The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History)

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Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to National United University - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-18

The Shelley–Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe

10.1057/9780230106307 - The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe, Paul Stock

P S  C  I H Anthony J. La Vopa, North Carolina State University. Suzanne Marchand, Louisiana State University. Javed Majeed, Queen Mary, University of London. The Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History series has three primary aims: to close divides between intellectual and cultural approaches, thus bringing them into mutually enriching interactions; to encourage interdisciplinarity in intellectual and cultural history; and to globalize the field, both in geographical scope and in subjects and methods. This series is open to work on a range of modes of intellectual inquiry, including social theory and the social sciences; the natural sciences; economic thought; literature; religion; gender and sexuality; philosophy; political and legal thought; psychology; and music and the arts. It encompasses not just North America but Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. It includes both nationally focused studies and studies of intellectual and cultural exchanges between different nations and regions of the world, and encompasses research monographs, synthetic studies, edited collections, and broad works of reinterpretation. Regardless of methodology or geography, all books in the series are historical in the fundamental sense of undertaking rigorous contextual analysis.

P  P M: Indian Mobilities in the West, 1900–1947: Gender, Performance, Embodiment By Shompa Lahiri The Shelley–Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe By Paul Stock Rammohun Roy and the Making of Victorian Britain (forthcoming) By Lynn Zastoupil The Reading of Russian Literature in China: A Moral and Manual of Practice By Mark Gamsa Culture and Hegemony in the Colonial Middle East By Yaseen Noorani



Series Editors

PAUL STOCK



The Shelley–Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe

THE SHELLEY–BYRON CIRCLE AND THE IDEA OF EUROPE

Copyright © Paul Stock, 2010.

An edited version of Chapter 4 appears as “The Shelleys and the Idea of Europe,” European Romantic Review 19, no. 4 (2008): 335–49. Parts of Chapter 2 appear as “Liberty and Independence: The Shelley–Byron Circle and the State(s) of Europe,” Romanticism 15, no. 2 (2009): 121–30. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–61963–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stock, Paul. The Shelley-Byron circle and the idea of Europe / Paul Stock. p. cm. — (Palgrave studies in cultural and intellectual history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–61963–0 (alk. paper) 1. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792–1822—Political and social views. 2. Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788–1824—Political and social views. 3. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792–1822—Friends and associates. 4. Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788–1824— Friends and associates. 5. Europe—Foreign public opinion, British. 6. Romanticism—Political aspects—Great Britain—History—19th century. 7. Nationalism in literature. 8. English literature—19th century—History and criticism. 9. Great Britain—Intellectual life—19th century. 10. Europe—Politics and government—1815– 1848. I. Title. PR5442.E85S76 2010 8219.7—dc22

2009039976

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.



The cover image shows “Europe in 1810” by Charles Colbeck, in The Public Schools Historical Atlas (New York: Longmans, Green, 1905). Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin.



To Linda and Terry Stock



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Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

Part 1

The Childe Harold Pilgrimage: Byron’s European Tour, 1809–18

1 “Spain, Portugal, and Greece”: Byron on the Borders of Europe, 1809–11

19

2 “Repairing Shattered Thrones”: Post-Waterloo Europe and the Shelley–Byron Circle, June 1815–December 1816

39

3 “The Elysium of Europe”: Byron, Italy, and Europe, June 1817–July 1818

65

Part 2

Europe and the Universal Revolution: Percy Shelley’s Europe, 1817–22

4 “Revolution in a European Nation”: The Shelley Circle, January 1817–March 1818 5 “From a Particular to a Universal”: The Shelley Circle, 1820–22

Part 3

99 121

The System of Europe: Byron and European Politics, 1822–24

6 “A Congress for Outworn Europe”: Byron’s International Relations, October 1822–July 1823


151


Contents

Contents

7 “The Cause of Greece, the Cause of Europe”: The Byron Circle, July 1823–April 1824

175

Notes

199

Bibliography

235

Index

253



viii

Much of the initial planning and research for this book was carried out between 2004 and 2007 with the financial support of the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council. I am also grateful to the School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London and to the International Byron Society for funding travel to overseas conferences where I could present and discuss work in progress. A number of people have made significant contributions to the development of the book. Dr. Luisa Calè has read virtually every word and never failed to offer substantial and challenging advice which sharpened my thinking considerably. I am also profoundly indebted to Dr. Tim Hochstrasser, whose friendship and guidance has shaped not only this project, but also my academic career more widely. For their detailed readings of the manuscript and their suggestions on further refining the project, I am grateful to Professor Paul Hamilton, Professor Anne Janowitz, Professor Suzanne Marchand, and Dr. Michael Rossington. I also want to thank Professor Mia Rodriguez-Salgado, Dr. Joya Chatterji, and Dr. Harald Braun for leading the seminars which ultimately inspired this research. The years spent on research have been enlivened by the company and conversation of many valued friends. I particularly wish to thank: Dr. Miriam Allam, Lucy Haines, Nick Johnstone, Dr. Alisa Miller, Joanne Murray, Dr. Justin Sausman, John Springford, Alexandra Stanciu, Dr. Monika Steinel, Laura Stock, Dr. Reina van der Wiel, and Evelyn Wong. My deepest debt, however, is to my parents, Linda and Terry Stock. Without their love and unstinting support, this book—and so much else— would have been unimaginable.



Acknowledgments




This book investigates how Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and their circle understood the idea of “Europe.” What geographical, political, and ideological concepts did they associate with the term? Which locations, historical episodes, and opposing “others” did they use to formulate those understandings? Through new readings of important texts—notably Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, A Defence of Poetry and Hellas—I analyze how Shelley and Byron construct ideas about Europe’s culture, history, geography, and future. In addition, the book gives sustained attention to underread material, especially Percy Shelley’s Laon and Cythna and Byron’s The Age of Bronze, arguing that they are central to an understanding of the poets’ work and thought. Shelley’s and Byron’s interest in Europe, I suggest, is part of an ongoing contemporary debate prompted by the political reshaping of the continent following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. By discussing the circle’s writings in terms of contemporaneous materials (including political commentaries, travel writings, newspapers, treaties, and diplomatic correspondence), I show how this wider context illuminates, and is illuminated by, the poets’ ideas of Europe. On one level therefore, this book provides fresh perspectives on Shelley’s and Byron’s writings and ideas, particularly those that concern political revolution, the classical tradition, the Greek War of Independence, and European diplomacy. But the implications for Romantic studies go still further. As I outline later, scholars have recently invoked “cosmopolitanism” as a means to interpret Romantic writing outside its traditional relationship with nationalism. But, there is a problem with this approach: cosmopolitanism is an imprecise term, which, in its concern to transcend national loyalties, can too often ignore local contexts and steer perilously close to universalism. And although it presents itself as an idea “without limits,” unconstrained by parochial restrictions, cosmopolitanism nevertheless depends upon very particular advantages: wide travel, advanced education, and mastery of many languages. For this reason, a new approach is needed which sees Romanticism outside both the limits of nationalism and the problematic connotations of cosmopolitanism or “world citizenship.”



Introduction

Shelley–Byron Circle and Idea of Europe

That approach can be found, this book argues, in a study of the idea of Europe, since an investigation of that concept engages with transnationalism as well as the specificities of particular locations and cultures. As I will show, “Europe” is a term rich with analytic possibilities: it can evoke totalizing narratives of common history or identity and also express a range of competing political and ideological systems. By focusing on ideas of Europe and tapping into this complexity, I show how the Shelley–Byron circle is interested in particular locations and local identities as well as transnational ideas about politics, history, and culture. This book therefore sets out an approach—both to Shelley’s and Byron’s work and the Romantic period more generally—which can account equally for the local, the national, and the transnational rather than privileging one perspective over the others. A focus on nationalist ideology in the period risks marginalizing important transnational concerns, especially regarding revolution, cultural encounter, and the transmission of political and cultural ideas across borders. On the other hand, an overemphasis on “cosmopolitanism” ignores the localism and sense of specific place that remains central to much Romantic writing. This book, therefore, explores the sometimes uneasy coexistence of local, national, transnational, and even universalist perspectives, both within the works of individual writers and the debates of their contemporary society. The acknowledgment of this interaction (and its consequent problems) leads to a more sophisticated understanding of identity and politics in the Romantic period.

The Idea of Europe What does it mean to talk of Europe as an idea? In brief, I am interested in Europe as an ideological and cultural concept which is both “invented and experienced.” “Europe,” I want to suggest, cannot be defined definitively; instead, it signifies “a series of world-views, [. . .] of perspectives on reality, sometimes only dreamt or desired, sometimes experienced and realized.”1 Furthermore, it is partly “an ideological program which can be mobilized and invoked” for specific purposes; rather than asking “what is Europe,” says Mikael af Malmberg, we should instead examine how various ideas of Europe are used for political and cultural ends: “how does Europe work as a practical category, as a classificatory scheme, as a cognitive frame?”2 In this respect, Europe is continuously reimagined in order to give particular meanings and order to the past and the future.3 Significantly, it is also a component in further constructions; it shapes perspectives on the world and acts as a “cognitive frame” for further interpretations of politics,



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cultures, and so on. Ideas of Europe are thus both products and producers of complex interpretative processes.4 With this in mind, my book examines how ideas about Europe were constructed in the early nineteenth century, and how those ideas were subsequently used in ideological and political terms. It would be misleading, however, to understand Europe simply as a “historically fabricated” invention.5 Europe, necessarily, is more than just an “idea” since it also consists of concrete applications: it is built upon (perceptions of) actual reality and therefore affects understanding of the material world and its politics.6 Europe is not merely a “symbolic operation learned and communicated among human beings”; it is also a “reality of the material world and its human transformations by techniques and organization.” 7 This relationship is symbiotic: figurative ideas of Europe stem from (interpretations of) actual historical events or geographical observations, and those ideas, in turn, reconstruct perceptions of Europe’s “reality.” In this respect, Europe exists on the porous boundaries between the real and the imagined, between the “material world” and its symbolic representations.

