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if the sublimest references to nature were in-
sufficient to accumulate glories for the bearer,
is consecrated by allusions to the thousand
storms and thousand thunders which the mast
of an imperial ship withstands.

His spear (to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand)
He walk'd with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marle; not like those steps
On Heaven's azure.

Now, having seen how the great Christian Poet has lavished all the glories of his art on the attendant hosts and personal investiture of the brave opponent of Almighty Power, let us attend to the language in which he addresses his comrade in enterprise and suffering.

Into what pit thou seest,

From what height fallen-so much the stronger proved

He with his thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his RAGE
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,

Though changed in outward lustre, that fix'd mind,
And high disdain, from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of spirits arm'd,

That durst dislike His reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook His throne !

Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors, hail!
Infernal world, and thou, profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same?
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater. Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence;
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell;
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven!"

but I dare only allude to the proposition made I might multiply passages of the same kind; of assaulting the throne of God" with Tartatorments," and to the address of Satan to the rean sulphur and strange fire, his own invented newly-created sun, in which he actually curses introduced into this indictment-suppose that the love of God. Suppose that last passage instead of the unintelligible lines beginning "They have three words, God, Hell, and Heaven," we had these-Be then His love accursed," with the innuendo, "Thereby meaning the love of Almighty God," how would you deal with the charge? How! but by looking at the object of the great poem of which those words are part; by observing how the poet, incapable of resting in a mere abstraction, had been led insensibly to clothe it from the armory of virtue and grandeur; by showing that although the names of the Almighty and Satan were retained, in truth, other ideas had usurped those names, as the theme itself had eluded even Milton's grasp! I will not ask you whether you agree with me in the defence which might be made for Milton; but I will ask, do you not feel with me that these are matters for another tribunal? Do you not feel with me that except that the boldness of Milton's thoughts comes softened to the ears by the exquisite beauty of Milton's language, I may find parallels in the passages I have quoted from the Paradise Lost, for those selected for prosecution from Queen Mab? Do you not feel with me that, as without a knowledge of the Paradise Lost, you could not absolve the publisher of Milton from the prosecution of "some mute This mighty representation of generous re- inglorious" Hetherington; so neither can you, sistance, of mind superior to fortune, of re- dare you, convict Mr. Moxon of a libel on God solution nobler than the conquest, concludes and religion, in publishing the works of Shelby proclaiming "eternal war" against Him-ley, without having read and studied them all?

Such is the force of the poet's enthusiastic sympathy with the speaker, that the reader almost thinks Omnipotence doubtful; or, if that is impossible, admires the more the courage that can resist it! The chief proceeds

What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome;
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify His power,
Who from the terror of this arm so late
Doubted his empire; that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy, and shame beneath
This downfall!

Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy,
Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of heaven.

Surely, but for the exquisite grace of the language compared with the baldness of Shelley's, I might parallel from this speech all that the indictment charges about "an Almighty Fiend" and "Tyrannous Omnipotence." Listen again to the more composed determination and sedate self-reliance of the archangelic sufferer!

"Is this the region? this the soil, the clime?" Said then the lost archangel, "this the seat

If rashly you assail the mighty masters of thought and fantasy, you will, indeed, assail though not for the purpose of torture; all you them in vain, for the purpose of suppression, can do is to make them suffer, as being human, they are liable to corporal suffering; but, like the wounded spirits of Milton, "they will soon close," "confounded, though immortal!"

ing the exercise of human genius on themes If, however, these are considerations affectbeyond its grasp, which we cannot discuss in this place, however essential to the decision of the charge, there is one plain position which I

That we must change for heaven? this mournful gloom will venture to assert: that the poetry which

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he,
Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid
What shall be right; farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equall'd, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,

pretends to a denial of God or of an immortal life, MUST contain its own refutation in itself, and sustain what it would deny! A poet, though never one of the highest order, may

Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on some pleasant lee,
Have glimpses which may make me less forlorn,
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn!

