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Shelley's association with Byron, of whom, in 'Julian and Maddalo' , he has drawn a picture with the darker features left out, brought as much pain as pleasure to all concerned.
The intimacy of Shelley and Byron, recorded in Julian and Maddalo, was of a less ardent sort. In fact, the premature close of such friendships has usually been the occasion for their celebration in verse, from classic times onward. Such friendships, like happy love-affairs, are too infrequent and transitory to dissipate the poet's conviction that he is the loneliest of men.
I do but hide Under these words, like embers, every spark Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark The grave is yawning; as its roof shall cover My limbs with dust and worms, under and over, So let oblivion hide this grief. Julian and Maddalo.
I was about to speak, when "We are even Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, And bade the gondolieri cease to row. "Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well If you hear not a deep and heavy bell."
Returning to England in 1815 he wrote his first really great poem, Alastor , followed by the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, Prince Athanase, Rosalind and Helen, and Laon and Cythna, afterwards called the Revolt of Islam . In 1818 he left England never to return, and went to Italy, and in the next two years while at Rome produced his two greatest works, the tragedy of The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound . He removed to Venice in 1820 in the company of Byron, and there wrote Julian and Maddalo, a poetic record of discussions between them.
Shelley, on the other hand, certainly the most modest of great poets, contemplates Byron in the fixed attitude of a literary worshipper. The introduction to Julian and Maddalo, directly suggested by this visit, under the slight veil of a change in the name, gives a summary of the view of his friend's character which he continued to entertain.
Shelley's letter describing Byron's Venetian home is torn at its most interesting passage and we are therefore without anything as amusing and vivid as the same correspondent's account of his lordship's Ravenna ménage. Byron took him for a ride on the Lido, the memory of which formed the opening lines of Julian and Maddalo. Thus: Later in 1818 Mrs.
The sketch which he has left us of Count Maddalo, the letters written to his wife from Venice and Ravenna, and his correspondence on the subject of Leigh Hunt's visit to Italy, supply the most discriminating criticism which has yet been passed upon his brother poet's character.
Shelley comes out even more squarely than Byron against conventional religion. In Julian and Maddalo, he causes Byron to say of him, You were ever still Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel. Shelley helped to foster the tradition, too, that the poet was persecuted by the church. In Rosalind and Helen, the hero was hated by the clergy,
In the summer and autumn of 1820, Shelley produced some of his most genial poems: the "Letter to Maria Gisborne", which might be mentioned as a pendent to "Julian and Maddalo" for its treatment of familiar things; the "Ode to a Skylark", that most popular of all his lyrics; the "Witch of Atlas", unrivalled as an Ariel-flight of fairy fancy; and the "Ode to Naples", which, together with the "Ode to Liberty", added a new lyric form to English literature.
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