The Romantic Period: Europe and Nationalism How have Romantic period studies imagined Europe thus far? Traditionally, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have been associated with emerging ideas of nationalism, which Stuart Woolf defines as the “identification of a people with the territorial nation state.”8 Histories of nationalism typically argue that the partition of Poland, the American and French Revolutions, and the local reactions to Napoleon’s conquests inspired a “blueprint for a political program of national autonomy, unity and identity.”9 This configures Europe as a place where hostile states are in perpetual competition, and where peoples and communities increasingly define themselves by their distinctive “nationality.” Following this pattern, historians have attempted to show how British national identity emerged in the eighteenth century. Linda Colley suggests that the 50 years after 1776 were “one of the most formative periods [. . .] in the forging of British identity,” principally because prolonged conflict with France helped to shape a “particular sense of nationhood.”10 Similarly, for Gerald Newman, the theoretical components of nationalism—awareness of common language, war against a (French) other, hostility to Francophile upper-class culture, new secular ideas of progress—combined to form a “consuming fire of nationalist demands and actions” as early as the 1740s.11



Introduction


Faced with this familiar interpretation, many literary critics associate the writing of the period with the development and consolidation of the nation state. The tellingly titled Romanticism in National Context argues that “the Romantics looked within their own nations, seeking to put down new roots in history, in folklore and folksong, in pure, indigenous traditions of language, speech and expression, in bards and ballads.”12 In this sense therefore, ideas about literary tradition and national history are mutually constitutive: some critics have suggested, for instance, that Walter Scott’s and William Wordsworth’s writings assert a nationalist purpose by “emphasizing the connection of a people to its land” and by connecting “nineteenth-century readers to the national past that defines them.”13 This also has implications for how British writing engages with “foreign” influences and peoples. Although the post-Revolutionary period witnessed the migration of ideas and literatures “across social, cultural, national borders,” Peter Mortensen characterizes this interconnection as a “phobic” relationship: the 1790s saw a rise in so-called Europhobic discourse, or a fear of “alien” influences in British literature and politics.14 This association of the Romantic period with nationalism has two important consequences. First, it constructs Europe as a foreign space, distinct and detached from Britain. As I will demonstrate, this is not necessarily a pervasive view: many of the individuals I discuss, regardless of political persuasion, see Britain as being inseparably connected to a shared European culture, history, and politics. Second, this emphasis on nationalism interprets Europe as a patchwork of hostile states, divided by impenetrable cultural and political borders. Again, this is only one of many competing perspectives: ideas about rivalry and competition exist alongside assumptions of mutual interest, common cultural foundations, and even dreams of past and future unanimity. In order to appreciate the full complexity of ideas about Europe in the Romantic period, it is therefore necessary to challenge and moderate any overemphasis on nationalism.

Beyond the Nation How, though, is it possible to configure the period outside the terminology of nationalism? Recent theorists have investigated how texts, identities, and communities refuse to be confined by national boundaries. After all, nationalism can only be understood in the context of “internationality,” since it constructs itself on the difference of “others” and on the interaction of purportedly discrete spaces and communities.15 For this



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reason, nationalism must necessarily coexist with “transnationalism,” a term which, according to Stephen Vertovec, “broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people and institutions across the borders of nation states.”16 A number of scholars have adopted a “transnational” approach by analyzing cultural encounters and texts outside the framework of nationalism. In Mary Louise Pratt’s terminology, these studies often talk about “contact zones,” or “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash,” and mutually influence one another. Such “transcultural” interplay challenges the straightforward construction of nationhood in direct opposition to an enemy.17 Texts too can be understood in terms of transcultural circulation: literary works often travel beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language. Rather than being inseparably wedded to a particular nation or locality, they circulate in new contexts, both “locally inflected and translocally mobile.”18 Understanding these exchanges can therefore reconfigure texts and identity politics outside the language of nationality without problematically dissolving the notions of community and people in a “postnational” abstraction.19 Importantly for my purposes, these perspectives also allow early nineteenth-century Europe to be understood outside the dominant ideologies of nationbuilding. Indeed, some historians have reconceptualized the period by looking beyond the standard emphasis on the rise of popular nationalisms and the nation state. Instead, Napoleonic rule imposed a measure of administrative and cultural uniformity across the continent, while the growth of empires caused transnational governmental procedures to be “exported to the rest of the world.”20 Felicity Nussbaum’s dissatisfaction with the restrictive “boundaries of national histories and literatures” have led her to focus on “worldwide crossings” of people, goods, and ideas in order to show the interaction of “the local, the regional and the global” in eighteenth-century cultural and commercial encounters. Significantly, this critique of nationalism opens analytical space for the local as well as the transnational, since it explores how “the regional, national, transnational and global are mutually implicated” rather than one obscuring or dominating the others.21 Several recent studies have examined these “worldwide crossings” in Romantic literary culture, arguing that the period was characterized by “commerce des lumières (exchange of enlightened ideas),” “transnational dialogue,” and “new forms of cosmopolitan identities and politics.”22 Margaret Cohen and Carolyn Dever, for example, suggest that the early nineteenth-century novel developed not through “nationally distinct trajectories” but through “intersections and interactions among texts, readers,



Introduction


writers and publishing, and also critical institutions that linked together Britain and France.”23 Central to this is the idea of “sentimental communities” of readers: the international popularity of works by Goethe, Staël, and Rousseau created “transnational communities” linked by a shared emotional sympathy that “transcends nations, classes, and patriarchal families.”24 Karen O’Brien argues that eighteenth-century historians— Voltaire, William Robertson, Edward Gibbon—wrote “cosmopolitan histories” which explore “how national identities intersect with [. . .] one another” in “a common European civilization.”25 Robertson, for example, discusses how the kingdoms of Europe, “formerly single and disjointed, became so thoroughly acquainted, and so intimately connected with each other, as to form one great political system.”26 It might seem, therefore, that my interest in the idea of Europe is connected to this recent work on Romantic period “cosmopolitanism,” especially since I discuss ideas not necessarily grounded in nationalist ideology. In fact, however, there are several problems with using cosmopolitanism as an interpretative framework. The first regards the term “cosmopolitanism” itself.27 Generally used to posit some sort of opposition to local loyalties and nationalisms, it “has acquired so many nuances and meanings as to negate its role as a unifying ethic.” Not only do the sheer range of those varieties (for example, Christian, bourgeois, feminist, or socialist cosmopolitanisms) invest the term with bewildering vagueness, but it also implies a “detached loyalty” to abstract concepts—for example, “the human”— which are “incapable [. . .] of providing any kind of political purchase.”28 In brief, “the term cosmopolitanism is too imprecise and widely contested to serve as a useful register of interactions between homelands and others.” For example, it might denote someone utterly without roots or affiliations and alienated from society, or a “citizen of the world,” equally “at home” in different cultures.29 There are other problems too. Thomas Schlereth defines cosmopolitanism as “an attitude of mind that attempts to transcend chauvinistic national loyalties or parochial prejudices.” However, this suggests that the cosmopolitan is somehow removed from contexts and that it steers dangerously close to “universalism,” an erasure of difference which posits “an ideal for all men at all times.” Such pretension to universality is especially problematic because cosmopolitanism typically represents the “social aspiration of the elite intellectual class”: it is associated with the sophistication and wide travel of the rich and intellectuals.30 This is a very considerable problem for those who would emphasize the unconventional or innovatory perspectives afforded by cosmopolitanism. Some have even suggested that the social exclusivity of “cosmopolitan taste” makes it politically reactionary, although it should be remembered too that cosmopolitanism’s refusal



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to be confined by a political state means it is sometimes “at odds with the dominant culture and questions its hegemony.”31 Indeed, radical writers— including, as I will show, the Shelley–Byron circle—sometimes manage to be both antiestablishment and totalizing when they attack governments for suppressing supposedly universal, but often quite personal, political ideals.32 Regardless of the complex political connotations, cosmopolitanism in the sense of wide travel, advanced education, and mastery of many languages is necessarily a minority experience. It might present itself as an idea unconstrained by local loyalties or parochial restrictions, but it nevertheless depends upon very particular circumstances. Given that cosmopolitanism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is so dependent on educational and financial advantages, to what extent does it really permit the erasure of cultural barriers that it purports to accomplish?

Europe: Beyond Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism This book builds upon studies of Romantic period cosmopolitanism by seeking to view the period and its literature outside the framework of nationalism. However, I am not trying to identify and celebrate a “cosmopolitan Europe,” nor do I use “European” as a synonym for “cosmopolitan ideal.” Instead, I am interested in the range of meanings Europe possesses in the period. “Europe,” I will argue, is a term rich with analytic possibilities: it is used to evoke totalizing narratives of common history or identity, as well as express and legitimize numerous political and ideological systems. As Étienne Balibar says: The name of Europe [. . .] has been connected to cosmopolitan projects, to claims of imperial hegemony [. . .] to the resistance that they provoked, to programs dividing up the world and expanding ‘civilization’ [. . .], to the rivalry of ‘blocs’ that disputed legitimate possession of it, to the creation of a ‘zone of prosperity’ north of the Mediterranean.33

My purpose is to analyze the different interpretations and implications of “Europe” in the Shelley–Byron circle and, more widely, in early nineteenthcentury Britain. By studying these various representations, I approach the period and its writing beyond the restrictive boundaries of nationalism, without falling into the vague and problematic connotations of cosmopolitanism or “world citizenship.”



Introduction


In this sense, therefore, I am following recent work which, by reconsidering ideas about cosmopolitanism and nationalism, seeks new ways to understand the politics of identity and community. Bruce Robbins redefines cosmopolitanism as “an impulse [. . .] to transcend partiality that is itself partial”: it looks beyond local specificity and is also a product of it. In this respect, it is a methodological median between “false universalism” (which purports to erase or ignore local differences and boundaries) and a restrictive preoccupation with those parochial divisions.34 Nussbaum hopes for something similar when she calls for eighteenth-century “global studies,” which both “questions the boundaries of national histories” and avoids a homogenizing and universalist perspective.35 My contention here is that a nuanced study of the idea of Europe can effect this possibility, principally because it has to acknowledge how locally grounded and transnational ideas interact to construct concepts and interpretations of Europe. Furthermore, it may well be unhistorical to speak of a binary distinction between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. In this case, new approaches are needed to conceptualize the period’s identity and community politics more fully. As several historians have observed, eighteenth and nineteenthcentury intellectuals and revolutionaries often sought to represent their ideals and assumptions as simultaneously national, European, and universal: “by representing French culture as the leading edge of civilization, [French thinkers] identified the cause of humanity with their own national causes and saw themselves at the same time as French patriots and upstanding citizens of a cosmopolitan Republic of Letters.”36 For this reason, my analysis of ideas about Europe acknowledges the imbrication, rather than the incompatibility, of nationalist and transnational perspectives. I am seeking, therefore, to complicate the concepts of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and understand the period in terms of the interactions and frictions between localism and universalism. Noting that “neither cosmopolitanism nor localism/nationalism are possible as pure positions,” David Simpson asks whether models can be found to negotiate these perspectives without succumbing absolutely to either of them.37 What I am suggesting is that an investigation into the meanings of Europe assists this project, moving understandings of (Romantic) identity politics in new directions and encompassing the full richness of the period’s (trans)nationalism. Of course, this is not to imply that a European viewpoint is entirely unproblematic. As I will show, it can privilege local specificity—the supposed perfection of classical Greece, for example—just as it can construct Eurocentric universalisms. But since it can encompass both these perspectives, analysis of the idea of Europe can do full justice to conceptions of identity and society in the period.



