Canto IX, where she glories in the triumph of their love over the

opposition of the world.

I fear nor prize Aught that can now betide unshared by thee.

Cythna thinks that she _will soon die_ and believes like Luxima that the story of their love will be a source of inspiration to mankind

Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love, Our happiness, and all that we have been Immortally must live and burn and move When we shall be no more.

There are, of course, some differences between the two stories, especially in the conclusions (Cythna and Laon are burned, while Luxima alone dies and the Missionary is never heard of again); but many of the incidents of both are so alike as to justify us in believing that those in _The Revolt_ were derived from _The Missionary_. This is confirmed by the fact that Shelley makes more attacks in this poem on priests and the celibacy of the clergy than in any other. In the preface to the poem, Shelley says that "although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years." It is suggestive that the idea of composing the poem came to him in 1811, the year in which he first read the _Missionary_. In this same year he wrote a little poem entitled an _Essay on Love_, no copy of which is now extant.[60] Should one ever come to light, it may show remarkable similarity to the love poem _The Revolt of Islam_, where "love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world."[61]

It has been said that Shelley was a libertine, but there seems to be no proof for this assertion. Hogg, who was his most intimate friend at Oxford, says the purity and sanctity of Shelley's life were most conspicuous. "He was offended, and indeed more indignant than would appear to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature at a coarse and awkward jest, especially if it were immodest and uncleanly; in the latter case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasiness preeminent." With the exception of his elopement with Mary Godwin there is nothing in his life to indicate that he was licentious. "Die ruhe, klarheit, sicherheit und staerke seines geschlechtlichen empfuendens, das frei ist von aller luesternheit oder unnatuerlichkeit ist bei seiner feinfuehligen, nervosen koerperanlage besonders bemerkenswert."[62]

True, Shelley loved many women, but this does not prove that he was immoral. His love is platonic and not sensual. Platonic love is described by Howell as "a love abstracted from all corporeal gross impressions and sensual appetites, but consists in contemplations and ideas of the mind."[63] It is a passion having its source in the enjoyment of beauty and goodness.

"What is love or friendship?" Shelley asks. "Is it capable of no extension, no communication?" Lord Kaimes defines love to be a particularization of the general passion, but this is the love of sensation, of sentiment--the absurdest of absurd vanities; it is the love of pleasure, not the love of happiness. The one is a love which is self-centered, self-devoted, self-interested ... selfishness, monopoly in its very soul; but love, the love which we worship--virtue, heaven, disinterestedness--in a word."[64] Love seeks the good of all, not because its object is a minister to its pleasures, but because it is really worthy.

Platonism, laying emphasis upon the function of the soul as opposed to the senses, treats "love as a purely spiritual passion devoid of all sensuous pleasure."[65] Beauty is a spiritual thing, the splendor of God's light shining in all things. It is that quality of an object which draws us to it and makes us love it. Man should love everything and everybody because they are all beautiful. Shelley says:

True love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away Love is like understanding, that grows bright Gazing on many truths;[66]

In another place he says "the meanest of our fellow beings contains qualities, which, developed, we must admire and adore." Beauty is something more than outward appearance. The source of its power lies in the soul. "The platonic theory of beauty teaches that the beauty of the body is a result of the formative energy of the soul." According to the Platonist Ficino the soul has descended from heaven and has framed a body in which to dwell. True lovers are those whose souls have departed from heaven under the same astral influences and who, accordingly, are informed with the same idea in imitation of which they frame their earthly bodies."[67] "We are born," writes Shelley, "into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness.... The discovery of its antitype; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own ... with a frame whose nerves like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own;... this is the invisible and unattainable point to which love tends."[68] According to Plato wisdom is the most lovely of all ideas and the human being who has the greatest amount of wisdom is the most lovable. Platonic love then concerns only the soul, and the union of lover and beloved is simply a union of their souls. "I am led to love a being," Shelley says, "not because it stands in the physical relation of blood to me but because I discern an intellectual relationship."[69] Whenever Shelley sees one possessing beauty and virtue he cannot help loving that person.

I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend And all the rest though fair and wise commend To cold oblivion;[70]

Again

Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.

This is the doctrine of Diotima in Plato's _Symposium_, which Shelley has translated as follows: "He who aspires to love rightly, ought from his earliest youth to seek an intercourse with beautiful forms.... He ought then to consider that beauty in whatever form it resides is the brother of that beauty which subsists in another form; and if he ought to pursue that which is beautiful in form it would be absurd to imagine that beauty is not one and the same thing in all forms, and would therefore remit much of his ardent preferences towards one, through his perception of the multitude of claims upon his love."

In the preface to _Alastor_ Shelley says that the poem represents a youth (himself) of uncorrupted feelings led forth to the contemplation of the universe. "But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length awakened, and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to himself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves." This image unites all of wonderful or wise or beautiful which the poet could depict. Shelley sought this ideal all through life, and when he thought he found it went into raptures. Disillusionment, however, soon followed, and _Alastor_ is the expression of his despair at not finding an embodiment of his ideal.

If we keep in mind that Shelley was a platonist, we shall be able to form a more intelligent estimate of his love lyrics and his relations with women. In his first wife, Harriet, he saw courage, a desire for freedom, and a willingness to learn his doctrines.

