Free Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes Page B

lightness of touch, and her apparently totally free attitude to sexual relations, Byron saw her with increasing frequency, usually in the evenings in his private rooms at the theatre. On one evening, when he could not be there, Byron offered her his box, but she refused as much as she wanted to go, because Shelley disliked the theatre and ‘declares he could not endure it’. At other soirées Claire probably sang to Byron, as she knew her voice was her greatest asset, and he wrote one of his most famous lyrics at this time, dating the manuscript 28 March 1816. It has traditionally been taken as addressed to Claire.
There be none of Beauty’s daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me;
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed Ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lulled winds seem dreaming . . . .
    It was a long time since Shelley had written such a love poem.
    [1] This, and other prose fragments of the period, come from a loose collection of Shelley’s fools-cap notes in the Bodleian MS. Shelley Adds. c. 4. Folder 21–23. They were never formally edited or titled by Shelley. Mrs Shelley later grouped them, including a fragment on Shelley’s recurrent dreams, under two headings: ‘Speculations on Metaphysics’ and ‘Speculations of Morals’. Since they are clearly held together by the central theme of the study of mental change and development — both generally in society, and specifically in Shelley’s own life — it is more appropriate to title them with his own phrase: ‘On the Science of Mind’.
    [2] David Hartley (1705–57), educated at Cambridge, doctor and medical writer, philosopher. His major work, Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749) is perhaps the first work of English psychology. He advanced a curious theory of physical vibrations (probably due for revival), as well as his famous theory of individual morality depending upon the ‘association of ideas’. He was influential among many later writers, including Wordsworth, Coleridge and J.S. Mill. Shelley first read Hartley’s Observations at Lynmouth in the summer of 1812.
    [3] Shelley finally accepted the sexual significance of this dream three years later, in his preface to a translation of the Symposium (1818).
    [4] William Drummond (1770?–1828), essayist and amateur geologist. Academical Questions , Vol. 1, was published in 1805; the projected Vol. II never appeared. Drummond studied the work of Descartes, Newton, Locke and Hume, and glanced critically at the contributions of Spinoza and Kant. His exposition of ideas was fluent and gentlemanly, with a strong, English flavour of scepticism. But he was eccentric enough for his times to write approvingly of Plato and Lucretius, and this particularly attracted Shelley. Drummond was in Italy during this decade, and finally met Shelley in Rome. He was making a study, appropriately enough, of volcanoes.
    [5] The dating of both the essays ‘On Love’ and ‘On Life’ is not absolutely certain. Shelley used and re-used the notebooks in which they appear both in England and in Italy. For example the Notebook Bodleian MS Shelley Adds. e. II contains both ‘On Love’ (pp. 1–9) and a draft preface to Prometheus Unbound (pp. 56–61) though they are certainly not contemporary. In the end, style, tone and sophistication of argument are important factors in assigning them to the summer of 1815, while the similarity of the material to that discussed in the ‘Preface to Alastor’ can be regarded as decisive.
    [6] It comes from a Choric Epode, in which Hippolytus’s fate is bemoaned, lines 1144ff:
    [7] Claire Clairmont’s literary judgement is surprisingly good. ‘Alastor is a most evident proof of improvement; but I think his merit lies in translation — the sonnets from the Greek of Moschus and from Dante are the best . . . .’ Claire to Lord Byron, spring 1816, Murray MSS.

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