CHAPTER VI.

ZASTROZZI; A ROMANCE. BY P. B. S.

Literary Ambition--Biographical Value of _Zastrozzi_--The Etonian Shelley's Disesteem of Marriage--Review of the Romance--Julia and Matilda--Conceits of the Romance reproduced in _Laon and Cythna_--Egotisms of the Prose Tale and the Poem--The Original of Count Verezzi and Laon.

The literary diversions, that occupied a considerable part of his leisure at Eton, are note-worthy indications of Shelley's intellectual tastes and aims at a time, when delusive biography represents him as possessed by a passion for scientific studies. Having in his earlier terms at the school found congenial pastime in the composition of childish dramas, he amused himself, after coming under Dr. Lind's hurtful influence, with translating some of the earlier chapters of Pliny's _Natural History_. Medwin assures us it was the boy's intention to produce a complete English version of that curious medley of fact and fable, but relinquished the enterprise almost at the threshold, on account of his inability to comprehend the philosopher's chapters on the stars. In his perplexity the youthful translator is said to have sought the aid of Dr. Lind, who avoided the difficulties submitted to his consideration, and at the same time preserved his credit for masterly erudition, by telling his disciple that he had better not waste his time on passages which the best scholars could not understand. In accordance with this prudent counsel, the aspirant to literary eminence bade adieu to Pliny the Elder, and looked about him for an easier way of winning the distinction for which he hungered.

In the spring of 1809, he bethought himself that he would compete with the artists of prose-fiction, and write a novel that should make him as famous as Mrs. Anne Radcliffe and Mr. Matthew Lewis. If the son of a West Indian planter could in his nonage write a novel so famous, that he was universally styled after its title 'Monk' Lewis, surely 'the heir of a gentleman of large fortune' (as the Etonian described himself in his letter to Messrs. Longman and Co.) might in his nonage produce a romance that should cause him to be talked about as Zastrozzi Shelley. To accomplish this ambition, Shelley went to work on the novel which, certainly begun in Mr. Bethell's house, and talked about before he left the school, was perhaps written to the last line at Eton; though, in consequence of the delays and postponements which usually attend a literary aspirant's first steps to celebrity, it was not published by Messrs. G. Wilkie and J. Robinson, of Paternoster Row, till the summer of 1810, when the author had been for some seven or eight weeks a member of the University of Oxford.

Though the idolaters of Shelley's genius have small reason to thank his most voluminous editor for recovering so absurd a performance from the oblivion that covers most of his puerile follies, the poet's biographers, and all who are interested in his story, have cause for gratitude to Mr. Buxton Forman, for reprinting in clear type the ludicrous tale, which enables them to examine the mental stuff and texture of the seventeen years' old boy (sixteen years and nine months old when he began the story, seventeen years and ten months old when he published it) who, fairly forward in Greek, could throw off Latin prose and verse, of more than average goodness, with singular facility.

Were it not for _Zastrozzi; a Romance_, by P. B. S. (1810), one would be without evidence that Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet of Free Love, did not leave Eton without conceiving the disregard for the religious sanctions of marriage, which developed into a strong repugnance to the institution, and a cordial disapproval of all the restraints imposed on wedlock by law and custom. Readers seriously bent on knowing the Real Shelley, who has been so artfully and dangerously replaced in these later years by the Fictitious Shelley, will do well to give their best attention to the following summary of the story which reveals so much of the poet's character and disposition, at the moment when he crossed the line that divides boyhood from manhood.

ZASTROZZI; A ROMANCE. BY P. B. S.

The action and successive tragedies of this curious performance result from the craft, energy, and diabolical vindictiveness of Pietro Zastrozzi, the illegitimate son of Olivia Zastrozzi, who in her fifteenth year was seduced, under promise of marriage, by the Count Verezzi, an Italian nobleman. More heartless than a majority of the seducers, who impart piquancy to the novels in which our grand-parents delighted, this nobleman of a southern clime, instead of allowing her the means of subsistence usually accorded in romantic literature to cast-off mistresses, refused to give his victim a crust, when, deserting her and her child (the villain of the book!), he threw himself into the arms of the heiress who became his wife,--and in due course the mother of another Count Verezzi, the virtuous count of the narrative.

