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XXXV: Shelley and Thomas Taylor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

James A. Notopoulos
James A. Notopoulos*
Affiliation:
Butler, Pennsylvania
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Extract

The influence of Taylor, the Platonist, on Shelley has been suspected by A. Koszul but left for further investigation. A study of Shelley in this context is important for the light it throws on his Platonism, and upon the meaning of several prose fragments found among his manuscripts. It is an influence which Shelley assimilated for the most part unconsciously in his early youth, and outgrew. The traces of it, therefore, are dim and the means of it indirect, but they are of significance not only for Shelley but for Platonism as an influence in the Romantic movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1936 , pp. 502 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 A. Koszul, La Jeunesse de Shelley, p. 69.

2 Edinburgh Review, xiv (April, 1809), 187–211.

5 According to Prof. J. L. Lowes, who has examined Wordsworth's copy of Taylor's Plato.

4 J. D. Campbell, S. T. Coleridge, pp. 13, 58, note 3.

5 Coleorton, ii, 107.

6 J. L. Lowes, Road to Xanadu, p. 232.

7 A. Koszul, op. cit., p. 70; J. Aynard, Coleridge, p. 29.

8 Humbert Wolfe's edition of The Life of Shelley, by Hogg, Peacock, and Trelawny (London, 1933), i, 73.

9 Preface by Mrs. Shelley to First Collected Edition, 1839, Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, (Oxford), p. xii.

10 Humbert Wolfe, op. cit., i, 121.

11 Taylor's influence on Shelley's Greek is interesting. Taylor was a mortal foe of Greek accents. His polemics against Greek accents won among his followers Shelley and Peacock. I have examined the Note Books of P. B. Shelley from the originals in the Library of W. N. Bixby, edited by H. Buxton Forman, and have found that Shelley follows Taylor in doing away with Greek accents. Many passages from Pindar and Æschylus' Agamemnon which he studied closely are jotted in Shelley's loose Greek script without accents. He carried this rule even in the printing of Greek in his writings, for example, in the quotation from Hesiod in the title page of A Vindication of Natural Diet, 1813; cf. Ingpen, Letters of Shelley, i, 429–431, 434, 441, for Greek phrases without accent. For a similar influence on Peacock see Carl Van Doren, Thomas Love Peacock (London, 1911), p. 129, and Peacock's novel Melincourt, p. 109. Though this influence of Taylor on Shelley and Peacock is of a literal and eccentric nature, it reveals how Taylor influenced them even in mannerisms.

12 Humbert Wolfe, op. cit., i, 5, 122.

13 The Works of Plato. Nine of the Dialogues by the late Floyer Sydenham and the remainder by Thomas Taylor. (London, 1804).

14 Ingpen, Letters of Shelley, i, xxxv.

15 Hogg, op. cit., p. 121.

16 Idem, p. 73.

17 Idem, p. 147.

18 Idem, p. 73.

19 Idem, p. 371.

20 Dowden, Life of Shelley, i, 405.

21 A. Koszul, The Shelley Correspondence in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1926), p. 46.

22 Ingpen, op. cit., ii, 548.

23 Ficino's Latin translation of Plato's works in the Bipont Edition.

24 J. S. Watson, Life of Richard Porson (London, 1861), p. 204.

25 Ingpen, op. cit., ii, 921.

26 Isaac Disraeli, Vaurien (London, 1797); Curiosities of Literature, (London, 1866), i, 215.

27 T. J. Mathias, Pursuits of Literature (London, 1808).

28 In his Dissertation upon Eleusinian Mysteries Taylor scores the superstition and credulity of moderns. “The jargon of innumerable sects,” as he called Christianity, “established a tyranny over the human mind.” In a dissertation, appended to his translation of Proclus there is a parallel between the good polytheist of Plotinus (no doubt Taylor himself) who tranquil and serene awaits death and a distinguished typical Christian (Dr. Johnson) who spends his last days in terror of the future.

29 The Antiquary, xviii (July, 1888).—As to accents, see note 11.

30 Carl Van Doren, Thomas Love Peacock, pp. 129–130.

31 Koszul, Shelley's Prose in the Bodleian Manuscripts, pp. 124–125.

32 Peck and Ingpen, Julian Edition of The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (New York 1907), vii, 151.—Ingpen's Note, loc. cit., p. 359. On Polytheism “The beginning of an essay so called follows the Manuscript of Shelley's essay On the Devil and Devils in the notebook belonging to Sir John Shelley-Rolls. It has not been published before.”

33 Koszul, Shelley's Prose in the Bodleian Manuscripts, Appendix pp. 124–125.

34 Op. cit., i, 86.

35 A Vindication of Natural Diet, being one in a series of notes to Queen Mab, London, printed for J. Callow, medical bookseller, 1813 The Greek quotation from Hesiod's Works and Days is also quoted in Mr. Newton's Return to Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen, Cadell, 1811.

36 Shelley quotes from Plutarch's essay at the end of his note in Queen Mab.

37 Enn, iii, 6, 5.

38 Koszul, La Jeunesse de Shelley, Appendix iii.

39 Ibid. p. 419.

40 Works of Thomas Love Peacock, Biographical Notice by his Granddaughter, Edith Nicolls, p. xxxviii.

41 His granddaughter confounds her grandfather's friend Thomas Taylor with Taylor of Norwich.

42 J. B. Priestley, Thomas Love Peacock (New York, 1927), p. 52.

43 Sir M. E. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1851–72 (1897), i, p. 41.

44 Thomas Love Peacock's Letters, p. 83.

45 Melincourt, p. 109.

46 An orang-outan from Angola who has been brought into the fashionable world in London, there to find himself completely at home.

47 Athenæum, 1835, p. 874 ff.