"link vice to a radiant angel;" he may diffuse | years give birth to images of grace which, unluxurious indifference to virtue and to truth; touched by time, people the retreats which are but he cannot inculcate atheism. Let him sought by youthful toil, and make learning strive to do it, and like Balaam, who came to lovely. Why shall not these be brought, with curse, like him he must end in blessing! His the poetry of Shelley, within the range of criart convicts him; for it is "Eternity revealing minal jurisdiction? Because, with all their itself in Time!" His fancies may be wayward, beauty, they do not belong to the passions of the his theories absurd, but they will prove, no less present time,-because they hold their domiin their failure than in their success, the divi- nion apart from the realities which form the nity of their origin, and the inadequacy of this business of life,-because they are presented world to give scope to his impulses. They are to the mind as creations of another sphere, to the beatings of the soul against the bars of its be admired, not believed. And yet, without clay tenement, which though they may ruffle prosecution-without offence-one of the greatand sadden it, prove that it is winged for a di- est and purest of our English poets, wearied viner sphere! Young has said, " An undevout with the selfishness which he saw pervading a astronomer is mad;" how much more truly Christian nation, has dared an ejaculating might he have said, an atheist poet is a con- wish for the return of those old palpable shapes tradiction in terms! Let the poet take what of divinity, when he exclaimed, range of associations he will-let him adopt what notions he may-he cannot dissolve his alliance with the Eternal. Let him strive to shut out the vistas of the future by encircling the present with images of exquisite beauty; his own forms of ideal grace will disappoint him with eternal looks, and vindicate the immortality they were fashioned to veil! Let him rear temples, and consecrate them to fabled divinities, they will indicate in their enduring beauty" temples not made with hands, eternal in the heavens!" If he celebrates the delights of social intercourse, the festal reference to their fragility includes the sense of that which must endure; for the very sadness which tempers them speaks the longing after that "which prompts the eternal sigh." If he desires to bid the hearts of thousands beat as one man at the touch of tragic passion, he must present" the future in the instant,"-show in the death-grapple of contending emotions a strength which death cannot destroy-vindicate the immortality of affection at the moment when the warm passages of life are closed against it; and anticipate in the virtue which dares to die, the power by which "mortality shall be swallowed up of life!" The world is too narrow for

us.

Time is too short for man,-and the poet only feels the sphere more inadequate, and pants for the all-hail hereafter," with more urgent sense of weakness than his fellows:

Too-too contracted are these walls of flesh,
This vital heat too cold; these visual orbs,
Though inconceivably endow'd, too dim
For any passion of the soul which leads
To ecstasy, and all the frigid bonds

Of time and change disdaining, takes the range
Along the line of limitless desires!

And the fantasies of Queen Mab, if not so compact of imagination, are as harmless now as those forms of Grecian deities which Wordsworth thus invokes! Pure-passionless-they were while their author lived; they have grown classic by that touch of death which stopped the generous heart and teeming fancy of their fated author. They have no more influence on living opinion, than that world of beauty to which Shelley adverts, when he exclaims in "Hellas,"

But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity.

Having considered this charge chiefly as affecting poetry, I must not forget that the last passage selected by the Prosecutor is in prose, culled from the essay which was appended to the poem of "Queen Mab," disclaimed by the editor-disclaimed by Shelley long before he reached the prime of manhood-but rightly preserved, shocking as it is in itself, as essential to the just contemplation of his moral and intellectual nature. They form the dark ground of a picture of surpassing interest to the philosopher. There shall you see a poet whose fancies are most ethereal, struggling with a theory gross, material, shallow, imaging the great struggle by which the Spirit of the If this prosecution can succeed, on what Eternal seeks to subdue the material world to principle can the publishers of the great works its uses. His genius was pent up within the of ancient times, replete with the images of hard and bitter rind of his philosophy, as idolatrous faith, and with moralities only to be Ariel was in the rift of the cloven pine; and endured as historical, escape a similar doom? what wonder if a Spirit thus enthralled should These are the works which engage and reward send forth strange and discordant cries? Bethe first labours of our English youth,-which, cause the words which those strange voices in spite of the objections raised to them, prac- syllabled are recorded here, will you say the tically teach lessons of beauty and wisdom-record is a crime? I recollect in the speech the sense of antiquity-the admiration of heroic of that great ornament of our profession, Mr. daring and suffering; and refine and elevate their lives. It was destined in the education of the human race, that imperfect and faint suggestions of truth, combined with exquisite perceptions of beauty, should in a few teeming