Possessing every virtue but womanly discretion and the power to forgive her enemies, the wretched and exemplary Olivia Zastrozzi died in her thirtieth year, after enjoining her son, Pietrino, to avenge his mother s wrongs. Having, in language appropriate to a pious son, mitigated his mother's mortal agonies with a vow to do her bidding, Pietrino passed from her grave to the cruel world, with a virtuous resolve to compass the destruction of his own father (the elder Count Verezzi), his own half-brother (the younger Count Verezzi), and any persons in whom the same virtuous young Count should be strongly interested. On coming to full manhood, Olivia Zastrozzi's son, seizing the happy moment and making the most of it, plunged a dagger into his father's heart, sending him without shrift to the pit that is reserved in the nether regions for the seducers of trustful womankind.

Having disposed of his father in this summary fashion, Pietro Zastrozzi determines to wreak his vengeance on his half-brother by means more secret, ingenious, and horrible. Biding his time till the young Count Verezzi has won the love of Julia Marchesa di Strobazzo, whose affection he worthily reciprocates, and has also gained unintentionally the love of Matilda Contessa di Laurentini, whose passion he is most desirous of avoiding, Pietro Zastrozzi is quick to see his advantage in the mutual jealousy and aversion of the two ladies, and in the embarrassments certain to arise from their idolatry of the same man. To afford his exemplary mother's soul the vindictive satisfaction for which so pure a spirit is naturally pining, Pietro Zastrozzi approaches these ladies, and, by a series of subtle stratagems and diabolical contrivances, brings them and their Count to extremities of passion and despair; and to deaths, that under the more skilful manipulation of Mrs. Radcliffe or _Monk_ Lewis, would have rendered _Zastrozzi_ a superlatively thrilling and sensational romance.

Resembling one another in the nobility of their lineage, and the enormity of their wealth, and the reputation that had come to them, these two heroines are alike admirable for their different styles of beauty. Whilst Julia is a gentle blonde, Matilda is a Cleopatra, with dark rolling eyes, and breasts made to heave with voluptuous desire. Each of these ladies is in love with the Count at the beginning of the story, which opens with particulars of his seizure at an inn near Munich, as he is journeying southwards to the damsel of his preference.

Captured at this tavern, whilst he breathes heavily and lies helpless under a stupor of Zastrozzi's contrivance, the Count Verezzi is thrust into a chariot, and conveyed to his place of imprisonment with all the celerity attainable on rough roads, in days long prior to the invention of the steam-locomotive. Drawn by relays of horses, that are put to their fullest speed by Bernardo (the postillion) the chariot moves rapidly throughout the day, till on the approach of nightfall it quits the post-road, and makes slower progress through the rugged underwood of a forest, to the jaws of a cavern yawning in a darksome dell. In this cavern the Count--fastened by a chain to the rock of the cavern's inmost recess, and fed upon bread and water--is confined for several days and nights, till the rock of his dismal dungeon is broken up during a thunderstorm by a scintillating flash of lightning!

On the morrow of this remarkable storm, the youthful Count is discovered in a plight, which causes his persecutors to liberate him from his manacles, and to call in a physician, who, after carrying the youth out of brain-fever (quite as skilfully as the Hermit, _alias_ Dr. Lind, in _Laon and Cythna_ carries Laon out of brain-fever under similar circumstances), recommends that he should be conveyed, without loss of a single moment, to a scene of tranquillity. In compliance with this advice, the captive is lifted again into the chariot, and conveyed by Zastrozzi and his subordinate villains (Ugo and Bernardo) to a cottage, standing in the middle of a wide and desolate heath, to which they come after four hours' rapid posting. In that cottage, tended by an old woman (one of Zastrozzi's creatures), and watched by Ugo and Bernardo, the Count remains till, on his convalescence, he knocks Bernardo down-stairs (in the temporary absence of Zastrozzi, Ugo, and the old woman), and clearing out of the humble tenement, reaches the vicinity of Passau, where he is sheltered and hospitably entertained by the peasant Claudine,--an amiable old woman, who gets her living by raising flowers for the Passau market.

