Tyrant of Earth! pale misery's jackal thou! Where is the noonday pestilence that slew At the dread word Korah's unconscious crew? Or the Angel's two-edged sword of fire that urged Our primal parents from their bower of DOUBTFUL, LOST AND UNPUBLISHED POEMS VICTOR AND CAZIRE DOUBTFUL POEMS THE WANDERING JEW A poem in MS., entitled The Wandering Jew, was offered by Shelley to Ballantyne & Co. of Edinburgh in the early summer of 1810, and declined by them September 24. It was immediately afterward, on September 28, offered by him to Stockdale of London, to whom he ordered Ballantyne & Co. to send the MS.; but, as they delayed or failed to do so, he sent to Stockdale a second MS. which he had retained. A poem, thus entitled, was published, as by Shelley, in The Edinburgh Literary Journal, June 27 and July 4, 1829. The editor stated that the MS. was in Shelley's handwriting, and had remained for the preceding twenty years in the custody of a literary gentleman of Edinburgh, to whom Shelley in person had offered it for publication while on a visit to that city. A second version of the same poem was published, as by Shelley, and with Mrs. Shelley's consent, but without mention of the former publication, in Fraser's, July, 1831. Lines 435, 443-451, were quoted by Shelley as a motto for chapter viii., and lines 780, 782790 for chapter x. of St. Irvyne, 1811. These last lines, and lines 1401-1408, were quoted by Medwin (Life, i. 56, 58), who ascribes them to Shelley, and are given among the Juvenilia by Rossetti, Forman and Dowden. The poem, as it appeared in Fraser's, appears to have been edited, by omission or alteration or both, and Mrs. Shelley's statement made below refers exclusively to such editing. Three lines are quoted in the Introduction to Fraser's version, as follows,There is a pretty, affecting passage at the end of the fourth canto, which we dare say bore reference to the cloud of family misfortune in which he [Shelley] was then enveloped : Tis mournful when the deadliest hate These lines are also quoted by Medwin (Life, i. 364) as written in his seventeenth year,' but he does not mention independent authority for them. They do not, however, appear in the poem as given in either version. Such are the facts making for Shelley's authorship. On the other hand Medwin claims to have written the poem, with aid from Shelley, and ascribes to him a concluding portion, embodying speculative opinions, which has never come to light. It is plain that the poem was not printed from Medwin's MS., which he does not himself seem to have consulted. His memory of the past was at best a confused one, as is shown by the inaccuracy of his Life of the poet; and, when the matter related to his literary partnership with Shelley, as in his translations at Pisa, his recollection of the share of each in their joint work was, one is compelled to think, very feeble indeed. It may, at least, be fairly surmised that more of Shelley's work goes under Medwin's name than has ever been affirmed. In the present instance Medwin's assertion of authorship, in which several blunders are obvious, is of no more value than other unsupported and loose statements by him, which would certainly be accepted only provisionally and with doubt. In view of the facts above, that Shelley twice offered the poem as his own and that it was twice printed from different MSS. without Medwin's interposition, the claim of a far more trustworthy writer would be much impaired. If the internal evidence of the poem be appealed to, the opinion that it is substantially Shelley's work is as much strengthened. The most plausible hypothesis is that Shelley worked with Medwin upon the subject in prose and in the first versification made of the prose; that he then rewrote the whole, confined the poem to the story, and reserved the speculative part, which has never appeared, among those early materials out of which Queen Mab was made and to which, both prose and verse, he referred in saying, that Queen Mab was written in his eighteenth and nineteenth year, or 1809-10; but that The Wandering Jew, as we have it, is substantially the poem offered by him for publication in 1810, and that it was Shelley's work and not Medwin's, are statements as well supported by external and internal evidence as can be looked for in such cases. Forman and, though with less decision, Dowden reject the poem, and therefore it is here placed in this division. The following documentary account of it is condensed from the Introduction to the reprint in the Shelley Society Publications by Mr. Bertram Dobell, who discovered the Edinburgh 1829 version. Messrs. Ballantyne & Co. (from Edinburgh) to Shelley, September 24, 1810: 'Sir, - 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 honor 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 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 some person in London would be more likely to ensure its safety than addressing it to Horsham.' Stockdale's Budget, 1827. (Hotten's Shelley, i. 41.) Shelley (from Field Place) to Stockdale, September 28, 1810: Sir, I sent, before I had the pleasure of knowing you, the MS. of a poem to Messrs. Ballantyne & Co., Edinburgh; they have declined publishing it, with the enclosed letter. I now offer it to you, and depend upon your honor as a gentleman for a fair price for the copyright. It will be sent to you from Edinburgh. The subject is The Wandering