Erskine, an illustration of the injustice of selecting part of a conversation or of a book, and because singly considered it is shocking, charging a criminal intent on the utterer or the publisher; which, if, at first, it may not

seem applicable to this case, will be found es- indicted volume conveys! What can the sentially to govern it. He refers to the pas- telescope disclose of worlds and suns and syssage in the Bible, "The fool hath said in his tems in the heavens above us, or the microheart, There is no God," and shows how the pub- scope detect in the descending scale of various lisher of the Book of God itself might be life, endowed with a speech and a language charged with atheism, by the insertion only like that with which Shelley, being dead, here of the latter division of the sentence. It is not speaks? Not even do the most serene prosurely by the division of a sentence only that ductions of poets, whose faculties in this world the context may be judged; but by the general have attained comparative harmony-strongly intent of him who publishes what is in itself as they plead for the immortality of the mind offensive, for the purpose of curious record- which produced them-afford so unanswerable of controversy-of evidence-of example. The a proof of a life to come, as the mighty empublisher of Shelley has not indeed said "The bryo which this book exhibits;—as the course, fool hath said in his heart, There is no God;" the frailty, the imperfection, with the dark but he has in effect said, The poet has tried to curtain dropped on all! It is, indeed, when say with his lips "There is no God," but his best surveyed, but the infancy of an eternal genius and his heart belie his words! What being; an infancy wayward but gigantic; an indeed does the publisher of Shelley's works infancy which we shall never fully understand, virtually say, where he thus presents to his till we behold its development "when time readers this record of the poet's life and death? shall be no more"-when doubt shall be dis. He says-Behold! Here is a spectacle which solved in vision-" when this corruptible shall angels may admire and weep over! Here is have put on incorruption, and when this a poet of fancy the most ethereal-feelings the mortal shall have put on immortality!" most devout-charity the most Christian-enthralled by opinions the most cold, hollow, and debasing! Here is a youth endowed with that sensibility to the beautiful and the grand which peoples his minutes with the perceptions of years who, with a spirit of self-sacrifice which the eldest Christianity might exult in if found in one of its martyrs, is ready to lay down that intellectual being-to be lost in loss itself -if by annihilation he could multiply the enjoyments and hasten the progress of his species-and yet, with strange wilfulness, rejecting that religion in form to which in essence he is imperishably allied! Observe these radiant fancies-pure and cold as frostworkhow would they be kindled by the warmth of Christian love! Track those "thoughts that wander through eternity," and think how they would repose in their proper home! And trace the inspired, yet erring youth, poem after poem-year after year, month after monthhow shall you see the icy fetters which encircle his genius gradually dissolve; the wreaths of mist ascend from his path; and the distance spread out before him peopled with human affections, and skirted by angel wings! See how this seeming atheist begins to adore how the divine image of suffering and love presented at Calvary, never unfelt, begins to be seen-and in its contemplation the softened, not yet convinced poet exclaims, in his Prometheus, of the followers of Christ

The wise, the pure, the lofty, and the just, Whom thy slaves hate-for being like to thee! And thus he proceeds-with light shining more and more towards the perfect day, which he was not permitted to realize in this world. As you trace this progress, alas! Death veils it-veils it, not stops it-and this perturbed, imperfect, but glorious being is hidden from us "Till the sea shall give up its dead!" What say you now to the book which exhibits this spectacle, and stops with this catastrophe Is it a libel on religion and God? Talk of proofs of Divine existence in the wonders of the material universe, there is nothing in anynor in all-compared to the proof which this

Let me, before I sit down, entreat you to ask yourselves where the course of prosecution will stop if you crown with success Mr. Hetherington's revenge. Revenge, did I say? I recall the word. Revenge means the returning of injury for injury-an emotion most unwise and unchristian, but still human;-the satisfaction of a feeling of ill-regulated justice cherished by a heart which judges bitterly in its own cause. But this attempt to retaliate on one who is a stranger to the evil suffered-this infliction of misery for doing that which the prosecutor has maintained within these works the right of all men to do-has no claim to the savage plea of wild justice; but is poor, cruel, paltry injustice; as bare of excuse as ever tyrant, above or below the opinion of the wise and good, ever ventured to threaten. Admit its power in this case-grant its right to select for the punishment of blasphemy the exhibition of an anomaly as harmless as the stuffed aspic in a museum, or as its image on the passionless bosom of a pictured Cleopatraand what ancient, what modern history, shall be lent unchallenged to our friends? If the thousand booksellers who sell the "Paradise Lost"-from the greatest publisher in London or Edinburgh down to the proprietor of the little book-stall, where the poor wayfarer snatches a hasty glance at the grandeur and beauty of the poet, and goes on his way refreshed-may hope that genius will render to the name of Milton what they deny to that of Shelley; what can they who sell "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" hope from the prosecutor of "Queen Mab?" In that work are two celebrated chapters, sparkling with all the meretricious felicities of epigrammatic style, which, full of polished sarcasm against infant Christianity, are elabo rately directed to wither the fame of its Martyrs and Confessors with bitterest scorn-two chapters which, if published at a penny each, would do more mischief than thousands of metaphysical poems; but which, retained in their apppropriate place, to be sought only by the readers of history, may serve the cause of truth by proving the poverty of the spite by