The scene now changes to one of the rural palaces of Matilda La Contessa di Laurentini--a palace of Gothic architecture, whose battlemented walls rise high above the lofty trees of the surrounding forest; the palace in which the Marchesa Julia's faithful servant, Paulo, dies from the fatal potion, administered to him by Zastrozzi and Matilda. As Paulo's only offence against La Contessa Matilda is his loyalty to his own mistress, one is constrained to pity the poor fellow, though he makes matters needlessly unpleasant by groaning in his death-torments with excessive loudness, and rolling his eyes in a revolting manner.

Despatching Zastrozzi to Naples to watch the movements of Julia La Marchesa di Strabozzi, and seize the first opportunity for murdering her, Matilda La Contessa di Laurentini migrates from her battlemented palace to her hotel in Passau, on the banks of the Danube, where she passes her time in meditating schemes for her rival's extinction, and taking measures to get possession of her beloved Verezzi. On the failure of these measures, the Countess grows desperate, and in the violence of her despair is on the point of drowning herself in the Danube, when, instead of dropping in the water, she falls into the arms of a casual wayfarer. Of course, this casual wayfarer is Verezzi, who, after saving her from the guilt of self-murder, carries La Contessa off for the night to Claudine's cottage. On the morrow, the Countess returns to Passau, attended by Verezzi, who henceforth lives with the lady till he expires in her presence.

Not that he yields at once to her overtures for his consent to their union. For a time, La Contessa Matilda gets nothing more agreeable from her domiciliation with her beloved Verezzi, than the pleasure of ministering to the brain-sickness and despondency of the invalid Count, who, regarding her by turns with frigid pity, distrustful tenderness, and vehement detestation, persists in vexing her ears with rapturous praises of his adorable Marchesa Julia. Acting on Zastrozzi's advice, Matilda di Laurentini assures her guest that Julia is dead, and even causes him to think her dead. But vain the assurance, bootless its success! Instead of seeking consolation in the arms of La Contessa di Laurentini, the Count Verezzi persists in idolizing his Marchesa, protesting that he is bound to her for ever--as much bound to her now that she is dead, as he was bound to her when she was alive.

But though she cannot draw him to her embrace, Matilda La Contessa gains a gradually growing influence over the Count by 'her siren illusions and well-timed blandishments.' Soothing him in his wilder moods, cheering him in his dejection, Matilda di Laurentini diverts him with piquant speech, fascinates him with the music of her harp and voice, and animates him with the society she attracts to her salon. Playing the part of his ministering angel, she conceals from Verezzi the real nature of the passion, whose fierceness and animality would revolt him. 'Her breast,' the reader is told, 'heaved violently, her dark eyes, in expressive glances, told the fierce passions of her soul; yet, sensible of the necessity of controlling her emotions, she leaned her head upon her hand, and when she answered Verezzi, a calmness, a melting expression overspread her features. She conjured him, in the most tender, the most soothing terms, to compose himself; and, though Julia was gone for ever, to remember that there was yet one in the world, one tender friend, who could render the burden of life less unsupportable.'

At length joy comes to this tender friend, whose demeanour is so mild and conciliatory to the Count Verezzi, though, in his absence, her bosom often heaves violently, whilst her dark and lustrous eyes emit glances, eloquent of the soul's fiercest passion. Matilda La Contessa di Laurentini, and her idolized Count, have journeyed from Passau to yet another of her stately homes,--the Castella di Laurentini, standing in a gloomy and remote spot of the Venetian territory; a palace surrounded by a darksome forest, and lofty mountains that 'lift their aspiring and craggy summits to the skies,'--when the lady achieves her purpose by a melodramatic stratagem.

To win the Count, she is admonished by Zastrozzi to 'dare the dagger's point,' and is, at the same time, instructed by her counsellor _how_ to dare it. In accordance with the instructions, Matilda La Contessa leads Verezzi to a convenient spot of her picturesque demesne--a spot where, on the right hand, the thick umbrage of forest trees would render indistinguishable any person lurking about; whilst on the left, there yawns a frightful precipice, at whose base a deafening cataract dashes with tumultuous violence around misshapen and enormous masses of rock, lying at the foot of the gigantic and blackened mountain, which rears its craggy summit to the skies.

