of the chirruping of birds or the perfume of flowers, that they know of? "There's a divinity that shapes our ends," and that probably uses up our grumblings, even when they are most aimless. Are we discontented? Let us say so, my friends, in proper time and place, and be sure that it will be "with very great exactness added to the eternities." There is, indeed, a doctrine which goes the length of saying that discontents ought not to be spoken, because they ought not to be felt. This doctrine I hold to be "flat burglary;" its comprehensiveness is admitted. From bad to good, from good to better, from better to best, that is the law of life; and if anybody expects humanity to renounce it, and sit like Grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." that individual should be reminded of the last beatitude-" blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." It is, indeed, the philosophy of his own teaching, teaching which we emphasize to those of tender years by some fable or other, winding up with, "If you would obtain your wishes, learn to moderate your desires." A moral which, if it means that half a loaf is better than no bread, and that a wise man will rather take a debt by instalments than not at all, is unexceptionable; but which, pushed to the length so common with preachers of contentment, is ridiculous enough. "The way not to be discontented is, never to want anything," that is their economy of human life; and it is preached, with garnishing of texts and hymns, especially to the poor, but now and then to all classes of society. It may be said to pervade didactic literature, in various degrees and forms. How often, when I was young, 'My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it," as Robert Manning's did at the sermon in Mount Zion chapel! I have always thought that in transparent impudence this didactic sophism has only one parallel among things intellectual that have obtained any footing in the world; I mean Hume's "argument" (as it is cheerfully entitled) "against miracles," because they are contrary to experience;" an argument which amounts precisely to this, and nothing more :— 66 66 66 If miracles never took place at all, they Miracles never took place in Judea. Few things have provoked me to indignation oftener than that argument," and the preaching of the Pharisees of contentment. I am never to want anything, am I? Why a jelly-fish knows better than that. I am to be "contented in that station of life in which it hath pleased," &c., am I? But I won't! my station is whatever I can reach. I am to be contented with my "portion," am I? But I won't! my portion is whatever I can get. Man," says one sage, 66 "is a laughing animal;" 66 man,' says another, "is a cooking animal; "man," says another (that's myself), " is a discontented animal." And the highest style of man is, I affirm, the "discontentedest." The Englishman who is worthy of his birthright never knows when he is beaten: I add, and never knows when he has had enough of a thing, or when it is done well enough. More and more! better and better! and so on, till the serpent takes its tail in its mouth and then da capo. For the rest the right of Discontent to its Utterance has been already touched upon. The hater of anything wrong, who never tells his hate, but, with a green and yellow melancholy, goes sitting like a quaker in a broadbrim, smiling at what he hates ;-let no such man be trusted! In particular, let no girl marry him. He is just the person to vow eternal loving and cherishing, while he is inwardly conscious of a dissatisfaction with the maiden of his dis-choice which, when the knot is tied, will go smouldering on and keeping up a perpetual smell of fire in his home, to the proximate perdition of both, and the daily torture of the wife, who will never be able to make out "what it is that's burning, my dear," though her woman's heart will apprise her of smoking tinder somewhere. I have known such cases. How differently it befalls with the man who, when dissatisfied, says so! Look at him in a domestic point of view. His wife never wonders what it is that is burning;-because why? He tells her before she has time to wonder. Take him as a citizen, as a social being. If he sees anything that he does not like, he says so; he tells society what is wrong; he grumbles; he badgers :-say rather, he stimulates, energizes, impels, reproves each dull delay, Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way." "And leads the way ?" Yes: for he makes of his dissatisfaction a religion, and it developes a proper, natural cultus of activity. Will anybody dare to assert that the world owes anything to contented men-except as the young Spartans may have been supposed debtors to the Helots, systematically intoxicated for their good? Discontent, discontent, discontent is the great pioneer and precursor of all good things. When his voice is heard wailing amid the lines of humanity's march, the bugle of hope replies. I grant there is nothing "constructive" in discontent; there is " nothing in it," if you please. But what is there in the mould of the artist? Discontent is the mould in which the positive forms of future life are cast! I grant discontent is not "creative;" it is only the murmur of Chaos for the Light and the Word; but so surely as it arises upon the deep, the brooding Dove comes down, and soon a firmament is spread to divide the waters from the waters. [Let me not grow dithyrambic. It is not in my mood to indite a hymn in praise of Discontent, or to write an "anatomy" of it, as You, Burton did of Melancholy. A few words of preliminary justification seemed fitting for my purpose, and they are written. I doubt not, whose eyes (may they never shed a tear which shall not leave them clearer and brighter!) pass over these lines, are a Discontented Person. Anch' io! We are, then, in perfectly frank relations with each other. It has often, very often, struck me, that if I were to register my discontents as they occur to me, it would be good pro salute animi; and also, on the general principles already suggested, for ends external to myself. It may be worth the trial. I have just been " sitting" on an inquest upon a poor child, the victim of domestic neglect; and I will, if you please, begin the memoranda of my discontented experiences in the next number, with an account of the dislosures of that inquest.] R. XXXVII.-NOTICES OF BOOKS. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Thomas Jefferson Hogg. Moxon. WHAT is it that the world requires of Shelley? Nearly forty years have elapsed since the wanderer was laid to rest, and within three months we have had three separate works all dealing with him and his deeds. Mr. Middleton's book, a mere compilation of existing materials, mixed up with some mistakes; Trelawney's recollections, a more authentic record of the latter portion of Shelley's life, written from the somewhat uncongenial point de vue of a man of the world; and now the two first volumes of an elaborate biography, put together by Shelley's own college friend, who was expelled with him from Oxford, dedicated to the wife of his only son, and professing to be supported by all the family papers which could be made available for such a purpose. Such a large increase to our stock of writing about Shelley, if not to our knowledge of him, appears to prove that there was something in this poet's personal character, something in the impression he made upon his contemporaries, which the world would not willingly let die. And so in truth it is. Shelley was a man who very early adopted distinct principles of action; principles which he matured and modified, but never essentially changed. To his theory of life he clung with an instructive pertinacity which would probably have made him, as years advanced, into a worldly as well as a spiritual power. At war with many of the conventions of society, he had in him the practical insight which told him in what directions society itself must inevitably change; and it is because Englishmen, forty years after his death, are actually working out in their social and political life some of Shelley's most cherished principles, that his memory, his letters, his ideas, retain for them a perennial freshness and an unfading charm. It has often seemed to us that a certain parallel might be drawn between Shelley and Milton. Both were essentially men of intellect, not merely imaginative poets. Both took a keen interest in their country's political development; in both natures may be traced the same sort of pious fervour. We use the words advisedly, for under Shelley's metaphysics any honest reader will find the devout spirit, which after-years would probably have associated with a distinct faith. But be that as it may, it is none the less the fact, that so far as Shelley did see what was pure and true, he made of it his daily practice, to a far greater extent than most men who accept what is told them and never take the slightest trouble to make it a reality. But he fell on evil times for him; on the days of the Holy Alliance and the return of the Bourbons to France; on the days of the Prince Regent and Lord Castlereagh, and the decaying but still virulent Toryism of the old school; and while Milton, two hundred years before found a stormy but glorious sphere open to him, a great genius like Cromwell to foster and appreciate, and a circle of statesmen and thinkers to whom he was the fitting laureate, Shelley found blame and grief and exile, and an early death at twenty-nine. If this view be borne out by the facts, we are in a position to say what the world now requires in a life of Shelley. It does not want a mere gossipping collection of anecdotes about a good poet, one of those who minister to the imaginative luxury of mankind; nor does it want an elaborate hash of the incidents known before to every one who cared about the subject. We require to have Shelley's career set before us in such a manner as may exhibit his principles, and the way in which he worked them out; a book which shall tell us so much of truth as may clear away the clouds of calumny which have rested on his name, since the suicide of his first wife, and the famous trial, which deprived him of the guardianship of his children. How much was he to blame; how much were others in fault under cover of his magnanimous silence? How did his daily life exemplify the power of his opinions, good or bad; was the water clear in the spiritual fountain head of that glorious tide of song; was that great volume of noble poetry, so full of aspiration for the world's best welfare, written by a bad man or by a good one? These are really very important questions; they involve a whole world of philosophical evidence upon the result of certain principles, and they might be answered by any biographer who, with Mr. Hogg's command of materials, should set to work to present Shelley in true colors. Now, what has Mr. Hogg done? He has written two thick volumes, of which the result is, that the truth is farther off than T ever; two volumes, in which it is almost impossible to disentangle the facts from the dense veil of prejudice in which they are enveloped, and in the midst of which Shelley's letters stand out every here and there, giving the lie to the very comments of his biographer on the circumstances. He says either too much or too little about Sir Timothy Shelley, and he might have stated the facts of the father's dealings with the son in much simpler form and more decorous language. As it is, it is exceedingly difficult to find out how the final rupture came about. In regard to Shelley's first married life, he wraps it round in a hopeless mist of sneers. He sneers at Mrs. Shelley's father, the "old ex-Coffee-house keeper," but does not let us know how far he was responsible for the marriage, or what part he played in the marriage after it took place. He sneers at Miss Eliza Westbrook, and reiterates to wearisomeness a story about her love for brushing her hair, and he darkly hints that she injured Shelley's domestic peace and was the cause of his ceasing to love his home. But this is not clearly stated, and ought either to have been so stated or let alone. He praises Mrs. Shelley at first for beauty, quietness, and excellent elocution, but finally sneers at her also, on account of her love of bonnets. With the Godwin family he deals still worse. He sneers at the philosopher on every occasion, and turns Shelley's enthusiasm for him into ridicule. It is not possible in a mere literary notice to give any adequate idea of the ingenuity with which every incident is turned the wrong side out, and a slur thrown on the poet's youthful ardor in behalf of one of the greatest writers of his day. This very ardor shews that in Shelley's character lay the possibility of true sonship, had his filial feeling been rightly cherished, and his letters to Godwin are among the really valuable portions of the book. For the rest, Shelley himself is not excepted from the general ridicule. Mr. Hogg calls him from first to last, and even with ostentatious parade, "My incomparable friend," and, "The divine poet, "but he invariably exalts the poet at the expense of the man, and whenever Shelly comes in contact with mundane affairs he is represented as half a madman, incapable of prudence and the most ordinary self-control. We shrewdly suspect that the young man who wrote the thoughtful and elaborate "Cenci," whose mind was full of solid and varied learning amassed year by year, and who penned those clear and vivid letters from Italy, was no fool even in the ordinary affairs of life, and that if he had lived long enough, he might have outrivalled Mr. Hogg himself in worldly wisdom. We do not say that Shelley's admirers will not read this book. There is much curious matter to be found in its pages, when disinterred from the anecdotal conceit of Mr. Hogg's own lucubrations. There is a whole series of letters written by the poet; the early ones full of a boy's somewhat stilted imagination, but ripening and |