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Introduction

9

Why, though, am I focusing on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Many historians associate this period with significant developments in the history of the idea of Europe, particularly a decline in the notion of “Christendom” and its gradual replacement with secular understandings of collective European identity—for instance, shared “arts and inventions” or military superiority.38 In this way, Europe came to be understood as a system of states held together by civil sovereignty, commerce, and diplomatic mechanisms designed to prevent religious wars and the growth of a hegemonic power.39 Montesquieu, for example, defined Europe in terms of “laws, morality, aristocracy, monarchy and liberty,” treating it not just as geographical term, but also a “cultural, political and intellectual entity with its own history and its own distinctive features.”40 Enrique Dussel also traces to the eighteenth century the influential idea that Europe has its intellectual and cultural origins in ancient Greece: an ideological construct which ignores how Greek texts were mediated through Muslim civilizations and insists that Greek culture is “exclusively western and European.”41 Furthermore, the tumultuous events following the year 1789 prompted prolonged competition over the political and ideological shape of Europe. How should it be organized? What intellectual frameworks should justify or modify that structure? The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars can thus be seen partly as a struggle between competing ideas of Europe: should it be a homogenously ruled empire, a network of rival regions, or an “association of nations”?42 Other problems, which now seem very contemporary, also emerged or became more intense at this time: difficulties of European nationalisms and conflict; questions about the geographical limits of Europe; the necessity of maintaining a “balance of power”; overtly imperial relations between Europe and the rest of the world. These enquiries became fused with earlier ideas about Europe as “a civilization superior to all others” and as a “commercially integrated community,” creating new and influential tensions in nineteenth-century constructions of Europe.43 As this implies, relations with the non-European world were especially crucial. Woolf argues that, through comparison with the extra-European world, “a distinctive conviction was forged of what constituted the essence of Europe’s superiority,” namely “role of the rational state” in furthering “civilization and progress.” This, in turn, “justified the material exploitation” of the rest of the world. The emergence of new disciplines—anatomy, anthropology, and philology—allowed Europeans to construct themselves and their “others” upon purportedly scientific foundations and according to renewed conviction of a unique “civilizing mission.”44 This is not an



The Idea of Europe and the Historical Moment


entirely uncontroversial view: recent scholarship has suggested that, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “there seems to arise a new desire [. . .] to construct an idea of Europe as ‘complete knowledge of itself’ ”; that is, to assume that Europe can be understood without reference to the rest of the world. Instead of identifying an inferior other outside Europe, Montesquieu, Staël, and others transferred its function onto a “negative part, or moment, of the European self”—most usually, the Italian or Iberian south. By this means, they translate the ancient “discussion between freedom (Europe) and despotism (Asia) [. . .] into a modern latitudinal rhetoric of north and south.” These eighteenth-century ideas—of an industrious north and a backward south—still inform modern “expectations of what we take Europe to be.”45 Of course, one could criticize these perspectives for oversimplifying or misrepresenting the (pre) Revolutionary period as an exclusive “point of origin” for certain ideas of Europe. However, the wider point can be accepted without reservation: the Romantic period, with its prolonged military and ideological conflicts, oversaw profound debate about Europe’s history and potential future. This book sets out to uncover how those ideas of Europe were constructed, both by the Shelley–Byron circle and in wider British culture of the early nineteenth century. However, my focus differs from the above examinations of Europe in two principal ways. First, these historians usually “narrate” Europe, tracing changes in the concept over long periods of time. They talk, for example, about the increasing importance of secularism, or the establishment of a modern “rational state.” Writing a smooth trajectory of this kind is not my purpose here. Instead, I aim to show how ideas of Europe contain several contradictory narratives, which run concurrently and are in debate. Second, while historians of the idea of Europe often focus on broad strands of time and sources, my study is of a much more specific group of individuals: the Shelley–Byron circle. As Peter Burke has argued, investigating the use of the word “Europe” is all very well, but we need to be sure whose idea is under discussion and under what contexts and constraints those thoughts operate. By identifying “the ‘repertoire’ of concepts available for expressing group identity in different places and times,” we can edge toward a “social history of consciousness of Europe.”46 Percy Shelley and Byron are especially suited to such an investigation, not only because they experienced and were fascinated by the sociopolitical events of the period which saw Europe redefined, but also because their works, as I will explore in detail, engage with many different ways to approach and understand Europe. They write about travel across borders (both within and outside European space); they discuss political change and the prospects of a new future for Europe; they show (problematic) interest in non-European cultures; and they identify ancient Greece and



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Rome as the “foundations” of European culture. Of course, focusing on particular individuals brings its own difficulties—their radicalism, relative wealth, and (classically based) education undoubtedly affect their conceptualization of Europe. They understand Graeco-Roman civilization, for example, not just in terms of its antiquarian interest, but as a living tradition which frames and inspires an understanding of Europe’s shared present and future as well as its common past. Furthermore, their perspectives are shaped by a British radical interpretation of “liberty” as freedom from religion, censorship, and political “despotism.” My purpose is not, therefore, to operate under the illusion that Shelley and Byron are straightforward representatives of all British ideas of Europe. Instead, I want to show, first, how their specific reflections contribute to wider understandings of the history of the idea of Europe and, second, how a study of “Europe” can inform readings of their work, allowing us to see it outside the frameworks of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Throughout the following chapters, I read Percy Shelley’s and Byron’s works alongside the writings of their “circle,” a term I use broadly to refer to those people they traveled, corresponded, or met with in a defined period of their careers. In this respect, I contribute to recent work in Romantic studies which examines authors and texts in terms of sociability and community.47 In general terms, I show how the circle discussed topics of mutual interest, and how works were composed as part of group dialogues about, say, Napoleon’s downfall, the Greek War of Independence, or the prospect of radical revolution. But, I also highlight more specific interconnections: the significance of Hobhouse as an author who shared many of Byron’s intellectual interests in politics and travel writing; Percy Shelley’s suggestion that Byron write a poem on the French Revolution, a proposal which eventually inspired his own Laon and Cythna; Byron’s engagement with political debates about international relations in the 1820s, and his association, through Thomas Moore and Hobhouse, with radical and Whig politicians and ideas. By showing how these individuals are part of interwoven group conversations and how the circle interacts with wider cultural discourses, I hope to avoid both an isolating focus on discrete individuals and the totalizations which would come from generalizing too broadly about ideas of Europe in the period.

Structure and Argument Each chapter in this book deals with a specific moment in the careers of Byron or Percy Shelley, tracing their use and interpretations of Europe



Introduction


at that exact time. In his analysis of how texts both document and “critically construct” history, James Chandler explains how “case studies” are used to comprehend and interpret specific events according to the concerns of later commentators. Historical understanding is thus constructed by a “dialogue” between two specific moments. Clearly, my book can itself be seen in these terms, since it examines historical ideas of Europe in terms of recent developments in Romantic period studies and burgeoning interest in the meanings of Europe. However, the Shelley–Byron circle also engages in this process, constructing ideas of Europe through a dialogue between the ideological concerns of their present (for example, radical politics) and interpretations of ancient and recent historical events or “cases,” such as Waterloo or Greek–Persian conflict. Moreover, case studies strive to identify both a unique instant and the wider schemes or structures for comprehending concepts at that moment.48 In this way, the Shelley–Byron circle’s writings reveal certain cultural structures and patterns for understanding Europe in the nineteenth century, but they are also partly anomalous, imparting unique viewpoints that, for specific reasons (for example, their political perspectives or aristocratic backgrounds), cannot be seen as entirely “representative” of those general structures. Part 1 of this book introduces the key ways in which the Shelley–Byron circle construct ideas about Europe, focusing on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and other contemporaneous travel writings. The circle’s real and imagined journeys through European spaces prompt reflections on borders, local particularity, and national rivalry. However, those same journeys also posit a transnational politics and culture, based on classical inheritance and the shared political implications of the Napoleonic wars. Chapter 1 focuses on Byron’s trip to the Near East in 1809–11. It examines his depiction of borders within and between European states, before considering how these boundaries construct ideas of Europe and its “others.” The chapter also introduces the problem of Greece and its supposed legacy, considered central to the development of European civilization, but problematically located within the Ottoman Empire. Chapter 2 investigates how Byron, Percy Shelley, and their circle respond to the post-Waterloo political situation in 1815–16. In the face of competing political programs for reorganizing the continent, they acknowledge a new multiplicity surrounding ideas of Europe. At the same time, however, they also articulate a singular history which narrates Europe’s development according to a specific ideological agenda determined mainly by their radical suspicion of reactionary politics. Furthermore, they understand Europe in terms of “freedom” and “liberty,”—concepts which simultaneously evoke and challenge the potential for European unity. Chapter 3 focuses on Byron’s residence in Italy



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between 1817 and 1818. Byron uses specific places in the Italian states to frame discussions of European history: he describes the uniqueness of certain locations, especially Rome and Venice, but also uses them to construct a federal idea of Italian culture and history. Italy, in turn, becomes a symbol for understanding modern Europe, particularly the ongoing struggles of monarchy and “freedom,” and the spread of a shared religion and classical heritage. Part 2 builds upon the ideas about Europe elucidated in the first three chapters, especially regarding international politics, the classical world, and experiences of travel. Percy Shelley uses these concepts about Europe for political ends: to articulate his interests in radical reform, and generalize his interpretation of European culture into an ideal model for universal progress. Chapter 4 shows how, for the Shelley circle in 1817–18, ideas of Europe emerge from reflections on the French Revolution and its legacy. I also consider how the circle identifies border-zones between Europe and Asia (especially in Constantinople), and how America is both an “other” and a more perfect version of Europe. The chapter concludes by discussing how the Shelleys were attacked for being “uneuropean” because they held allegedly defective (sexual) mores. In Chapter 5, I turn to the texts in which Percy Shelley uses the word “Europe” most often: the Defence of Poetry and Hellas, both written in 1821. He writes about Europe in ways that are both totalizing and specific; in other words, he builds ideas of Europe on specific historical moments, but also universalizes European civilization into an ideal for all places and periods. The chapter continues by considering the circle’s concurrent interests in travel, translation, and the (im)possibilities of transcultural communication. Part 3 explores the Byron circle’s engagements with actual political attempts to reshape Europe in the post-revolutionary period: the “congress system” and the Greek War of Independence. I discuss how Byron and other activists and politicians use discourses about Greece, revolution, and (trans)nationalism to both advocate and critique practical models for Europe’s future. Chapter 6 analyses the Byron circle’s reactions to international diplomacy in 1822–23. While Byron and associates denounce oligarchical tyranny, the politicians responsible for the congress system use the language of peace and cooperation to construct very different ideas of Europe. Crucially, however, as in Chapter 2, the word “liberty” is used to articulate and justify very different interpretations of Europe’s history and future. Lastly, Chapter 7 deals with Byron’s final trip to Greece in 1823–24. Greece and Europe come to be seen as inseparable concepts: support for the Greek War of Independence is intimately linked to enduring preoccupations with European cultural



Introduction


heritage and the possibility of radical change. Problematically though, differing interpretations of the War expose ideological conflict about the idea of Europe, the nature of “liberty,” and the purposes of that radical cause. These chapters therefore analyze a range of interweaving and competing concepts, which are particular to the circle itself, but also contribute to much wider debates about the future of Europe and the interpretation of its histories. In the face of this complexity, it might be tempting to conclude that Europe is “a mass of values” which “have simply accumulated without being ordered to form a harmonious synthesis.”49 But just because a complete “synthesis” is impossible, this does not mean that identifiable positions and trends cannot be recognized and analyzed. Percy Shelley, Byron, and their circle construct Europe using radical interpretations of “liberty” and “freedom”; they understand Europe through particular imaginings of ancient and modern Greek and Roman history; they define European spaces and cultures against Islamic and American others. As part of these processes, they identify both a flawed and aberrant Europe (of depots and restorations) and an alternative European future, mediated through their interests in radical politics and the prospect of revolution (or at least a process of reform). These Europes are entwined together, both conflicting with and conceptually dependent on one another. Most importantly, the Shelley–Byron circle uses the language of “Europe” in a particularizing and a universalizing manner. They identify specific historical events, places, and writings which construct a uniquely European culture, while also generalizing that culture into a universal ideal for all humanity, a process which purports to disguise Europe’s particularity. By exploring these ideas, this book reconsiders the circle’s ideas and politics, and notes how its members engage with and use contemporary events for ideological purposes. Significantly though, Europe is both a discourse centered on political “debate and conflict” and has the “proportions of an unattainable idea.”50 In other words, ideas of Europe are political programs and not just immaterial “ideas”; yet, at the same time, they have a utopian dimension, since they look for a social prospect beyond immediate material conditions. The language of Europe is a way to engage with (the frustrations of) political circumstances and “go beyond” those restrictions by appealing to something more ideal. This tension is central, I think, to comprehending the politics of Percy Shelley, Byron, and their circle. And nor do the implications of my argument end there. By showing how various texts engage with ideas about Europe, I present an approach to the period outside the dominant language of nationalism and the potentially imprecise generalizations of cosmopolitanism.