Matilda and Verezzi are looking down the precipice, when a man, who has been instructed to play the part of an assassin, rushes with upraised dagger on the Count, who deems himself the mark of the bravo's weapon. A second later, and the Contessa di Laurentini, hurling herself between the two men, receives the descending poniard in her right arm. Disappearing in the forest, the sham-bravo leaves the uninjured Verezzi with the wounded Contessa,--the one overflowing with gratitude to his preserver, whilst the other exults in the success of her artifice.

Soon after this theatrical scene, the Count, yielding to Matilda di Laurentini's 'siren illusions and well-timed blandishments,' addresses her as his wife, adding '_And though love like ours wants not the vain ties of human laws, yet, that our love may want not any sanction which could possibly be given to it, let immediate orders be given for the celebration of our union_.'

Their marriage having received the vain sanction of human laws, Matilda and Verezzi enjoy a brief term of tempestuous bliss. On her wedding-day, 'Matilda's joy, her soul-felt triumph, is too great for utterance,--too great for concealment. The exultation of her inmost soul flashes in expressive glances from her scintillating eyes, expressive of joy intense--unutterable. Animated with excessive delight, she starts from the table, and seizing Verezzi's hand, in a transport of inconceivable bliss, drags him in wild transport and varied movements to the sound of swelling and soul-stirring melody.' By this time, the virtuous Verezzi has so completely succumbed to 'siren illusions' that instead of showing any disapproval of the Contessa's forwardness, or any annoyance at being dragged about thus sportively, he exclaims with delight, 'Come, my Matilda, come, I am weary of transport,--sick with excess of unutterable pleasure.'

In the earlier days of the honeymoon, one circumstance alone moderates Matilda's happiness. Though the Count thinks Julia la Marchesa is dead, the Contessa has received no intelligence of a successful issue to her arrangements for her rival's murder. This source of uneasiness passes away, however, for a time, when Zastrozzi assures the Countess he has removed Julia di Strabozzi with poison. But malignant fate soon puts a period to the feverish felicity of the husband and wife. Ere they have been married a month, Matilda La Contessa di Laurentini is summoned before the Inquisition. In their alarm at the letter of citation, the Count Verezzi and Matilda (albeit the latter has been warned by Zastrozzi to keep away from the capital) fly to a secluded dwelling in the eastern suburb of Venice, in the hope of living there in concealment from the agents of the dread Tribunal.

At Venice Matilda soon discovers that Zastrozzi's warning was not given without reason. They have not been there many days, when one evening she and the Count behold the pensive and melancholy Marchesa di Strabozzi, gliding over the Laguna in her magnificent gondola, surrounded by 'the innumerable flambeaux which blazing about rival the meridian sun.' Whilst the Count discovers that the Marchesa, the real possessor of his heart, is still alive, the Contessa Matilda discovers that Zastrozzi has deceived her with a false announcement of her rival's death. At the same time, the pensive and melancholy Julia di Strabozzi discovers that her Count Verezzi is living on terms of suspicious familiarity with Matilda di Laurentini.

These discoveries are followed by dramatic incidents and tragic scenes. Sitting with Matilda in the villa of the eastern suburb, the Count Verezzi is in the act of drinking to her, with protestations of eternal fidelity, when the pensive and melancholy Julia appears at the supper-table. 'My adored Matilda!' the Count is saying, 'this is to thy happiness,--this is to thy every wish; and if I cherish a single thought which centres not in thee, may the most horrible tortures which ever poisoned the peace of man drive me instantly to distraction! God of Heaven! witness thou my oath, and write it in letters never to be erased! Ministering spirits, who watch over the happiness of mortals, attend! for here I swear eternal fidelity, indissoluble, unutterable affection, to Matilda!'

No sooner has the Count Verezzi delivered himself of this oration than Julia comes into the room. The Count has been taken at his word! The ministering spirits are in attendance! If she has not appeared as a witness against him, Julia has come to inquire why her affianced suitor is living so intimately with Matilda. No wonder that Verezzi dashes the goblet to the ground! that his frame is agitated with convulsions! that, 'seized with sudden madness, he draws the dagger from his girdle, and with fellest intent raises it high!'

