

Dublin, No. 17, Grafton Street, March 20th, 1812.

MY DEAR SIR,

The tumult of business and travelling has prevented my addressing you before.

I am now engaged with a literary friend in the publication of a voluminous History of Ireland,' of which two hundred and fifty pages are already printed, and for the completion of which, I wish to raise two hundred and fifty pounds. I could obtain undeniable security for its payment at the expiration of eighteen months. Can you tell me how I ought to proceed? The work will produce great profits. As you will see by the Lewes paper, I am in the midst of overwhelming engagements. My kindest regards to all your family. Be assured I shall not forget you or them.

1 The reference is to A Compendium of the History of Ireland, from the Earliest Period to the Reign of George I., by John Lawless. It has been assumed that some of this book was written by Shelley. It does not seem certain from the letter that he wrote anything intended for it: he may have done so; but equally his task may have been to raise the money and for

My dear Sir,

Yours very truly,

P. B. SHELLEY.

ward the publication. Even if he wrote anything towards it, there is no evidence that Lawless used it; and I find no unmistakeable trace of Shelley's hand in the book; though there are passages that he might equally well have written, or have had in mind when he wrote some of his prose effusions of 1812-13.

LETTER XVI.

TO SIR JAMES LAWRENCE,'

KNIGHT OF MALTA.

SIR,

Lymouth, Barnstaple, Devon, August 17, 1812.

I feel peculiar satisfaction in seizing the opportunity which your politeness places in my power, of expressing to you personally (as I may say) a high acknowledgment of my sense of your talents and principles, which, before I conceived it possible that I should ever know you, I sincerely entertained. Your "Empire of the Nairs," which I read this spring, succeeded in making me a perfect convert to its doctrines. I then retained no doubts of the evils of marriage, Mrs. Wollstonecraft reasons too well for that; but I had been dull enough not to perceive the greatest argument against it, until developed in the "Nairs," viz. prostitution both legal and illegal.

1 Sir James Lawrence, or the Chevalier de Laurence, as he sometimes called himself, printed this letter in The Etonian out of Bounds (John Brooks, 1834), Vol. I, Appendix, p. xxiii, with the following remarks:

"My acquaintance with Shelley having originated in the 'Allegory of Love,' inserted in this volume, I take this opportunity of noticing the following passage in Captain Medwin's interesting Memoir of our lost friend (p. 43)-'That he continued to think with Plato on the subject of Wedlock, is clear

from a letter addressed to Sir James Lawrence, who had sent to him his "History of the Nairs." Shelley says, "I abhor seduction as much as I adore love, &c.

"Here I must remark that, though I was several years younger than Shelley, when I first conceived my present opinions, and still a minor studying at Brunswick, when in 1793, the celebrated Wieland, then the patriarch of German literature, published in his Mercury, my Essay on the Nair System of Gallantry and Inheritance; yet I, however con

Love

I am a young man, not yet of age, and have now been married a year to a woman younger than myself. seems inclined to stay in the prison, and my only reason for putting him in chains, whilst convinced of the unholiness of the act, was, a knowledge that, in the present state of society, if love is not thus villainously treated, she, who is most loved, will be treated worse by a misjudging world. In short, seduction, which term could have no meaning in a rational society, has now a most tremendous one; the fictitious merit attached to chastity has made that a forerunner of the most terrible of ruins, which, in Malabar, would be a pledge of honour and homage. If there is any enormous and desolating crime, of which I should shudder to be accused, it is seduction.' I need not say how much I admire "Love;" and

vinced of its morality, would have
scrupled to send my Empire of
the Nairs' to any minor, however
promising his talents.
In fact, I

knew not of Shelley's existence,
before he wrote for 'Love, an
Allegory; when this poem being
out of print, Mr. Hookbam applied
to me, and I lent him, for Shelley,
my only remaining copy.
Not
long afterward, I received the
following letter, of which Captain
Medwin seems to have discovered
the intended original amongst
Shelley's papers.

"During the following winter, I knew not which most to admire in him, his talents, his enthusiasm, his angelic goodness, his manly character, or his youthful appearance. He showed me what he had finished of his 'Queen Mab,' and the sketch of the remainder. I frequently objected to him that he went too far, and we discussed several points. We subsequently exchanged letters, but I never saw him after Buonaparte's overthrow, in 1814, when I returned to the

Continent, from which the atrocities of the Corsican had driven me.”

In the foregoing passage, Lawrence refers, of course, to Medwin's Memoir in The Shelley Papers, first published in The Athenæum in 1832, and then in a separate form in 1833, the year before the issue of The Etonian out of Bounds; and the whole passage which he considers Medwin to have taken from the iutended original is

"I abhor seduction as much as I adore love; and if I have conformed to the usages of the world on the score of matrimony, it is that disgrace always attaches to the weaker sex."

Whether this passage really stood in the draft that would seem to have come into Medwin's hands appears to me questionable enough: it may have so stood; but it is quite as likely that finding so cold a word as admire applied to Love, and not knowing that Love was the title of a book, Medwin saw fit to trim the phrase a little.