poison which may infect the soul as long as the soul shall endure--whom, to do this prosecutor justice, I know he disclaims-may obtain true bills of indictment against any man, who has sold Horace, or Virgil, or Lucretius, or Ovid, or Juvenal-against all who have sold a copy of any of our old dramatists-and thus not only Congreve, and Farquhar, and Wycherley, but Fletcher, and Massinger, and Ford, and Webster, and Ben Jonson; nay, with reve

ever pure in essence, may be placed at the mercy of an insect abuser of the press-unless juries have the courage and the virtue to recognise the distinction between a man who publishes works which are infidel or impure, because they are infidel or impure, and publishes them in a form and at a price which indicate the desire that they should work out mischief, and one who publishes works in which evil of the same kind may be found, but who publishes them because, in spite of that imperfection, they are on the whole for the edification and delight of mankind;-between one who tenders the mischief for approbation, and one who exposes it for example. And are you prepared to succumb to this new censorship! Will you allow Mr. Hetherington to prescribe what leaves you shall tear from the classic volumes in your libraries? Shall he dictate to you how much of Lord Byron-a writer far more influential than Shelley-you shall be allowed to lend to your friends without fear of

which it has been assailed, and find ample | which-children often themselves-mount the counterpoise in the sequel. The possibility chariot and board the steamboat to scatter that that this history should be suppressed by some descendant of Gibbon, who might extravagantly suppose it his duty to stifle cold and crafty sneers aimed at the first followers of Christ, was urged-and urged with success against me when I pleaded for the right of those descendants to the fruits of the labours of their ancestor; yet, if you sanction this attempt, any Hetherington may compel by law that suppression, the remote possibility of which has been accepted as a reason for deny-rence be it spoken, even Shakspeare, though ing to the posterity of the author a property in the work he has created! This work, invested with the peculiar interest which belongs to the picture of waning greatness, has recently been printed in a cheap form, under the sanction of a dignitary of the Established Church-a Christian Poet of the noblest aim-whose early genius was the pride of our fairest university, and who is now the honoured minister of the very parish in which we are assembled. If I were now defending Mr. Milman, of whose friendship I am justly proud, for this last and cheapest and best edition of Gibbon, I could only resort to the arguments I am now urging for Mr. Moxon, and claim the benefit of the same distinction between the tendency of a book adapted to the promotion of infidelity, and one which, containing incidental matter of offence, is commended to the student with those silent guards which its form and accompaniments supply. True it is that Mr. Milman has accompanied the text with notes in which he sometimes explains or counteracts the in-his censure? Shall he drag into court the sinuations of the author; but what Notes can vast productions of the German mind, and ask be so effectual as that which follows "Queen juries to decide whether the translator of Mab"-in which Shelley's own letter is set Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Lessing-dealforth, stating, on his authority, that the work ing with sacred things with a boldness to was immature, and that he did not intend it for which we are unused-are guilty of crime? the general eye? Is not the publication of this Shall he call for judgment on that stupendous letter by the publisher as decisive of his mo- work, the "Faust," with its prologue in Heative-not to commend the wild fancies and ven, which has been presented by my friend stormy words of the young poet to the reader's Mr. Hayward, whose able assistance I have approval, but to give them as part of his to-day, with happy vividness to English readbiography, as the notes of Mr. Milman are ers-and ask a jury to take it in their hand, of that which no one doubts, his desire to make and at an hour's glance to decide whether it is the perusal of Gibbon healthful? Prosper this a libel on God, or a hymn by Genius to His attempt, and what a field of speculative prose- praise? Do you not feel those matters are cution will open before us! Every publisher for other seasons-for another sphere?—If of the works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Vol- so, will you, in the dark-without knowledge ney, of Hume-of the Classics and of their without evidence-sanction a prosecution Translations-works regarded as innoxious, which will, in its result, impose new and because presented in a certain aspect and strange tasks on juries who may decide on offered to a certain class, will become liable to other trials; which may destroy the just every publisher of penny blasphemy who may allowance accorded to learning even under suffer or hate or fear the law;--nor of such absolute monarchies; and place every man only, but of every small attorney in search of who hereafter shall print, or sell, or give, or practice, who may find in the machinery of the lend, any one of a thousand volumes sancCrown-office the facilities of extortion. Nor tioned by ages, at the mercy of any Prosewill the unjust principle you are asked to sanc-cutor who for malice-for gain-or mere mistion stop with retaliation in the case of alleged chief, may choose to denounce him as a blasphemy--the retailer of cheap lascivious- blasphemer? ness, if checked in his wicked trade, will have And now, I commend into your hands the his revenge against the works of the mighty cause of the defendant-the cause of genius dead in which some tinge of mortal stain may-the cause of learning-the cause of history unfortunately be detected. The printer of one—the cause of thought. I have not sought to of those penny atrocities which are thrust into the hands of ingenuous youths when bound on duty or innocent pleasure, the emissaries of