'Raised with fellest intent,' the gleaming poniard is in a trice buried in the Count's breast. Whilst 'his soul flies without a groan, his body falls upon the floor bathed in purple blood.' Furious at the spectacle, Matilda plucks the weapon from her husband's corse, and rushes upon the pensive and melancholy intruder, who, seeing mischief in the Contessa's flashing eyes, and danger in the ensanguined weapon, turns and flies towards the door. 'Nerved anew by this futile attempt to escape her vengeance, the ferocious Matilda seizes Julia's floating hair, and holding her back with fiend-like strength, stabs her in a thousand places, and with exulting pleasure again and again buries the dagger to the hilt in her body, even after all remains of life are annihilated.' On throwing the dagger from her, Matilda di Laurentini regards a terrific scene with sullen gaze.

As it takes at least two seconds to plunge a dagger up to the hilt into the tenderest flesh and to withdraw the weapon for another blow, the Countess must have spent considerably more than half-an-hour in stabbing the Marchesa's body. Bearing in mind the amount of muscular effort requisite for driving a dagger up to the hilt into a human body, one is not surprised to learn that the murderess exhausted herself. Bearing in mind also the number of square inches on the surface of a woman's body, no reader will question that Julia's body was frightfully disfigured by the thousand stabs in a thousand different places.

Julia's murder is of course followed by the punishment of the murderess, and of the supreme villain who may be said to have educated her to perpetrate the monstrous crime. Zastrozzi is racked to death. No particulars are given of Matilda di Laurentini's last agonies, but the reader is left under the impression that she has died or will die by the executioner.

Published in a single duodecimo volume, this tale of horror contains about as many words as a single volume of an ordinary three-volume novel. Perhaps more horrors have never been crowded into so short a romance. The tortures endured by Verezzi during his successive imprisonments afflict the memory. Verezzi's father is poniarded to death by his bastard son. Julia's faithful servant, Paulo, dies in the presence of his poisoners, groaning horribly and writhing in hideous convulsions. Matilda makes a futile attempt to throw herself into the Danube. The dagger-scene in the vicinity of the Castella di Laurentini would not have been more terrific had the mock-assailant been a veritable bravo. The Count Verezzi commits suicide. Julia is stabbed in a thousand different spots of her body. Zastrozzi is racked to death. The Contessa di Laurentini is left for execution.

Affording not a single indication of literary taste or wholesome sentiment, the story is badly written, morbid, unnatural, and superlatively foolish, from its first to its last page. To Shelley's reasonable and honest biographers, the performance is of great value and interest on account of the view it gives of the future poet's culture, attainments, and mental condition towards the close of his career at Eton. Allowance should of course be made for the author's youth, his inexperience of human nature and society, and the difficulties besetting every puerile essayist in an arduous department of literature. But when all allowances have been made, the book remains a thing of evidence to the utter discredit of all the fine things that have been written by certain of the poet's adulators about his intellectual precocity. He would not have laboured at this crude tale in his seventeenth year, corrected it for the press, and published it in his eighteenth year, hoping to win fame by it, had he, in his boyhood, acquired the knowledge of English literature, for which several historians of his earlier career have given him credit, or had he been the sincere and strenuous student of natural science the same writers have declared him. Had he perused the works of the higher English writers with critical discernment as well as delight, the Etonian would have written his mother tongue with less inelegance and feebleness. Had his care for natural science exceeded the commonplace curiosity of a youth, given to play tricks with an air-pump, an electrical machine, and a chest of chemical materials, his mind would have been too fully occupied to have a hankering for the miserable distinction that comes to the writers of bad novels.

Though it is not regarded as a faultless performance in the coteries of the Shelleyan enthusiasts, passages of considerable merit and indications of fine feeling have been discovered in this superlatively foolish story, by some of the gentlemen who have in these later years constituted themselves the peculiar guardians of Shelley's honour, and the especial interpreters of his philosophical utterances.