14

Introduction

15


“Europe” evokes a vocabulary able to articulate both transnationalism and the specificities of particular locations and cultures. For this reason, the study of the idea of Europe can enable new ways to understand the complexities of identity formation and the politics of community in the Romantic period and beyond.





The Childe Harold Pilgrimage: Byron’s European Tour, 1809–18



Part 1




“Spain, Portugal, and Greece”: Byron on the Borders of Europe, 1809–11

Introduction This chapter explores how Byron perceived and imagined Europe on his trip to the Near East between 1809 and 1811. The tour inspired the bestselling travel poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage I and II (1812), which I read alongside Byron’s contemporaneous journals and correspondence. Additionally, I examine texts by individuals whom Byron met on the journey and who published their own accounts shortly before or after Childe Harold. This includes John Cam Hobhouse, who accompanied Byron until July 1810; Sir John Carr, who met Byron in Spain; and John Galt, who traveled with him from Gibraltar to Malta and later socialized with him in Athens and Smyrna.1 Byron labels his expedition as both real and imagined: a fictionalized interpretation of an actual experience. In the preface to Childe Harold I and II, Byron insists that his poem documents an actual journey. The scenes correspond to particular places experienced by the author: “Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania and Greece.” But, despite this specificity, he also insists that the narrative is invented; it makes “no pretension to regularity” and is framed by the imagined consciousness of “this fictitious character, ‘Childe Harold.’ ”2 In making this double assertion, the preface presents the Mediterranean tour as both a literal and an imagined journey, where representations and real experiences of European space are interdependent. In Stephen Cheeke’s words, Byron explores “the materiality of history” and “all that [a location] represents imaginatively or historically,



Chapter 1


all that expands [. . .] beyond the circumference of the actual spot.”3 Childe Harold participates in this “materiality” as well as in imaginative construction; it shows that the perception and the production of spaces are interrelated. I am particularly interested in how the poem produces ideas of European space by perceiving and conceiving the places it mentions. For example, in the opening stanza of Childe Harold, the narrator locates his muse in Greece: in Hellas deem’d of heav’nly birth [. . .] Yet there I’ve wander’d by thy vaunted rill; Yes! sigh’d o’er Delphi’s long-deserted shrine. (Canto 1, lines 1–6)

The narrator alludes to an actual place, but also to an imaginative landscape loaded with classical allusion and mythological significance. Delphi is both a real space experienced by those who visit it and an imagined cultural space which resonates with readers far distant from the actual site. That resonance both creates and presupposes a community of readers who appreciate classical heritage and trace that shared culture back to ancient Greece. By describing his reflections on Delphi, Byron thus formulates an idea of European culture premised upon, and bound together by, classical inheritance. His writings document the lived experience of European travel, while simultaneously constructing the Europe through which he and his characters move. The chapter pursues three lines of enquiry. First, it explores the presentation of boundaries within and between European states, and how this helps construct ideas about Europe. In his writing about Spain and Portugal, Byron describes a European space checkered with state and cultural rivalries, but which also allows for travel and cultural interaction. In this way, Byron presents contrasting strategies for articulating difference within Europe—sometimes privileging divisions and sometimes identifying evidence for commonality. Second, the chapter discusses the “edges” of Europe and what signifies a transition to alien, non-European space. Byron identifies Albania, Gibraltar, and Constantinople as border-zones where otherness meets familiarity and differing Asian and European social practices clash and interact. Last, the chapter introduces a theme central to this book: how the spatial politics of Greece’s location—within the Ottoman Empire—affects the idea of a European tradition centered on ancient Greek civilization. Greece is simultaneously conceived as a European progenitor as well as a corrupted and alien other. In this respect, Greece is central to



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Spain, Portugal, and Greece

21

Boundaries within Europe Writing to his friend Robert Dallas, Byron presents two quite distinct perspectives on the possibility and utility of travel: All climates are equally interesting to me; that mankind are everywhere despicable in different absurdities; that the further I proceed from your country the less I regret leaving it, and the only advantage you have over the rest of mankind is the sea that divides you from your foes [. . .] I would be a citizen of the world, but I fear some indispensable affairs will soon call me back.4

Byron notes that travel in unfamiliar places accentuates division: societies are defined by their different flaws and separated by physical and cultural barriers. However, he also celebrates the unconstrained freedom of his journey: he is comfortable in “all climates” and is almost a “citizen of the world,” unrestrained by borders or emotional longings for home. These two perspectives, I want to suggest, shape Byron’s perception and conception of European spaces. He imagines and experiences Europe as open and interconnected as well as fragmented and divisive. In Childe Harold, when the protagonist arrives at Lisbon, the narrator imagines Europe as a place of international conflict, where state boundaries are the scenes of competition between rivals. Portugal is “a nation swoln with ignorance and pride, / Who lick yet loath the hand that waves the sword / To save them from the wrath of Gaul’s usurping lord” (1.222–4). Portugal is proud of its independence and is the scene of spatial conflict, at the boundary of French and British influence. This nationalistic focus peaks in the stanzas condemning the Convention of Cintra in 1808: And ever since that martial synod met, Britannia sickens, Cintra! at thy name [. . .] Will not our own and fellow-nations sneer, To view these champions cheated of their fame. (1.306–7, 311–12)

In this view of European politics, competing nations thrive on conflict over boundaries and engage in a contest which seeks to expand and harden



European history and self-representation, but it also is inseparable from non-European spaces and cultures. For the Byron circle, Greece epitomizes uncertainty about the borders and definition of Europe.


the spatial divisions between states. Byron frames his Iberian experience in terms of national comparison and notes the differences between British and Spanish practices: “Spanish roads,” for example, “are far superior to the best English turnpikes.”5 In this way, he establishes cultural borders as well as political ones, noting the extent and type of differences indicated by customary behavior and social convention. While in Spain, Byron encountered Sir John Carr6 whose Descriptive Travels in the Southern and Eastern Parts of Spain (1811) presents Europe as fractured by national rivalries. He notes that “the admiration of the English, and abhorrence of the French, [is] every day more and more conspicuous” among the Spanish. Carr also devotes much space to laughing at, or exclaiming against, Spanish culture: the bad food, the filthy inns, the incompetent government, and the ill-kempt women.7 His is a Europe divided by borders and otherness; the purpose of travel is to catalogue this unfamiliarity. Indeed, for Carr, each person is a traveling island of nationhood, unable to traverse the borders of cultural difference. Individuals are held as symbols of their countries: after the battle of Talavera (1809), Spanish crowds parade English tourists, thanking them for the victory and calling them by spurious military titles.8 John Galt, whom Byron first encountered in Gibraltar, also imagines Europe in this manner. His book Voyages and Travels in the Years 1809, 1810 and 1811 regularly launches into national triumphalism. At one point, he claims that “all the greatest additions which the moderns have made to the faculties, the knowledge, the comfort, and the power of man, are of British origin,” before pompously explaining how “the ranting tragedy of the Revolution, and the solemn farce of the Emperor [Napoleon] are exhibitions [. . .] offensive to good taste.”9 The companion volume, Letters from the Levant, ends by proclaiming Britain “the most independent, singly and collectively happy” country in the world.10 By using these words, Galt sketches a border around Britain, separating it by virtue of its alleged security and happiness. Galt’s years of travel, and two volumes of reflections, merely confirm the absoluteness of such divisions within Europe: the unassailable barrier between the familiar and the unfamiliar. The narrator of Childe Harold, however, is not always so constrained by national boundaries. Describing the Spanish–Portuguese border, he says: Where Lusitania and her sister meet, Deem ye what bounds the rival realms divide? [. . .] Ne barrier wall, ne river deep and wide,



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But these between a silver streamlet glides, And scarce a name distinguisheth the brook, Though rival kingdoms press its verdant sides. Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook, And vacant on the rippling waves doth look. (1.360–1, 366–73)

The border, and the intense separateness of the two countries, dissipates into a pastoral scene undivided by military or diplomatic rivalries. A similar process occurs between stanzas 52 and 60, when the narrator turns from Spanish politics and literary romance to apostrophize Parnassus. This translocation across borders uses the ancient mythological traditions of Greece to illuminate modern Iberian events and disrupts both spatial boundaries and temporality. The analogy constructs a kind of Hellenistic commonality, whereby the images of ancient Greece can frame or contextualize contemporary incidents elsewhere in Europe. In this way, therefore, the poem presents an idea of Europe unencumbered by boundaries—where illusory borders can be crossed at will, ancient practices illuminate contemporary politics, and cultural traditions are applicable outside their location of origin. The poem does, however, also note the potential dangers of this undivided Europe, especially in imperialist rhetoric. The narrator laments how Napoleon’s ambition knows no limitations, and how his empire does not respect the sanctity of separations, absorbing conquests into itself: “When soars Gaul’s Vulture, with his wings unfurl’d, / [. . .] the young, the proud, the brave, / [. . .] swell one bloated Chief’s unwholesome reign (1.547–50). Some contemporary reviews of the poem find these complex ideas of Europe uncomfortable, arguing either that Byron had misunderstood the real “state of Europe,” or that he possessed defective views on patriotism and national pride. Town Talk, for instance, chides Byron for praising Spanish courage, whereas in fact “the Spanish rely more upon the power of the allies than their own spirit and patriotism” (italics in original). Indeed, the reviewer considers Spain a lost cause, counseling instead that Britain should attack France directly. He understands that Childe Harold seeks to investigate Europe, but interprets that treatment rather narrowly and criticizes the poem for underestimating “French tyranny” and for overindulging Spanish (rather than British) national interest.11 The Christian Observer also connects Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers to changes in European politics: “his Lordship seized the tomahawk of satire, mounting the fiery wings of his muse, and, like Bonaparte, spared neither rank, nor



