Shelley: The Pursuit Read Online Free PDF

reached Old Windsor again in four days, on 10 September. ‘We all felt the good effects of this jaunt,’ Charles wrote to Claire, ‘but in Shelley the change is quite remarkable; he now has the ruddy, healthy complexion of the autumn upon his countenance, and is twice as fat as he used to be.’ 13 ‘He…rowed vigorously, was cheerful, merry, overflowing with animal spirits, and had certainly one week of thorough enjoyment of life,’ said Peacock, who was inclined to attribute it to his diagnostic prescription of mutton chops.
    Returned to the house at Bishopsgate, Shelley sent off lists of classical and philosophical authors to booksellers in London and Edinburgh, and got down to developing his speculations ‘On the Science of Mind’ with fresh determination. ‘Let us contemplate facts,’ he wrote. ‘Let us in the great study of ourselves resolutely compel the mind to a rigid consideration of itself. We are not content with conjecture, and inductions, and syllogisms in sciences regarding external objects. As in these, let us also, in considering the phenomena of the mind, severely collect those facts which cannot be disputed. Metaphysics will thus possess this conspicuous advantage over every other science that each student by attentively referring to his own mind may ascertain the authorities upon which any assertions regarding it are supported. . . . Metaphysics may be defined as an inquiry concerning those things belonging to, or connected with, the internal nature of man.’ 14 With the emphasis on severely factual inquiry into mentalphenomena, Shelley was clearly advancing towards the notion of an objective psychology, which despite the work of the philosopher David Hartley, was still not generally current. [3] He was himself aware that some new descriptive term was needed, though he hesitated to supply it. ‘Metaphysics is a word which has been so long applied to denote an enquiry into the phenomena of mind that it would justly be considered presumptious to employ another. But etymologically considered it is very ill adapted to express the science of mind.’ 15
    Shelley’s first attempt to exploit the realization that ‘we are ourselves the depositories of the evidence of the subject which we consider’, was to embark on an analysis of his own dreams. He called this a ‘Catalogue of the Phenomena of Dreams, As Connecting Sleeping and Waking’. For the moment he was content to work away at these ‘obscure and shadowy’ caverns of the mind in prose rather than in verse. ‘Let us reflect on our infancy, and give as faithfully as possible a relation of the events of sleep. And I am first bound to present a faithful picture of my own peculiar nature relative to sleep. . . . I shall employ caution, indeed, as to the facts which I state, that they contain nothing false or exaggerated.’ The main interest of this ‘Catalogue’ lies in the dramatic way in which it proved how difficult Shelley found it to analyse himself, to follow the stream to its source.
    His first recurrent dream is presented with little comment, ‘the single image, unconnected with all other images, of a youth who was educated at the same school as myself’. He merely remarks that he had dreamed of this youth ‘between intervals of two or more years’, and that he could never hear his name without instantly remembering the dreams and the places where he dreamt them. This dream obviously refers to the early romantic attachment at Syon House, which the sight of a statue in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, was also to recall. [4]
    The next dream that he discussed produced on the contrary an extraordinary commentary, one of the most peculiar records of composition that he ever made.
I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and unaccountable connection of which to the obscure parts of my own nature, I have been irresistibly impressed. I have beheld a scene which has produced no unusual effect on my thoughts. After the lapse of many