In the superabundance of his veneration for every line written, and every scrap of paper known to have been touched by the poet, Mr. Buxton Forman, is educating the English people to regard _Zastrozzi_ as a performance that, instead of being perused lightly and laughed over merrily, should be studied with due regard to the various readings of its two different editions,--the original edition of 1810, and the reprint of 1839, in _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_. Wherever those editions differ by an inverted comma, a mark of punctuation, a dropt letter, or a letter too many, Mr. Buxton Forman calls attention to the difference, as though each trivial diversity of the two texts were a matter of high importance. Believing that delicate meanings may be found in the poet's occasional slips of spelling, Mr. Forman calls attention to the remarkable fact, that the word 'ceiling' in the reprint is spelt 'cieling' in the original edition; the no less curious and significant circumstance that the word 'escritoire' of the later edition is spelt _escrutoire_ in the edition that passed straight to the world from the author's own hand and eye. In like manner we are invited to notice the difference of a perfectly formed 's' between the 'mishapen' of Shelley's own text, and the 'misshapen' of the reprint. Mr. Forman calls attention to an even bolder departure from the original text in the reprint, which may well be regarded with suspicion and mistrust by the Shelleyan specialists. Whilst the original edition contains the sentence, 'The most horrible scheme of vengeance at at this instant glances across Zastrozzi's mind,' the editor of the 1839 edition has the daring (not altogether innocent of irreverence) to omit the second 'at.' From the standpoint and principles of an editor, who regards Shelley as a being who might have been the Saviour of the World, Mr. Buxton Forman is of course right in attaching great importance to these differences of the two editions, of an almost sacred performance. But to the profane mind of the present writer, who, instead of thinking Shelley in any respect comparable with the Saviour of the World, and conceives him to have been a rather foolish schoolboy in the earlier months of 1809, a very foolish Oxford undergraduate in the later months of 1810, and a still more foolish undergraduate in the earlier months of 1811, it appears that these differences of the two editions of _Zastrozzi_ are of no more importance than the proverbial difference between 'tweedledum' and 'tweedledee.'

It is, however, interesting to observe how the hero of the puerile novel corresponds with the hero of _Laon and Cythna_,--to observe also how Shelley (holding to crudities and fantastic fancies, which any other man of similar strength would have hurled to his soul's rubbish-bin), reproduces in the great poem some of the subordinate details of the immature romance.

The victim of secret enemies and relentless persecutors (even as Laon is the victim of similar enemies and persecutors, and even as Shelley himself suffered from a conspiracy headed by his unnatural father, ever watching for a pretext for locking him up), the Count is torn from Julia di Strabozzi, and carried to a cavern in a darksome forest, even as Laon, after being torn from Cythna, is conveyed in a state of unconsciousness to the cavern of the column-surmounted rock. On entering the cavern in the wood, Verezzi recovers consciousness, even as Laon recovers his powers of observation on approaching the 'cavern in the hill.' The darkness of the tortuous way, by which the Count's enemies lead him to the inmost cell of the cavern, is qualified by no ray of light, but for awhile the cell is illumined by Bernardo's solitary torch, even as the cavern under the hill, which serves as a passage to Laon's grated prison, is lit by the solitary torch, carried by one of his captors.

In _Zastrozzi_, it is said, 'after winding down the rugged descent for some time, they arrived at an iron door, which at first sight appeared to be part of the rock itself. Everything had till now been obscured by total darkness, and Verezzi, for the first time, saw the faces of his persecutors, which a torch borne by Bernardo rendered visible.'

In _Laon and Cythna_ it is written,

'They bore me to a cavern in the hill Beneath the column, and unbound me there; And one did strip me stark; and one did fill A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare A lighted torch, and four with friendless care Guided my steps the cavern-paths along, Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair We wound, until the torch's fiery tongue Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.'

After bringing him into his prison, the Count Verezzi's persecutors put an iron chain about his waist, and leave him fast bound to the cruel rock that cuts his tender flesh, even as Laon is bound with chains in his cage upon the mountain's top.

In _Zastrozzi_ it is written, 'His triumphant persecutor bore him into the damp cell, and chained him to the wall. An iron chain encircled his waist; his limbs, which not even a little straw kept from the rock, were fixed by immense staples to the flinty floor; and but one of his hands was at liberty to take the scanty pittance of bread and water which was daily allowed him.'