Ne horrid crags, nor mountains dark and tall Rise like the rocks that part Hispania’s land from Gaul:


sex, nor age, but converted the republic of letters into one universal field of carnage.”12 Just as Napoleon ruptured the pan-European “republic of letters” with aggressive military universalism, so has Byron colluded in this project, his vitriolic literary attacks symbolizing the decline of genteel cultural exchange across borders. Both these reviewers see the centrality of Europe in Byron’s work, but they disagree with the ideas allegedly presented: Town Talk considers Byron insufficiently conscious of the borders between European states, inappropriately supporting another national interest, while the Observer regrets that he antagonizes cultural conflict, particularly between Scotland and England. Most reviews accuse Childe Harold of being inadequately patriotic. The Critical Review says: “we hope in some future Canto to welcome the Childe’s return to his native country [. . .] retaining his innate enthusiasm only for the nobler purposes of a legitimate and patriotic ambition.”13 The reviewer finds Harold’s transgression across borders problematic, perhaps because it implies a view of Europe not easily compartmentalized into patriotic spatial territories. Similar sentiments recur in Francis Jeffrey’s otherwise positive assessment in the Edinburgh Review: Byron’s writing and Harold’s movements, “run directly counter to very many of our national passions.” The Satirist addresses the author directly: “For shame! for shame! my Lord. Are these the sentiments of a Briton [. . .] Devoid of all generous and patriotic enthusiasm?”14 For these writers, the borderlessness of Harold’s wanderings—his lack of consistent affiliation with a specific state or locale—is profoundly unsettling in a time of war, when state boundaries and competition for territorial control is paramount. The Quarterly Review even accuses the poem of being excessively cosmopolitan in its means of expression, objecting to the mix of “Greek, Saxon, and modern English” in the line “And where these are, light Eros finds a feere.”15 As Jane Stabler observes, hostile reviews often associated this “incongruous” and unconventional style with unstable, anti-establishment politics: Byron’s “refusal to discriminate in matters of style was equated with democratic principles” and construed as an unpatriotic challenge to British foreign policy.16 These reviews, however, only comprehend one aspect of the poem, for it is not explicitly anti-nationalist—especially in the sections extolling Spanish and, later, Greek achievements. Instead, Childe Harold emphasizes both the connection and the separations between peoples across Europe. The bullfighting scene operates as a marker of cultural identity, separating locals from travelers. Harold is distressed by this parochial “ungentle sport” and aware that it creates a cultural border between locals and the alien “others” (1.792, 827–36). But the narrative voice also identifies common correlations across these cultures: the vestiges of a “fallen” chivalric tradition, the former nominal unity between “Christian shores,” and, more 10.1057/9780230106307 - The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe, Paul Stock


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recently, the cause against a common enemy (1.881, 685). Such correlations facilitate understanding across national borders: they allow the bullfight to be (ironically) understood in the context of a shared chivalrous past; they enable swift comparison between this Sabbath-day pursuit and the riotous social display of a Sunday in Hackney. At such moments in the poem, European societies both clash and interact, and the experience is described in terms of familiarity and alienation. Another example occurs in the lines “Fall’n nations gaze on Spain; if freed, she frees / More than her fell Pizarros once enchained” (1.913–4). This manages to invoke a specific Spanish nationalism and brings together oppressed “fall’n nations” jointly inspiring each other to “freedom.” This kind of commonality contrasts with the imperial erasure of borders alluded to in the Pizarro reference and now represented by French advances into the Iberian Peninsula. In this way, Byron imagines Europe both with and without unassailable borders: it is a space checkered with state and cultural separations, but also an area of uninhibited travel and extensive cultural interaction. The first edition displays this in its appendix, which provides translations of Romaic texts, a list of Romaic authors, and a lexicon of phrases. The appendix has a particularist element in that it seeks to reinvigorate the language and literature of a specific geographical and cultural space. But, it also introduces the language to a wider readership and enabling intercultural communication beyond the borders of the region.17 All these examples display variable spatial understandings of Europe as both divided and undivided. But they also negotiate contrasting societal understandings of Europe: they highlight specific (and potentially divisive) cultural practices and an awareness of how those same practices can be mutually comprehensible and comparable. In this way, the examples present contrasting strategies for articulating difference within Europe— either privileging those divisions, or attempting to reconcile them by focusing on potential sources for commonality. Some moments—for example, the bullfighting scene—show how a pluralistic comparison of different European cultural practices and a more homogenous understanding of shared culture are evident in the same instance. The spatial investigation of borders thus leads to reflections on cultural ideas of Europe— particularly the contrasting visions of Europe as pluralistic variation or as a single cultural entity. It is productive to compare Byron’s spatial and social ideas of Europe with those put forward by Galt in Voyages and Travels. Galt contends that France has traditionally striven for pan-European authority: “Kings of France have never ceased to cherish the wish and hope of being Emperors of the West,” either through “coercive wars to recover the sovereignty of Europe,” or cultural imperialism (“[France] set herself up as transcendent in the arts and sciences [. . .] and acquired no small ascendancy in 10.1057/9780230106307 - The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe, Paul Stock




the minds of the admiring vulgar”).18 Galt thus equates European unity with French expansionism, though he exalts British “commercial power” in opposition to this aggressive model. British possessions are not tyrannical, Galt argues, because Britain aims to create trade routes rather than “one corporative despotism.” First, this theory makes history and contemporary politics a battle for the idea of Europe, pitting French federalism against British commercial networks. Second, it suggests that a unified Europe will occur if all European space is overwhelmed by specifically French military and cultural power. In this respect, the borderless Europe, where political and cultural boundaries between countries are erased, is merely the consequence of aggressive state expansion: it follows national competition for bordered territory. Byron’s vision is more complex, since he overlays divided and undivided ideas of Europe, exploring how certain scenes reveal both parochial and collective notions of Europe. As I show in subsequent chapters, this becomes extremely important in Byron’s later discussions of Greek heritage and independence, both in later Cantos of Childe Harold and at the end of his career in 1824. Indeed, the following chapter argues that the Shelley–Byron circle combine bordered nationalist understandings of Europe with hopes for a common or transnational European culture and purpose.

At the Edges of Europe Childe Harold does not only investigate boundaries within Europe. It also explores the edges of Europe; that is, spaces defined by borders with a nonEuropean “other.” This theme first arises in Canto 1: after commenting on the fluid border between Spain and Portugal, the narrator constructs a new frontier between chivalric Christian Europe and military Islam—a division “Of Moor and knight [. . .] The Paynim turban and the Christian crest” (1.383–5). The second Canto develops this idea, establishing a geographical and racial division between Europe and Africa: Through Calpe’s [Gibraltar’s] straights survey the steepy shore; Europe and Afric on each other gaze! Lands of the dark-ey’d Maid and dusky Moor. (2.190–3)

The narrator creates a cultural border between European familiarity and “otherness,” remarking on the “Moslem luxury” of “Wealth and Wantonness” and the warlike “wrath how deadly” (2.570–2, 583). This



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builds a very clear separation between European and non-European space, the division indicated by Islamic rule and nonwhite skin color. Consequently, those people occupying European space can be represented as a single group, despite their various nationalities and allegiances. The narrator uses “Giaour” as an umbrella term for western European Christians in conflict with “Othman’s race” (2.729–30) and also refers to the “ancient butcher-work” of “Frank and Turk” (2.602–3). Hobhouse defines “Frank” very specifically as “a name that includes all those of whatever nation who are dressed in the [manner . . .] of civilised Europe,”19 and Galt also uses the word in this sense, referring to “Frank families [. . .] of English descent.”20 They thereby construct a homogenous idea of European peoples defined by contrasts with Ottoman and Islamic society. Significantly, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “frank” has etymological associations with “free” and “freedom.” It can mean the following: “free in condition; not in serfdom or slavery”; “released from captivity”; “free from restraint or impediment.”21 In this respect, the word has political connotations, defining European “freedoms” in contrast with Islamic decadence and despotism.22 The usage of “Frank” might seem to establish an idea of European solidarity opposed to an Islamic “other.” In fact, however, Byron employs the word to signify both collectivity and separateness within European countries. In a supplementary paper to Childe Harold, he uses “Frank” to refer only to the French, mentioning “Englishmen, Germans, Danes, &c.” separately, and imagining various European peoples competing for influence in the Greek regions. In the appendix though, the word reemerges as a collective term for all Europeans: “it is pleasant to be a Frank, particularly an Englishman, who may abuse the government of his own country; or a Frenchman, who may abuse every government except his own.”23 This sentiment is particularly significant since it acknowledges both differences and connections between European peoples. In this sense, therefore, Byron’s investigation of the boundaries of Europe exposes a certain ambiguity regarding (the existence of) European identity. This becomes all the more complex when Childe Harold turns away from the spaces and peoples on either side of the apparent European border to observe the spaces of that border itself. The narrator locates one such border-zone in Albania, an outpost of civility, where “chivalrous emprise” meets the “savage men”: “Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak, / Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear”; “The scene was savage, but the scene was new” (2.337–9, 376–7, 385). Albania represents a barbarous space, as if Europe is the epicenter of civilization and the further away one travels, the more diluted that civility becomes. At these edges of Europe, humans are hardly distinguishable





from animals: the “wilder men” and the “savage [. . .] scene” are defined in terms of each other. However, Albania is also a borderland between Christianity and Islam—“The cross descends, thy minarets arise, / And the pale crescent sparkles in the glen” (2.340–1). This implies a clash between two cultures and their symbols, rather than a movement from a single “civilized” society to its absence. In this respect, Byron presents the spaces outside Europe in a deeply ambiguous fashion, suggesting that the Islamic world is both “savage” and a rival civilization. This uncertain conception of the non-European continues in Byron’s letters. He remarks on the incivility of Islamic customs, especially the “horrible cruelties” of war, but also finds recognizable social interest in high rank, decorum, and property.24 In this sense, Albania is both strange and familiar; Byron’s travels have led him to a border-zone between the alien and the known. His letters from early 1810 reveal his awareness of traveling at the edges of Europe—“ I am now on the Asiatic side,” he says on March 19, adding a month later that “I have traversed Greece [. . .] and got into Asia,” as if he is crossing an invisible boundary.25 More revealingly, he informs Henry Drury that “Albania I have seen more of than any Englishman (but a Mr Leake) for it is a country rarely visited from the savage character of the natives, though abounding in more natural beauties than the classical regions of Greece.”26 This important phrase confirms Albania as a borderland where unknown savagery and ancient Greek high-culture confront and interact with one another. Byron is fascinated by such meetings of otherness and familiarity, and these borders are sometimes articulated in terms of European and Asian boundaries, Christian and Muslim rivalry, or Frankish and Turkish social customs. Other writers also identify Albania as a borderland. The “Mr Leake” mentioned by Byron, a British traveler and resident at Ali Pasha’s court, says that the area has historically been the scene of “Oriental” and Frankish interaction, signified by the mixing of Christian and Islamic practices. Albania is thus a mysterious place where “the exact boundaries [. . .] are doubtful”—on the edges of the familiar, but not quite alien.27 Hobhouse also calls Albania a country which “has never been accurately described”; it is a place on the borders of the known, since travelers have found it “impossible to give [. . .] the actual boundaries of the country.” Unable to associate themselves either with Frank or Turk, the local inhabitants instead define themselves by their marginalized independence: “For when the natives of other provinces, upon being asked who they are, will say ‘we are Turks,’ or ‘we are Christians,’ a man of this country answers ‘I am an Albanian.’ ”28 Hobhouse understands the region in terms of Christian-Turkish interaction and is disconcerted to find people on the “frontiers” who do not define themselves according