Thou art sincere and good, of resolute mind Free from heart-withering customs' cold control, Of passion lofty, pure and subdued.

As soon as she ceased to take interest in his studies, his love for her began to wane. "Every one must know," he tells Peacock, "that the partner of my life should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy." A month or two after his first marriage he tells Elizabeth Hitchener that he loves her. Seeing that she possessed high intelligence, great love of mankind, and a tendency to oppose existing institutions, he straightway calls her the "sister of his soul."

Later on he meets a beautiful, sentimental Italian girl, Emilia Viviani, imagines she is the perfect ideal which he had formed in his youth, and writes the _Epipsychidion_. "Emilia," says Professor Dowden, "beautiful, spiritual, sorrowing, became for him a type and symbol of all that is most radiant and divine in nature, all that is most remote and unattainable, yet ever to be pursued--the ideal of beauty, truth, and love."[71] _Epipsychidion_ is the poetic embodiment of the feelings awakened in Shelley by this supposed discovery of the incarnation of the ideal. Emilia turned out to be an ordinary human creature, and then Shelley wished to blot out the memory of her entirely. In a letter to Mr. Gisborne, June, 1822, Shelley says: "I think one is always in love with something or other; the error--and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it--consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps eternal." "Such illusions," says Dowden, "may be of service in keeping alive within us the aspiration for the highest things, but assuredly they have a tendency to draw away from real persons some of those founts of feeling which are needed to keep fresh and bright the common ways and days of our life."[72]

Some of Shelley's views on women and the family were derived from Mary Wollstonecraft's _Vindication of the Rights of Women_. "According to the prevailing opinion," says Mrs. Wollstonecraft, "women were made for men." All their cares and anxieties are directed towards getting husbands. They deck themselves out with artificial graces that enable them to exercise a short lived tyranny. "Love in their bosoms, taking place of every nobler passion, their sole ambition is to look fair, to raise emotion instead of inspiring respect; and this ignoble desire, like the servility in absolute monarchies, destroys all strength of character."[73] Women then should not depend on their charms alone, because these have little effect on their husband's heart "when they are seen every day when the summer is past and gone." Her first care should be to improve her mind, to exercise her God-given faculties, assert her individuality. This can never be, though, as long as she is the plaything of man. If one may contest the divine right of kings one may also contest the divine right of husbands. Women should bow only to reason and cease being the modest slaves of opinion. It is a violation of the sacred rights of humanity to exact blind obedience and meek submission of women. "The being who patiently endures injustice will soon become unjust."

In _The Revolt of Islam_, Cythna says:

Can man be free if woman be a slave? Chain one who lives and breathes this boundless air, To the corruption of a closed grave! Can they whose mates are beasts condemned to bear Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare To trample their oppressors?

According to Pope "every woman is at heart a rake." "Rendered gay and giddy by the whole tenor of their lives, the very aspect of wisdom or the severe graces of virtue must have a lugubrious appearance to them." "Till women are led to exercise their understandings they should not be satirized for their attachment to rakes."[74]

Shelley's opinion of women is even less complimentary:

Woman! she is his slave, she has become A thing I weep to speak--the child of scorn, The outcast of a desolated home. Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn, As calm decks the false ocean....[75]

"The parent," Mrs. Wollstonecraft writes, "who pays proper attention to helpless infancy has a right to require the same attention when the feebleness of age comes upon him. But to subjugate a rational being to the mere will of another, after he is of age to answer to society for his own conduct, is a most cruel and undue stretch of power, and perhaps as injurious to morality as those religious systems which do not allow right and wrong to have any existence, but in the Divine will." Children should be taught early to submit to reason, "for to submit to reason, is to submit to the nature of things, and to that God who formed them so, to promote our real interest."[76]

But children near their parents tremble now Because they must obey ... ... and life is poisoned in its wells.[77]

"Obedience (were society as I could wish it) is a word which ought to be without meaning."[78]

Another book that interested Shelley very much was the "_Memoires relatives a la Revolution Francaise_" of Louvet. Louvet was a licentious novelist and ardent Republican. He strongly opposed the tyranny of Marat and of Robespierre and the work of the commune of Paris. He was very courageous and often endangered his life by his opposition to the arbitrary measures of the Council. In 1793 he was obliged to flee for his life and the _Memoirs_ contains interesting details of this flight. He and his wife were very devoted to each other, and this together with the man's courage made a strong impression on Shelley. "Je te laissai, mon cher Barbaroux; maix tu me le pardonnes; tu sais quelle passion j'avais pour elle, et comme elle en etait digne!" He goes to Paris in spite of the fact that he runs the risk of being seized and guillotined. "Quiconque n'epouvva point un pariel supplice ne saurait en avoir une juste idee. O Ladoiska! sans le souvenir de ton amour, qui donc aurait pu m' empecher de terminer mes peines?"[79]

Louvet and Ladoiska are reunited again, but only to be arrested soon afterwards. This causes her to exclaim, "Non, je jure que sans toi, la vie m'est tourment, un insupportable tourment, seule, je perirais bientot, je perirais desesperee. Ah! permets, permets que nous mourions ensemble."[80]

This work may have suggested to Shelley the idea of making Laon and Cythna die together. Cythna tells Laon

Darkness and death, if death be true, must be Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed with thee.[81]