In _Laon and Cythna_ it is read,

'They raised me to the platform of the pile, That column's dizzy height:--the grate of brass Thro' which they thrust me, open stood the while, As to its ponderous and suspended mass, With chains which eat into the flesh, alas! With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound:

* * * * *

I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever Its adamantine links, that I might die.'

From the fever which results from the barbarities inflicted upon him in the forest cavern, and from the terror consequent on the thunderstorm that shatters the walls of his prison, the Count Verezzi is recovered by the ministrations of a physician, who, after carrying him through the crisis of the malady, prescribes conditions of existence more favourable to mental tranquillity. Very much the same happens to Laon, who is restored to sanity from the sheer madness, that seizes him and preys upon him in the brazen cage, by the wise physician who visits him under the guise of a hermit, and conveys him to the tranquil retreat, where he eventually regains his faculties.

In _Zastrozzi_ it is written,--'A physician was sent for, who declared that, the crisis of the fever which had attacked him being past, proper care might reinstate him; but, that the disorder having attacked his brain, a tranquillity of mind was absolutely necessary for his recovery. Zastrozzi, to whom the life, though not the happiness, of Verezzi was requisite, saw that his too eager desire for revenge had carried him beyond his point. He saw that some deception was requisite; he accordingly instructed the old woman to inform him, when he recovered, that he was placed in this situation, because the physicians had asserted that the air of this country was necessary for a recovery from the brain-fever, which had attacked him. It was long before Verezzi recovered--long did he languish in torpid sensibility, during which his soul seemed to have winged its way to happier regions. At last, however, he recovered, and the first use he made of his senses was to inquire where he was.'

In _Laon and Cythna_ the hero of the poem describes his release from prison and his recovery from fever in the following terms:--

'... in the deep The shape of an old man did then appear, Stately and beautiful, that dreadful sleep His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.

And when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw That column, and those corpses, and the moon, And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon Of senseless death would be accorded soon;-- When from that stony gloom a voice arose, Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose, And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.

He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled; As they were loosened by that Hermit old, Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled, To answer those kind looks--he did infold His giant arms about me, to uphold My wretched frame, my scorchèd limbs he wound In linen moist and balmy, and cold As dew to drooping leaves;--the chain, with sound Like earthquake, thro' the chasm of the steep stair did bound.

* * * * *

... We came at last To a small chamber, which with mosses rare Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.

* * * * *

Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled, My thoughts their due array did re-assume Thro' the inchantments of that Hermit old; Then I bethought me of the glorious doom Of those who sternly struggle to relume The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot; And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought-- That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.'

From these passages of the puerile romance and the mature poem, readers may see how Shelley nursed and nourished every fancy that entered his brain; how, growing gradually in form and beauty under his fostering egotism, the conceits of his puerile inventiveness developed into the conceptions of his poetical genius; and how he weaved the story of his own life out of imaginations as baseless, and in the earlier stages of their development as grotesque, as the phantasies of departing slumber. The imprisonment of Laon was the outgrowth of Verezzi's imprisonment. The hero of the poem resembles the hero of the romance in being the victim of secret and unscrupulous enemies; and in that respect they resembled the poet who created them,--the poet who only escaped captivity such as theirs by repeatedly flying from foes, bent on throwing him into a dungeon. The fever that seized Laon in the grated cage, and the fever that nearly killed Verezzi in the gloomy forest were romantic reproductions of the fever Percy Bysshe Shelley endured at Field Place. The tyrant who put Laon between brazen bars, and the villain who chained Verezzi in the darksome cavern, had their prototype in the unnatural father (of the poet's 'marvellous story' to his second wife), who was set on sending his wretched heir to a madhouse. The physician who, braving a tyrant's vengeance, rescued Laon from confinement and ministered to his mental disease, was the same hard-swearing Windsor doctor who, facing the malicious despot of Field Place, saved Percy Bysshe Shelley from his appointed doom, and carried him out of brain-fever. It was thus that Shelley wrote his wild views of his own story into the Byronic 'egotisms' of his literary productions:--the 'egotisms' which the Shelleyan enthusiasts would have the world accept as pieces of substantially veracious autobiography.