maintain it by assailing the law as it has been expounded by courts, and administered by juries; which, if altered, should be changed

by the authority of the legislature, and neither turing tastes for the lofty and the pure, it has by the violation of oaths, nor by the machinery been Mr. Moxon's privilege to diffuse largely which the prosecutor has employed to render throughout this and other lands, and with them it odious at the cost of those whom he himself the sympathies which link the human heart to contends to be guiltless; but I have striven to nature and to God, and all classes of mankind convince you, that by a just application of that to each other! Reject then, in your justice, law, you may hold this publication of the the charge which imputes to such a man, that works of Shelley to be no crime. It has been by publishing this book, he has been guilty of fairly conceded that Mr. Moxon is a most re- blasphemy against the God whom he reveres ! spectable publisher; one who has done good Refuse to set the fatal precedent, which will service to the cause of poetry and wisdom; not only draw the fame of the illustrious dead and one who could not intentionally publish a into question before juries, without time to inblasphemous work, without treason to all the vestigate their merits; which may not only associations which honour his life. Beginning harass the first publishers of these works; but his career under the auspices of Rogers, the which will beset the course of every bookeldest of a great age of poets, and blessed with seller, every librarian, throughout the country, the continued support of that excellent person, with perpetual snares, and make our criminal who never broke by one unworthy line the courts the arenas for a savage warfare of charm of moral grace which pervades his literary prosecutions! Protect our noble literaworks, he has been associated with Lamb, ture from the alternative of being either corwhose kindness embraced all sects, all parties, rupted or enslaved! Terminate those anxieall classes, and whose genius shed new and ties which this charge, so unprovoked—so unpleasant lights on daily life; with Southey, the deserved-has now for months inflicted on the pure and childlike in heart; with Coleridge, defendant, and his friends, by that verdict of in the light of whose Christian philosophy Not Guilty, which will disappoint only those these indicted poems would assume their true who desire that cheap blasphemy should have character as mournful, yet salutary specimens free course; which the noblest, and purest, and of power developed imperfectly in this world; most pious of your own generation will rejoice and with Wordsworth, whose works so long in; and for which their posterity will honour neglected or scorned, but so long silently nur- and bless you!

SPEECH ON THE MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL TO AMEND THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT,

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1837.

Mr. SPEAKER,-In venturing to invite the at- | for hitherto, with the exception of the noble tention of the House to the state of the law affecting the property of men of letters in the results of their genius and industry, I feel that it is my duty to present their case as concisely as its nature will permit. While I believe that their claims to some share in the consideration of the legislature will not be denied, I am aware that they appeal to feelings far different from those which are usually excited by the intellectual conflicts of this place; that the interest of their claim is not of that stirring kind which belongs to the busy present, but reflects back on the past, of which the passions are now silent, and stretches forward with speculation into the visionary future; and that the circumstances which impede their efforts and frustrate their reward, are best appreciated in the calmness of thought to which those efforts are akin. I shall therefore intrude as briefly as I can on the patience of the House, while I glance at the history of the evils of which they complain; suggest the principles on which I think them entitled to redress; and state the outlines of the remedies by which I propose to relieve them.

It is, indeed, time that literature should experience some of the blessings of legislation;

boon conferred on the acted drama by the bill of my honourable friend the member for Lincoln, it has received scarcely any thing but evil. If we should now simply repeal all the statutes which have been passed under the guise of encouraging learning, and leave it to be protected only by the principles of the common law, and the remedies which the common law could supply, I believe the relief would be welcome. It did not occur to our ancestors, that the right of deriving solid benefits from that which springs solely from within us-the right of property in that which the mind itself creates, and which, so far from exhausting the materials common to all men, or limiting their resources, enriches and expands them—a right of property which, by the happy peculiarity of its nature, can only be enjoyed by the proprietor in proportion as it blesses mankind-should be exempted from the protection which is extended to the ancient appropriation of the soil, and the rewards of commercial enterprise. By the common law of England, as solemnly expounded by a majority of seven to four of the judges in the case of "Donaldson v. Beckett," and as sustained by the additional opinion of Lord Mansfield, the author of an original work

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