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to that rivalry, choosing instead to name themselves after the borderland that separates and connects the two. Hobhouse identifies other such border-zones at the edges of Europe. He portrays Constantinople as a place of interfaith tension: “the distinction between the Mahometan and the Christian resident or settler, is perhaps nowhere so decided.” The Bosphorus is a boundary between Europe and Asia: “country houses of the Franks [. . .] in the European style” face KarakAnadoli, “the castle of Asia” across the water, making a clear geographical division between continents. Moreover, his experiences in the city prompt reflection on different cultural practices: The system of manners belonging to the civilised ancients of the West and East, seems to be nearly the same as that of the modern Orientals, and entirely distinct from that of the Franks and of Christendom. If the Russians, Poles, and Hungarians, have any peculiarities which distinguish them from other Frank Christians, it is because these nations are of Oriental origin.29

Unlike some contemporaries, Hobhouse does not associate the spaces and cultures outside “Christendom” with savagery. Firstly, he identifies the modern Orient with ancient classicism, potentially legitimizing the occupation of Greece by suggesting that the Turks are the cultural inheritors of classical civilization. Secondly though, he makes “Frankishness” fully separate from both “Eastern” cultures and ancient Greece and Rome; the Franks instead represent an independent, younger tradition. In this sense, a specifically “Frankish,” or western European, self-identity is not dependent on classical inheritance and developed only after the growth of Christianity. By distinguishing between different societal traditions in Europe according to geographical location and climate, Hobhouse recalls Montesquieu’s distinction between northern and southern European peoples. Those in the north have “peu de vices, assez de vertus, beaucoup de sincérité & de franchise” (few vices, enough virtues, and much sincerity and frankness), whereas in the south “vous croirez vous éloigner de la Morale même; des passions plus vive multiplieront les crimes” (you will believe you have moved away from morality itself: the liveliest passions will increase crimes).30 According to Roberto Dainotto, this complicates any straightforward separation between free Europe and despotic Asia, by internalizing an “other” within Europe: the north’s “civilization” defines itself against the stagnant and barbaric south.31 Hobhouse similarly identifies two governmental traditions along the same north–south axis: north-western “Frankish” culture, and southern Greco-Roman-Oriental “system of manners.” However, because he associates classical civilization and the Orient together, Hobhouse challenges





those thinkers, including Byron, who enshrine Greece at the centre of European tradition. In all these writers, the interest in borderlands and cultural confrontation serves a double purpose: it establishes a division (however vaguely defined) between Europe and its “others” and, at the same time, it shows how that divide can be traversed. Étienne Balibar provides a useful metaphor for this perspective when he describes European space as consisting not of separate regions, but of “overlapping sheets or layers”—a phrase which acknowledges the division of borders, but which also allows for their flexibility.32 Hobhouse proposes that various peoples—Romans, Slavs, Huns and Scythians—all traveled through Albania and left their marks on the region.33 This theory partly upholds the separations between those peoples with their different histories and enduringly distinct social customs. Yet, it also suggests that cultural and spatial borders are open: boundaries can be established, but can also disappear or be relocated over time.34 For John Carr, too, the border can be a place of exchange and cultural fluidity. Reflecting on the Moorish rule of Spain, he commends the “brilliant dominion” which led to “a high degree of renown for those arts and sciences, and system of political economy, which enrich and embellish nations.” Carr does not define Spanish “civility” in opposition to Islamic “otherness”; instead, that civility is the product of the Moorish encounter. As such, the Gibraltar–Africa border is a space for cultural exchange: “the most southern point of Europe, where there is a large Moorish round-tower [. . . faces] a craggy mountain of stupendous height called Ape’s Hill, the ancient Abyla, one of the northern bulwarks of Africa.”35 Carr describes a border here, but one of mutual naming and interaction—a crossing point, not a barricade. Even Galt, preoccupied with French–British rivalry, sees the Mediterranean as a connecting space, linking “opulent and populous lands” from the “rich tract of Asia Minor” to the “celebrated kingdom of Egypt.” The sea enables communication, acting as a gateway rather than a barrier.36 Traversing borders is important for Byron. In his letters, he constantly boasts of having swum the Hellespont from Europe to Asia. Writing to John Hanson, he declares that “if I should ever be induced to sell N[ewstead]—I will pass my life abroad.—If I retain it, I return, if not I stay where I am.” The prospects of future wanderings are thus related to the uncertainties regarding Byron’s property problems; as he probes the edges of Europe, the spaces of “home” are under threat, and he defines himself by his dislocation.37 On the ship back to England, Byron declares himself more comfortable with the spatial ambiguities of travel than with the bordered securities of his own country—he wishes to return “either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East,” to a border-zone poised between the familiar and



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the strangeness of adventure.38 Furthermore, many of the shorter poems printed with Childe Harold are concerned with the traversal of borders. One discusses the swimming of the Hellespont, while another negotiates the relationship between spatial translocation and attachment to a particular locale: “Think of me sweet! when alone / Though I fly to Istanbul / Athens holds my heart and soul” (from poem VII, “Athens 1810”). In the second poem of the XIV, the narrator at first pines for “the distant shore which gave me birth,” but later sees the spaces of “otherness” transformed into the familiar: Lady! when I shall view the walls Where free Byzantium once arose; And Stamboul’s Oriental halls The Turkish tyrants now enclose [. . .] On me ‘twill hold a dearer claim, As spot of thy nativity. (lines 33–40)

The speaker envisages his alien surroundings as a romantic scene, both perceiving the unfamiliar space and reimagining it in more reassuring terms.39 All these poems deal with the physical crossing of spatial and cultural borders, but they also illustrate confrontations with “otherness”—in the sense of both antagonism and accommodation. For this reason, these border-zones represent the interaction of non-European “otherness” and European familiarity. In doing so, they both confirm and erase separations between peoples and their cultures.

Locating Greece In addition to Albania, Gibraltar and Constantinople, another borderland at the edge of Europe is Greece: The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same; Unchanged in all except its foreign lord— Preserves alike its bounds and boundless frame. (Childe Harold, 2.836–9)

Greece is both a specific location, constrained, and overrun by a “foreign lord,” but its cultural legacy also inspires people beyond its historical and spatial borders. When the narrator mentions “the scenes our earliest dreams




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Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng; [. . .] Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore; (2.855–60)

This section locates Greece at the margins of Europe, overwhelmed by Ottoman otherness, but also central to European culture and education. For those travelers who visit and imagine Greece, it is a borderland where the familiar and the unfamiliar are negotiated and redefined. Hobhouse also understands Greece as a borderland between Franks and Turks. “At Athens,” he says, the Turk is “subdued either by the superior spirit of his subjects, or by the happy influence of a more genial climate” and gains “a new character, ornamented by the virtues of humanity, kindness, and an easy affability, to which he attains in no other quarter of the Mahometan world.” In this respect, Athens is the point where two cultural traditions interact—where Grecian tradition affects and is affected by Turkish “ferocity.” Hobhouse, like Montesquieu, implies that particular places are associated with specific forms of cultural behavior: the “soil” of Athens moderates the conduct of the fierce Ottomans. Later, however, Hobhouse seems uncertain how to express Greece’s complex relationship with western European countries. He contends that “Europe is indebted to this once famous country” for many intellectual and technical innovations, but that, partly due to its Ottoman government, it has recently degenerated and now offers “no useful invention which they have transmitted to the West.” Greece is both within and outside the pan-European transmission of ideas.40 If Hobhouse suggests that Greek and Ottoman culture can affect one another, creating a border-zone between Europe and its others, John Galt asserts the indissoluble foreignness of the Turks: though they “are the masters of Greece [. . .] Europe is not the proper country of that people [. . .] In Europe the Turk appears as a stranger.” The Ottomans have illegitimately traversed into Europe by invading Greece—although the region itself is not unambiguously part of Europe since “the Greeks are almost as ignorant of the west of Europe as we are of them.”41 For Galt, borders can only be crossed in one direction: the European traveler can experience and analyze



have dwelt upon” (2.833), this phrase explicitly acknowledges the importance of Greece as a conceived, as well as a perceived, space. Moreover, the use of “our” constructs some kind of non-Greek cultural community connected to Greece and its achievements:

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unfamiliar territories, but the peoples living in those places (Turks and modern Greeks) either remain bound by their locations or can only venture out illicitly.42 The learned European traveler can take possession of Greece, claiming it as a predecessor for his society, but the Ottomans cannot lawfully rule it. In this respect, Greece acts both as a border-zone and as a conceptual barricade against the Ottomans: it asserts European superiority, as well as acknowledging the complex cultural legacies in the region. Despite the spatial ambiguities of Greece, Hobhouse appropriates its history to construct a shared European tradition. The Greeks are “in possession of the key of a treasury, whose stores they were unable to use” and thus, it has been left to British scholars and collectors to reclaim the culture and language which “was once that of all the civilised nations of Europe.”43 First, Hobhouse maps out the “true” legacy of Grecian glory: preserved by Western Europe, and thus central to European identity. But second, he strips modern Greece of any such pretensions to inherit that achievement itself, partly to legitimize the first point, but also to reimagine Greece as a border-zone on the edges of European civility and partly overrun by non-European barbarity. In this way, he explores its problematic location, situated on the borders between classical and Ottoman civilizations, but also constructs a kind of progress theory, in which certain sociocultural “values” (like technical innovation) were at first Greek, but have now come to represent Europe. Hobhouse identifies Greece and modern Europe as stages in a teleological theory of progress. While Hobhouse appropriates ancient Greece conceptually by absorbing it into a European foundation narrative, other individuals, notably Lord Elgin, literally took possession of Greece by removing its artifacts for personal or government collections. According to William St. Clair, the publication of Childe Harold, with its verses attacking Elgin, unleashed debate regarding the legality of this practice: No longer did the conversation turn on the dry academic question of whether the marbles were truly “Phidian” or not. Now the question was what right had Elgin to remove the precious heritage of a proud nation [. . .] The Elgin marbles had now become a symbol, of Greece’s ignominious slavery, of Europe’s failure to help her, and of Britain’s overweening pride.44

On one level, Byron satirizes Elgin’s behavior as a straightforward imperial conquest: “the last poor plunder from a bleeding land” (2.114). However, Byron also appropriates Greece for his own reasons, representing the Parthenon as a timeless symbol of civilized resistance against barbarian invaders and arbitrary “tyrants” (including Elgin himself) (2.101, 119).





