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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Shelley composed “Mont Blanc” upon the occasion of his first visit to the Swiss Alps. “The immensity of these aerial summits,” he tells us, “excited when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of extatic [sic] wonder, not unallied to madness.” Of “Mont Blanc,” which resulted from this experience, he says that “it was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe,” and then evidently aware of the poem's difficulty, describes it as “an undisciplined overflowing of the soul.”
1 First published by Mary Shelley in History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a Pari of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland (1817; subsequent references to this and to other works by Shelley are from Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck, The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian Edition, 10 vols. (London, 1926-1930), hereinafter noted as Julian Works.
2 Op. cit., Julian Works, vi, 137.
3 Ibid., vi, 88.
4 Ibid.
5 Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Dowden ed. (London, 1906), p. 70.
6 “Mary Shelley's Reading Lists” in Newman Ivey White, Shelley, 2 vols. (New York, 1940), ii, 541.
7 The date of this essay and of the essay “On Life” has been much discussed, but it appears from the relationship of their ideas to the ideas in “Mont Blanc,” as pointed out in this paper, that both essays were written after 1816 rather than in 1815 as has been conjectured.
8 Julian Works, vii, 64.
9 V. supra, note 7.
10 Julian Works, vi, 193,
11 London, 1805. “Perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be found in Sir William Drummond's Academical Questions,” says Shelley in the essay, ibid., vi, 195.
12 Op. cit., vi, 194.
13 Ibid., vi, 194.
14 Ibid., vi, 196.
15 For the sources of this idea in Shelley, see the following works all well-known to Shelley-even before the publication of “Queen Mab” in 1813; William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, 2 vols. (London, 1793), i, 12 ff.; Paul Henri Thiry, baron D'Holbach, Le Système de la Nature par M. Mirabaud, 2 vols. (Londres [Leyden], 1770), i, 31 ff.; John Locke, An Essay Conerning Human Understanding, A. C. Fraser, ed., 2 vols. (London, 1894), i, 121 ff.; David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, eds., 2 vols. (London, 1909), i, 311 ff.
16 Passus, vi, ll. 146-238, Julian Works, i, 111; see also Shelley's note on these lines, ibid., i, 148 ff.
17 Julian Works, vi, 56.
18 Op. cit., vi, 197.
19 Letters, Julian Works, x, 87.
20 Julian Works, vii, 109.
21 Ibid., vii, 113.
22 Ibid., vii, 134.
23 Op. cil., i, 283-317.
24 Op. cit., i, 1-70.
25 Julian Works, i, 144.
26 Julian Works, i, 111.
27 Ibid., i, 146.
28 Op. cit., i, 242.
29 Op. cit., i, 316.
30 Julian Works, i, 145.
31 Julian Works, i, 143.
32 Op. cit., i, 39.
33 Julian Works, vii, 64.
34 Julian Works, vi, 194.
35 Cf.: Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
“Song to the Men of England,” (ll. 1-4).