8. Dryden and Waller as Members of the Royal Society

Abstract

elaborates he would certainly have discussed the matter with Peacock and, had he persisted in his interpretation, Peacock would presumably have referred to the fact. But Shelley was the last person to give this interpretation to one of his poems for such an explanation of the mystery of life would have revolted him. On the contrary, he pictured the poet as guilty of what he himself thought a serious offence, the neglect of human love. Furthermore the title, as is clear Peacock's account, was an afterthought; there is no reason to suppose that while composing the poem Shelley had in mind any idea derived Greek tragedy. Professor Wier says that the poet became alastor; Peacock insists that he was not Alastor. Professor Wier says that solitude is the curse laid by Alastor upon the poet because of his sin; Peacock says, what the subtitle implies, that Alastor is the spirit of solitude. Besides, the preface insists that the solitude of the poet is not the punishment for his sin but the sin itself. Professor Wier says that the poet suffered from the malignity of Alastor because he had roamed too long the ruins of antiquity; I find no evidence anywhere in the poem or in its preface for this assertion, and no reason for believing that the poet had ever seen a ruin until after he had left the home which we are now asked to believe that he was banished because of his addiction to ruins. The other cause of his banishment, according to Professor Wier, was his gazing on memorials Of the world's youth ... till meaning ... flashed [on him] and he saw The ... secrets of the birth of (121-8); but this also occurs after, probably some time after, his leaving his home. Professor Wier apparently takes the lines Gazed . . . time, all of ... knew (123-8, 72-5) as implying undue or forbidden knowledge such as might arouse the jealousy of the gods. This does not seem to me the natural interpretation and there is nothing in the remainder of the poem or in the preface to suggest that that he possessed such knowledge. The lines appear to mean that he understood the literature and other arts of the past and felt their beauty. How Professor Wier learned that the poet became unwilling to commit suicide, I do not know.