This is a disagreement about how (and not whether) Greece can be used ideologically to interpret Europe’s cultures and traditions. Are ancient Greek artifacts the cultural property of all Europe, implying a shared heritage? Or do the claims of modern Greece hold sway, an argument which posits a Europe of more firmly divided spatial and national loyalties? The sections of Childe Harold which denounce Elgin (for example, 2.91–117) enter the debate in a double-sided manner. The liberal use of classical allusion makes reference to a shared, European-wide cultural base, but the denunciations assert a more nationalistic cause too, emphasizing the intellectual and literary independence of Greece and opposing its appropriation by any “Despot’s chains” (2.108). Interestingly, Elgin’s own justifications are similarly double-edged: “the exertions I made in Greece were wholly for the purpose of securing to Great Britain, and through it to Europe in general, the most effectual possible knowledge.”45 He argues that Greece’s buildings and statues are “all Europe’s” and should be shared among other countries, but also that Britain is the most advanced inheritor of that tradition and therefore deserves to increase its own knowledge further by removing artifacts. In other words, both Byron’s and Elgin’s arguments depend both on a shared European heritage and on more nationalistic explanations. For this reason, therefore, Child Harold establishes and questions the Greek connection with Europe, tracing a cultural link between ancient Greece and modern European powers while denouncing those countries’ mistreatment of the region. Sometimes, this occurs simultaneously, as when the narrator combines mythological allusion (comprehensible to educated western Europeans and thus a sign of cultural connection) with overt criticism of British policy toward Greece: Tell not the deed to blushing Europe’s ears The ocean queen, the free Britannia bears The last poor plunder from a bleeding land Yes, she, whose gen’rous aid her name endears, Tore down those remnants with a Harpy’s hand. (2.112–16)

Canto II also makes repeated reference to a tradition of “freedom,” crucial to the self-definition of Greece and those countries who claim intellectual connection with it. The narrator proclaims Greece as the land of “lost Liberty,” and suggests that the recapture of that freedom is partly an exercise in national independence: “who would be free themselves must strike the blow / [. . .] Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? no! / True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, / But not for you will Freedom’s altars flame”



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The city won for Allah from the Giaour, The Giaour from Othman’s race again may wrest; And the Serai’s impenetrable tower Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest; (2.729–32)

These terms imply a western European or Christian collective pitting against the Islamic other; and in this sense, Greece’s lack of independence is an issue affecting all European countries. By invoking the complex matter of “freedom,” the poem manages to fuse ideas of nationalistic independence (and thus of a divided Europe) with notions of a European tradition of free government—a tradition itself under threat, but derived from Greece and fundamentally distinct from Ottoman despotism. As I discuss further in the next chapter, this twofold notion of “freedom” also guides the Shelley–Byron circle’s responses to subsequent political developments following Napoleon’s defeat. The idea of “freedom” also directs conceptions of Europe’s future. In The Curse of Minerva, which Byron wrote between March and November 1811,46 Minerva declares Britain the simultaneous heir and despoiler of Greek “freedom”: “Pallas when she gave / Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave” (lines 227–8). The poem climaxes in an apocalyptic vision of international rivalry and destruction, a nightmarishly fractious idea of Europe in which “freedom” and Greece are marginalized—where “Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains” and Britain’s empire collapses amidst local uprisings and interstate conflicts (284, 309). John Galt also imagines Europe in terms of antagonism, not community. He remains suspicious of Hellenism, arguing that European history owes more to innovation than tradition: “I am very willing to allow the ancients to have been very extraordinary persons, yet you know I have always thought but little of their great affairs, and particularly of their famous characters, compared to the great affairs and famous characters of the moderns.” Classicists “attach more value to the past than it deserves, and regard the present with far less esteem that it merits.” For this reason, Greek inheritance (and European commonality based upon it) can be legitimately discarded. The focus on “the moderns” explains, first, why he interprets the spaces he visits in terms of present international rivalries (the Near East is too “hollow and unsafe for the new superstructure” states of Britain and France) and, second, why he debunks ancient mythological traditions by guessing at the “real” events which inspired them (for example, the Chimera represents “a wicked old



(2.721–25). Almost immediately, however, this struggle is reinterpreted as a wider clash of cultures:

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The two ancient nations which have affected to the greatest extent the condition of mankind in Europe, are the Greek and the Jew: the former by their literature, and the latter by their religion, but the sentiments of the former have ever been at variance with those of the latter [. . .] The religion of the Jews, as perfected in Christianity, teaches only peace and good-will to man [. . .] The literature of the Greeks exalts into virtues those qualities which are calculated to make war admirable for its own sake.48

Just as conflict motivates current political events, so does competition underpin Europe’s cultural inheritance. Therefore, although Galt does identify specifically European mentalities, created by a combination of Greek and Jewish thought, any potential commonality is buried beneath the enmity intrinsic to that fusion, as well the diverse aims, structures, and procedures of competitive European states. Why then are border-zones, particularly Greece, so important for the construction of Europe? Balibar writes that: Border-zones [. . .] are not marginal to the constitution of a public sphere but are rather at the centre. If Europe is first of all the name of an unresolved political problem, Greece is one of its centers, not because of the mythic origins of our civilization [. . .] but because of the [. . .] problems concentrated there.49

Since Greece can be described as a tyrannized subject, an intellectual predecessor, a common progenitor, or an “other,” it can evoke contrasting notions of Europe—from a unified cultural heritage, to a disparate medley of states striving for power and independence. The reason these complex associations are possible lies partly in the spatiality of Greece, both within and outside Europe, both part of and excluded from Christendom, and the location of both high civilization and alien barbarity. In this respect, like Montesquieu, Byron’s circle presumes a close connection between space and social structures, but this relationship leads in two directions. On the one hand, they use Greece to explore the vagaries of European divisions and borders, while on the other, they try to establish secure ideas about European government and historical tradition based on comparison with non-European “others.” The longevity of classical thought adds further intricacies to this double-project: Greece is at the centre of the educated European’s intellectual self-definition and at the margins of modern geopolitics; both a specific locale and a source of wider, common tradition,



woman”).47 His explanation of intellectual history is also premised upon rivalry and discord:


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and imagery. I show later in Chapters 5 and 7 that the Greek War of Independence further encouraged the Shelley–Byron circle to see Greece and Europe in terms of one another. Significantly though, Greece epitomizes and inspires uncertainty over the “borders” of Europe: it is alternately marginal and central in the negotiation of European spaces.





“Repairing Shattered Thrones”: Post-Waterloo Europe and the Shelley–Byron Circle, June 1815–December 1816

Introduction This chapter investigates how the end of the Napoleonic wars affected the Shelley–Byron circle’s understandings of Europe, especially while they traveled through the continent in 1816. It focuses on the third Canto of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Hobhouse’s published account of Napoleon’s downfall, and the Shelleys’ writings immediately following Waterloo and on their own excursion to Switzerland in 1816, particularly the History of a Six Weeks’ Tour. I argue that the Shelley–Byron circle contribute to a contemporary debate—also involving political commentators and politicians—about what kind of Europe has emerged following Waterloo. In this respect, they acknowledge a new multiplicity surrounding ideas of Europe, which thrives on competing political programs for reorganizing the continent. At the same time, however, they articulate a singular history which narrates Europe’s development according to a specific ideological agenda determined mainly by their suspicion of reactionary politics. As a result, they treat Europe as a concept open to debate, while also constructing a specific vision of what “Europe” should mean or represent. Second, the chapter discusses how the circle interprets European politics through use of the words “freedom” and “liberty.” Sometimes this



Chapter 2


language of freedom constructs a transnational European community, in which states are connected by their shared commitment to “free” government. Complicating this however, the circle also associate “freedom” with ideas of state independence; that is, a Europe divided into rival states independent from one another and not necessarily unified by any common tradition. In this respect, the idea of “freedom” both evokes and challenges notions of a common European identity. These different usages might appear to be contradictory, but they can be connected, I want to suggest, by reconsidering the circle’s radical ideas about patriotism, which argue for a local patriotic politics that legitimizes transnational collective identity.

Waterloo and the Multiple Histories of Europe The end of the Napoleonic wars once again opened up continental Europe to British travelers, and the Shelley–Byron circle were among the first to take advantage of this new freedom of movement. The practical difficulties of traveling in a recent war-zone influenced their experiences of the new Europe. Writing to Hobhouse, Byron reports that “at Manheim we crossed the Rhine & keep on this side to avoid the French segment of Territory at Strasbourg—as we have not French passports—& no desire to view a degraded country.”1 Byron regards his journey in terms of border-tensions; he is restricted by passport bureaucracy and territorial protectionism, but also suggests that the ideological landscape has altered and that “degraded” France is part of an imperfect new European order. Charles Clairmont’s tour through France is similarly shaped by the physical consequences of combat: “we visited the battleground where Soult was defeated by Wellington. We mounted the redoubts & viewed [. . .] the mouldering and bleached bones of our countrymen.”2 The national divisions accentuated by war define Clairmont’s and Byron’s understandings of European travel. If the end of war permitted these journeys and defined particular routes or objects of interest, then it also shaped ways to think about Europe, rekindling older debates about the potential for renewed progress. In his “View of the Progress of Society in Europe” (1769), William Robertson had said that “the universal progress of science during the last two centuries, the art of printing, and other obvious causes have filled Europe with such a multiplicity of histories.”3 The mention of “universal progress” evokes a common European identity: a single “great political system” in which “the acquisition of knowledge, the progress in the art of war [and . . .] political sagacity and address are nearly equal” across European states. However, Robertson also suggests that growing “collections of historical materials”



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enable a variety of “histories” (or historical interpretations) to be posited. Robertson thus combines a single shared comprehension of Europe, with plural, or “multiple,” understandings of that history.4 This is an important tension, which occurs throughout the writings of the Shelley–Byron circle in this period. Many are concerned to argue for one particular post-Waterloo idea of Europe (i.e., that Europe either has developed or should develop along a specific ideological line). But they simultaneously acknowledge the multiple political and cultural directions Europe could subsequently take and the various interpretations which can be given to a single historical event. In a diary entry for July 8, 1815, John Cam Hobhouse records his disappointment that Louis XVIII has been proclaimed king “in the twenty-first year of his reign”—a dubious declaration given that Louis had evidently not ruled France for the previous two decades. The proclamation attempts to rewrite history to suit a new political agenda, but disguises its reinterpretation as a continuous monarchical narrative. Refuting this complacent resolution, Hobhouse instead presents the post-Waterloo political negotiations as a clash between “the rights of the French nation to choose their own monarch” and the treatment of France “as a conquered nation.” In this way, postwar Europe is a battleground for ideological conflict between the forces of “liberty” (including Wellington, whose “moderation” gave “the friends of freedom [. . .] every hope”) and the tyranny represented by Lord Castlereagh and Louis XVIII.5 This is not a national dispute (that is, between competing states)—rather, it is driven by interpretations of “freedom,” in which certain actors, like Wellington and Napoleon, can figure on both sides. In his Letters Written [. . .] During the Last Reign of the Emperor Napoleon (1816), Hobhouse quotes and then comments on a declaration by Castlereagh: ‘[my] object has long been to restore Europe to that ancient social system which her late convulsions had disjointed and overthrown’ [. . .] The ancient social system of Europe!—Truly one has as great a respect for these words, either together or apart, as for the holy Roman Empire, though it should turn out to be neither ancient, nor social, nor a system. [. . .] That state of things which his lordship would wish to restore [. . .] can be no other than that absolute monarchy, repugnant to the institutions and national manners of the ancestors of the modern peoples of Christendom.6

Hobhouse agrees that Europe can be considered as a common unit in political and social analysis, but he rejects Castlereagh’s specific idea of Europe as a rigid, anti-progressive, misinterpretation of the proper tradition of monarchy. In England, which more accurately represents how Europe



Repairing Shattered Thrones


should be organized, “the sovereign augmented the rights of the citizen.” Hobhouse, therefore, recognizes the multiplicity of ideas of Europe, but also gives preference to a singular history which narrates Europe’s development according to a specific ideological agenda: “the friends of the ‘ancient social system’ [. . .] must see [. . .] that they have scotched the snake of Jacobinism not killed it.” Commenting on Helen Maria Williams’s Narrative of Events in France, Hobhouse remarks that, had he not known her to be an eyewitness, he would suppose that “she had employed the optics of the editors of some ministerial journal, rather than those eyes which beamed with delight at the dawn of continental freedom.”7 Here, he notes the multiple interpretations of European events—not only because Williams’s hostility to Napoleon conflicts with his own views, but also because her change of mind about the Revolution indicates how “multiple histories” result from an author’s ideological repositioning.8 Importantly though, Hobhouse still insists upon the rejection of absolutist monarchy as the single “true” direction for historical progress. How, then, did Waterloo and its political consequences affect ideas of Europe? Some members of the circle configure Napoleon’s defeat as a turning point which altered the political and military circumstances of Europe. Their reflections on the precise nature of these changes are, however, closely related to uncertain views about Napoleon himself, since they are unsure whether to welcome or condemn a remodeled Europe premised politically and ideologically on his defeat. In Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage III, the narrator says: Gaul may champ the bit And foam in fetters,—but is Earth more free? Did nations combat to make One submit, Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty? What! shall reviving Thraldom again be The patched-up idol of enlightened days. (3.163–8)9

The passage summarizes several competing visions of Europe resulting from the war. Was it fought to free Europe from the universalizing dominance of “One” ruler? Or did it intend to resurrect “true” forms of monarchical government? Did it unify European states by constructing a “league” which worked collectively to reshape Europe? Or did it shatter “the links of the world’s broken chain” (3.162), destroying potential commonality through international conflict and coercion? Byron implies that Waterloo is a defining moment in the (re)configuration of European society, but he is less sure about the ideological implications of Napoleon’s defeat.



