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Shelley's Admiration for Bacon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William O. Scott
William O. Scott*
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Extract

Shelley's curious admiration for Francis Bacon has attracted enough attention to make references to Bacon fairly common in studies of Shelley, but a full study of the poet's interest in the philosopher has not yet appeared. In 1933 David Lee Clark published information on Shelley's marked copy of Bacon to supplement the list of marginalia in W. E. Peck's biography, but Clark disclaimed any attempt at a final study. Perhaps the best approach is not through source study as such, but through an attempt to reconstruct the effect his reading of Bacon had on Shelley's mind, with special attention to his changing attitude toward Bacon and his ultimate assessment of him. If, as Clark says, Shelley's debt to Bacon was mainly indirect, what we need is a study of Bacon's whole impact rather than a list of supposed parallel passages.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , June 1958 , pp. 228 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1958

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References

1 “Shelley and Bacon,” PMLA, xlviii (June 1933), 529–546; Shelley, His Life and Work (Boston, 1927), ii, 344–348.

2 Works, ed. Spedding, Ellis, Heath (Boston, 1861), vi, 105. Subsequent references will be given in the text, prefixed by “Spedding” in case of ambiguity. For page numbers in Shelley's edition (the 1778 quarto), see Clark. Unless otherwise noted, Clark is the authority for all markings.

3 Works, Julian ed. (London, 1930), vii, 75. Subsequent references will be listed in the text, prefixed by “Julian” in case of ambiguity.

4 Peck, ii, 347, for both notes.

5 For the importance of simple natures in Bacon's philosophy, see A. E. Taylor, “Francis Bacon,” Proc, Brit. Acad., xii (1926), 273–294; C. D. Broad, “The Philosophy of Francis Bacon,” Ethics and the History of Philosophy (London, 1952), pp. 117–143.

6 Systême de la nature (London, 1775), ii, 380. For suggestion of this similarity I am indebted to Professor Carlos Baker of Princeton. The Latin version of the essay is not as close to Shelley's as Holbach's is: “Atheismus non prorsus convellit dictamina sensus, non philosophiam, affectus naturales, leges, bonae fama: desiderium; quae omnia, licet religio abesset, morali cuidam virtuti externa? conducere possunt: at superstitio hæc omnia dijicit, et tyrannidem absolutam, in animis hominum exercet” (Bacon, Works, ed. Montagu, London, 1834, xv, 287–288).

7 A quick check of Locke, Hume, Godwin, Hobbes, and Voltaire has failed to yield anything, except that, as one might expect, these writers (Hume excepted) were highly laudatory of Bacon and probably predisposed (or confirmed) Shelley's opinion.

8 A. H. Beavan, James and Horace Smith (London, 1899), p. 173.

9 Thomas Medwin, Life of Shelley (London, 1847), ii, 31. The context refers to events of 1820.

10 Newman I. White, Shelley (New York, 1940), ii, 602.

11 Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron, ed. Humbert Wolfe (London, 1933), ii, 199.

12 JHI, xv (June 1954), 355.

13 The Platonism of Shelley (Durham, N. C, 1949), p. 328.