nell' questo dissimile, questo men puro, non merita il sacro nome di amore, e gli empi che lo profanano, e lo denigrano, saranno puniti da questo potentissimo nume, et meriteranno l'eterna perdizione. Ove l'anima che è sensibile, che cerca amore, si trova una volta nell' abysso della desolazione, e ove il cuore sia deserto di questo dolce fuoco, o trovi infidele l'oggetto di sua tenerezza, quest' anima miserabile cerchi, (almeno io gli il consiglio) cerchi almeno, il suo refugio nella tomba, e si pascoli di esso, come dell' ultima consolazione! Every other sentiment dissimilar from this, than this less pure, deserves not the sacred name of Love; and they who impiously profane and defile it, shall be punished by that most mighty of Divinities, and shall merit eternal perdition. Where the soul that is feelingly alive seeks for love, and finds itself in the abyss of desolation, and where the heart is divested of this sweet fire, or finds faithless the object of its tenderness, that miserable soul, let it seek (at least I so counsel it), let it seek, I say, its refuge in the tomb, and feed upon it as its last consolation. -- This admirable piece of eloquence was perhaps the source of the inspiration of the Epipsychidion,1 a poem that combines the pathos of the Vita Nouva of Dante with the enthusiastic tenderness of Petrarch. The Epipsychidion, is the apotheosis of love-Emilia a mere creature of his imagination, in whom he idealized Love in all its intensity of passion. His feeling towards the Pschye herself, was, as may be seen by Letter LX. of his correspondence, a purely Platonic one. He calls the Epipsychidion a mystery, and says "as to real flesh and blood, you know that I do not deal in those articles 1 The quotation on the title-page of the passage italicized at p. 425. Epipsychidion is, it will be observed, Expect nothing human or earthly from me," &c. His love for Emilia, if such it can in the general acceptation of the term be called, was of the kind described in the Symposium by Socrates. . . . Shelley thought that to pass from one state of existence to another, was not death, but a new development of life; that we must love as we live, through all eternity; and that they who have not this persuasion, know nothing of life, nothing of love; that they who do not make the universe a fountain whence they may literally draw new life and love, know nothing of one or the other, and are not fated to know anything of it. The words are not his, but they shadow out what I heard him better express. This poem, or rhapsody, incomprehensible to the general class of readers, from a defect in the common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats, fell dead from the press. I believe that not a copy of it was sold, not a single review noticed it one of the many proofs that the public ear is deaf to the finest accords of the lyre. But Emilia's term of bondage was about to expire; she was affianced to a man whom she had never seen, and who was incapable of appreciating her talents or her virtues. She was about to be removed from the scenes of her youth, the place of her birth, her father on whom she doted, and to be buried in the Mahremma. The day of her wedding was fixed, but a short respite took place for a reason mentioned in a letter of Shelley to Mrs. Shelley (from Ravenna), where he says, "Have you heard anything of my poor Emilia ? from whom I got a letter the day of my departure, saying that her marriage was deferred on account of the illness of her sposo !" and in another letter he expresses what, in the fragment of Ginevra, too well typified the fate of that unfortunate lady, the poor sacrificed Emilia, his fears as to what she was destined to suffer. The sacrifice was at length completed, and she was soon as much forgotten as if she had never existed-though not by Shelley. I am enabled to detail the consequences of this ill-starred union, to finish her biography. Some years after, P—. . made his appearance at the capital of Tuscany, where I then was.... He did not forget our old acquaintanceship at Shelley's, and haunted me like an unquiet spirit. One day, when at my house, he said mysteriously,—“I will introduce you to an old friend-come with me." The coachman was ordered to drive to a part of the city with which I was a stranger, and drew up at a country house in the suburbs. The villa, which had once boasted considerable pretensions, was in great disrepair. The court leading to it, overgrown with weeds, proved that it had been for some years untenanted. An old woman led us through a number of long passages and rooms, many of the windows in which were broken, and let in the cold blasts from "the windswept Apennine;" and opening at length a door, ushered us into a chamber, where a small bed and a couple of chairs formed the whole furniture. The couch was covered with white gauze curtains, to exclude the gnats; behind them was lying a female form. She immediately recognized me-was probably prepared for my visit-and extended her thin hand to me in greeting. So changed that recumbent figure, that I could scarcely recognize a trace of the once beautiful Emilia. Shelley's evil augury had been fulfilled, she had found in her marriage all that he had predicted; for six years she led a life of purgatory, and had at length broken the chain, with the consent of her father; who had lent her this long disused and dilapidated Campagne. I might fill many a page by speaking of the tears she shed over the memory of Shelley,-but enough-she did not long enjoy her freedom. Shortly after this interview, she was confined to her bed; the seeds of malaria, which had been sown in the Mahremma, combined with that all-irremediable malady, broken-heartedness, brought on a rapid consumption. And so she pined, and so she died forlorn. The old woman, who had been her nurse, made me a long narration of her last moments, as she wept bitterly. I wept too, when I thought of Shelley's Psyche, and his Epipsychidion. In giving the foregoing narrative, I have of course followed the original text as a rule, only correcting a few obvious printer's or writer's blunders. For example, Emilia figures in the original Life as having features of "an almost German contour," whereas the context clearly shews that almost Grecian was intended. That would doubtless be a printer's error; but I suspect Medwin is responsible for translating slancia into lances instead of launches (page 425). Such mistakes as these, one is bound to correct, especially when, as in the present case, the book abounds with blunders of all kinds. The Italian composition of Emilia is frightfully mangled, mainly, I suspect, by the printer; and I have done my best to set that to rights. I am told that the word bestemmia, which occurs at page 427, is a far less presentable word than its dictionary equivalent, blasphemy, and not a word that an Italian lady of refinement would generally choose to use. If that be so, we must put it down to the low company referred to at page 424. H. B. F. IV. MRS. SHELLEY'S ACCOUNT OF EMILIA VIVIANI.1 [PISA] 29th December, 1820. Well, good-night; tomorrow I will finish my letter and talk to you about our unfortunate young friend, Emilia Viviani. It is grievous to see this beautiful girl wearing out the best years of her life in an odious convent where both mind and body are sick from want of the appropriate exercise for each. I think she has great talent, if not genius—or if not an internal fountain how could she have acquired the mastery she has of her own language, which she writes so beautifully, or those ideas which lift her so far above the rest of the Italians. She has not studied much, and now hopeless from a five years' confinement, everything disgusts her, and she looks with hatred and distaste even on the alleviations of her situation. Her only hope is in a marriage which her parents tell her is concluded, although she has 1 This extract is from a long and very interesting letter; but there is no more in it about Emilia Viviani than was given in Leigh Hunt's Correspondence (Vol. I, p. 160). As the extract appears there, it opens with the passage He [Shelley] has written a long poem [The Epipsychidion], which no one has ever read, and like the illustrious Sotherby, gives the law to a few distinguished Blues of Pisa." The pardonable mis-spelling of Sotheby's name is Mrs. Shelley's, as I find from the original letter, placed at my disposal by Mr. Townshend Mayer; but I am glad to be enabled, from the same source, to remove the imputation laid upon Mrs. Shelley by Thornton Hunt, of comparing her husband to Sotheby. The passage immediately preceding the word he relates to one Rosini, the "ringleader" of a "gang" who had attempted to " put down the Improvisatore Sgricci at the Pisa Theatre. A great portion of the letter is descriptive of Sgricci's doings; and this assailant, Rosini, is characterized as "a speaker of folly in a city of fools,-one chi mai parla bene di chichessia-o di quei che vivono, o dei morti." Immediately after this quotation comes the passage "He has written" &c. ; there is no allusion to Shelley anywhere near it; and it is absolutely clear and certain that "he" was not Shelley, as indicated in the Correspondence, but Rosini,-the long unread poem not the Epipsychidion, but something that is probably still unread. |