Jew. As to its containing atheistical principles, I assure you I was wholly unaware of the fact hinted at. Your good sense will point out the impossibility of inculcating pernicious doctrines in a poem which, as you will see, is so totally abstract from any circumstances which occur under the possible view of mankind.' Stockdale's Budget, 1827. (Hotten, i. 140.) Shelley (from University College) to Stockdale, November 14, 1810: 'I am surprised that you have not received The Wandering Jew, and in consequence write to Mr. Ballantyne to mention it; you will, doubtlessly, therefore receive it soon.' Stockdale's Budget, 1827. (Hotten, i. 44.) Shelley (from University College) to Stockdale, November 19, 1810: If you have not got The Wandering Jew from Mr. B., I will send you a MS. copy which I possess.' (Hotten, i. 44.) Shelley (from Oxford) to Stockdale, December 2, 1810: Will you, if you have got two copies of The Wandering Jew, send one of them to me, as I have thought of some correc 'There has recently been put into our hands a manuscript volume, which we look upon as one of the most remarkable literary curiosities extant. It is a poem in four cantos, by the late poet Shelley, and entirely written in his own hand. It is entitled The Wandering Jew, and contains many passages of great power and beauty. It was composed upwards of twenty years ago, and brought by the poet to Edinburgh, which he visited about that period. It has since lain in the custody of a literary gentleman of this town, to whom it was then offered for publication. We have received permission to give our readers a further account of its contents, with some extracts, next Saturday; and it affords us much pleasure to have it in our power to be thus instrumental in rescuing, through the medium of the Literary Journal, from the obscurity to which it might otherwise have been consigned, one of the earliest and most striking of this gifted poet's productions, the very existence of which has never hitherto been surmised.' [The poem was published, Nos. 33, 34 (June 27, July 4, 1829), with the following remarks]: It may possibly have been offered to one or two booksellers, both in London and Edinburgh, without success, and this may account for the neglect into which the author allowed it to fall, when new cares crowded upon him, and new prospects opened round him. Certain it is, that it has been carefully kept by the literary gentleman to whom he entrusted its perusal when he visited Edinburgh in 1811, and would have been willingly surrendered by him at any subsequent period, had any application to that effect been made. . . . Mr. Shelley appears to have some doubts whether to call his poem The Wandering Jew or The Victim of the Eternal Avenger. Both names occur in the manuscript; but had the work been published, it is to be hoped that he would finally have fixed on the former, the more especially as the poem itself contains very little calculated to give offence to the religious reader. The motto on the title-page is from the 22d chapter of St. John: "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? "The subject of the following Poem is an imaginary personage, noted for the various and contradictory traditions which have prevailed concerning him the Wandering Jew. Many sage monkish writers have supported the authenticity of this fact, the reality of his existence. But as the quoting them would have led me to annotations perfectly uninteresting, although very fashionable, I decline presenting anything to the public but the bare poem, which they will agree with me not to be of sufficient consequence to authorize deep antiquarian researches on its subject. I might, indeed, have introduced, by anticipating future events, the no less grand, although equally groundless, superstitions of the battle of Armageddon, the personal reign of J- Cetc.; but I preferred, improbable as the following tale may appear, retaining the old method of describing past events: it is certainly more consistent with reason, more interesting, even in works of imagination. With respect to the omission of elucidatory notes, I have followed the well-known maxim of Do unto others as thou wouldest they should do unto thee.' - January, 1811."' The poem introduced by the above Preface is in four cantos; and though the octosyllabic verse is the most prominent, it contains a variety of measures, like Sir Walter Scott's poetical romances. The incidents are simple, and refer rather to an episode in the life of the Wandering Jew, than to any attempt at a full delineation of all his adventures. We shall give an analysis of the plot, and intersperse, as we proceed, some of the most interesting passages of the poem.' Medwin, Shelley Papers, pp. 7-9: 'Shortly afterwards we wrote, in conjunction, six or seven cantos on the subject of the Wandering Jew, of which the first four, with the exception of a very few lines, were exclusively mine. It was a thing such as boys usually write, a cento from different favorite authors; the crucifixion scene altogether a plagiary from a volume of Cambridge Prize Poems. The part which I contributed I have still, and was surprised to find totidem verbis in Fraser's Magazine. As might be shown by the last cantos of that poem, which Fraser did not think worth publishing, his [Shelley's] ideas were, at that time, strange and incomprehensible, mere elements of thought-images wild, vast and Titanic.' |