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Hobhouse also speculates on Napoleon’s triumphs and the consequences of his downfall. While in office, Napoleon’s achievements were “the conquest of Egypt, of Italy, of Austria, of Prussia, of Poland, the foundation of empires and kingdoms, [. . .] a thousand monuments of laws, and arts and arms.” His leadership remodeled legal and cultural life in many European countries, showing how violent conquest can reformulate society for the better and how separate states can be drawn into a common system. Still more crucially, Napoleon embodies the possibility of complete change in Europe’s self-organization. The alliance that defeated France “will dissolve,” says Hobhouse, and “the empire of reason and independence [. . .] will extend its reign beyond the boundaries prescribed for individual ambition and, embracing state after state, establish at last its prevailing happy sway over the fairest portion of the civilised world.”10 In other words, Napoleon is merely the prelude to the “decisive triumph” of a borderless community, beginning in Europe and then expanding across the “civilised world.” This Eurocentrism assumes Allied failure even in the moment of apparent victory: Waterloo may have curbed Napoleon’s ambition, but it also initiates a new beginning since the restored governments cannot resist social and political change. Elsewhere, however, Hobhouse worries that Waterloo is the fulcrum of multiple possibilities. If Castlereagh can realize the “utility of reform, he might yet be the benefactor of Europe.” Yet the grim prospect of monarchical oppression remains: whereas formerly “the friends of freedom cherished every hope,” now France appears a “conquered culprit” and is “dissolved by force.” Hobhouse acknowledges several interpretations of the new Europe, each hinging on the consequence of Waterloo. Yet, this uncertainty also contains radical possibility, for if Europe can be interpreted differently, it can also be made to change: Europe’s future is not prescribed and its political and ideological associations can be altered. Hobhouse notes that, as a form of government, monarchy has become so closely aligned with European stability that states have declared war to defend it from revolutionary intentions. However, if “monarchy” can be redefined, then a new notion of Europe can also be constructed; if Louis XVIII could return not as “divine proprietor” of France, but “upon the enfranchisement of the commons,” then a new Europe can emerge from Waterloo outside Castlereagh’s “ancient social system.”11 For the Shelleys, Waterloo represents the supremacy, rather than the potential alteration, of pre-Revolutionary monarchical European government. In the History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, Mary Shelley suggests that borders have intensified as a result of post-Waterloo politics: “we were detained for two days for the purpose of obtaining [. . .] our passports, the French government having become much more circumspect.”





Furthermore, the war has reinvigorated oppressive government—the Allies “fill [France . . .] with hostile garrisons, and sustain a detested dynasty on the throne” (my emphasis), showing how Waterloo has failed to alter Europe’s governmental system. Like Hobhouse though, Mary Shelley speculates that this defeat may instigate future change, inspiring “every nation in Europe” toward “liberty.”12 Her husband is more pessimistic. He tends to see Napoleon and the Allies as two aspects of the same despotic idea of Europe, arguing that Waterloo replaced one form of monarchical absolutism with another. In “Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte,” the speaker laments how “old Custom, legal Crime” were nearly banished in the Revolution, but had reemerged under the Emperor and therefore how Napoleon had disastrously failed to change Europe’s “despotic” political system.13 Shelley makes clear the precise extent of this stagnation when he writes, three years later, “the usurpation of Bonaparte, and then the Restoration of the Bourbons were the shapes in which this reaction clothed itself, and the heart of every lover of liberty was struck as with a palsy by the succession of these events.”14 This language of paralysis is apt, for despite the “succession of events,” history itself has not progressed forward in the ideal way Shelley had hoped: in August 1815, he remarked to Hogg, “you will see in the papers the continuance of the same system.”15 Other members of the 1816 circle share this view. Writing very soon after Waterloo, Byron says to Thomas Moore, “every hope of a republic is over, and we must go on under the old system.”16 Unlike Childe Harold III, these remarks suggest that the debate about the European system of government has concluded. Manfred, which was begun in Switzerland in 1816, also gloomily alludes to European politics. In act 2, scene 3, Nemesis tells how he “was detain’d repairing shattered thrones, / Marrying fools, restoring dynasties, / Avenging men upon their enemies, / And making them repent their own revenge.”17 Although “mortals dared to ponder for themselves, / To weigh kings in the balance, and to speak / Of freedom, the forbidden fruit” (2.3.69–71), the attempt has failed, change has proved illusory, and the “old system” is reinvigorated. One character in the drama even speculates on the nightmarish return of Napoleon, so deeply is Europe locked into a stasis where no progress is possible: “The Captive Usurper, / Hurl’d down from the throne, / Lay buried in torpor, / Forgotten and lone; / I broke through his slumbers, / I shivered his chain, / I leagued him with numbers—/ He’s Tyrant again” (2.3.16–23). Hobhouse also complains that Castlereagh’s attempts to revitalize the “ancient social system” enshrine reactionary stasis at the heart of Europe. According to him, Castlereagh wishes to create a political system whereby mutual antagonism ensures that one country’s prosperity and progress is



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opposed by the others, “so that each of the states of Europe might be successively proscribed and successively ruined” by “the perpetual recurrence of wars.” Castlereagh’s ideal Europe never deviates from the status quo and preserves the bordered rivalries of separate states. Hobhouse justifies this analysis by quoting the foreign secretary’s own writings, which speak of the “security and permanent tranquillity of [. . .] Europe” (Hobhouse’s emphasis). Castlereagh thus wishes to secure the permanence of his particular notion of Europe, disguising reaction behind the language of peace and stability.18 It is precisely this kind of language, however, which appeals to contemporary conservative commentators. In his Annals of Europe (1816), T. H. Horne celebrates Waterloo because it has “restored to the world those ancient land-marks, which the lawless hand of tyranny had removed.” Horne uses the word “Europe” in a historical sense, to refer to the preNapoleonic and pre-Revolutionary political state. Napoleon had thus formulated “ruinous aggression on the peace and prosperity of the nations of Europe”; by seeking to change that peace and stability, he is betraying the ideal of what Europe should be like.19 The Annual Register for 1815 makes a similar assertion, arguing that Napoleon has upset the peaceful balance of Europe by wielding sovereignty “to the hazard and disturbance of all the neighbouring states” and obliging the Allies to maintain military presence “inconsistent with that pacific character [of . . .] Europe.”20 In this sense, Waterloo has preserved the authentic ideal of Europe from irresponsible revision. For George Ensor, an anti-establishment writer, postWaterloo politics contradicts the inevitable progress of history: “for almost every kingdom in Europe within these twenty-five years has exhibited the substitution, abdication, or the dethronement of the reigning prince.”21 However, for conservative observers, this same denial of progress defends the proper order of things from dangerously new imaginings of Europe. Both these perspectives implicitly recognize the “multiplicity” of ideas of Europe even as they identify an “authentic” or “true” course for the subcontinent’s future. They engage with many potential Europes but also construct a singular vision of what Europe should mean or represent. Waterloo is a key part of this process, determining where Europe is headed both politically and ideologically. A crucial consequence of this debate about the implications of Waterloo is that it becomes possible to see Europe as both united and divided by recent political events. In her 1817 account of the elopement excursion with Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont three years earlier, Mary Shelley reflects on the strangeness of postwar Europe and the difficulties of communication across national borders. Continental travel having been difficult for so long, France now seems an alien place, and she notes how





unfamiliar cultural practices differ from country to country: “on passing the French[-Swiss] barrier, a surprising difference may be observed between the opposite nations that inhabit each side.” She conceives of the border in terms of a barrier which prevents interaction between states. Indeed, this separation occurs even within states: rural France is “detached from the rest of the world, and ignorant of all that was passing in it.” Mary Shelley seems skeptical that these national and regional boundaries can be transcended. She relates the example of a man “in a very unfortunate position: he had been born in Holland, and had spent so much of his life between England, France and Germany, that he had acquired a slight knowledge of the language of each country, and spoke all very imperfectly. He [. . .] was nearly unable to express himself.”22 This man is a kind of failed cosmopolitan— uncertainly aligned with all nations and none, he is barely able to function in European society. These observations contrast strongly with Polidori’s accounts of his journey over similar territory. He comments on how travel is permitted without passports and how borders are not marked, so that countries appear to blend into one another. If it were not for the military presence and the signs of economic deprivation—both consequences of the recent wars—“we should not have perceived that we had crossed” any border.23 The disparity between Mary Shelley’s and Polidori’s impressions is partly a matter of traveling status and finances (Polidori journeyed with Byron, already an international celebrity by this point). But, it also reveals various interpretations of postwar Europe: Mary Shelley emphasizes the divisions exacerbated by the conflicts, while Polidori’s Europe opens new possibilities for international travel and cross-border cultural communities. Significantly, Polidori, unlike the Shelleys, frequented Germaine de Staël’s international literary gatherings at Coppet in 1816, along with Byron, Hobhouse, August von Schlegel, Charles de Bonstetten, and many others. I discuss Staël in more detail in the following chapter, but it is important to note here that the Coppet-Byron circle is explicitly concerned with issues of nationality and transnationalism. The group discuss international travel (Byron and Hobhouse’s trip to Greece being especially fascinating) and debate Napoleon’s impact on various European countries, particularly Spain and the Italian states. These salons appear to have been contentious: Hobhouse, for example, disapproves of Schlegel’s “dreadfully national” opinions.24 Other authors and politicians also remark on how the war unites and divides Europe. Lord Liverpool, the British prime minister, considered Napoleon’s return “not merely a British, but a European question”—a problem which affects the “system” of Europe and must be determined by all Europeans together.25 Childe Harold III puts this more elegantly: France has been “pierced by the shaft of banded nations through” (3.160)—Europe



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comes together, but in opposition to one of its own number, united and divided by the conflict. Waterloo itself is the culmination of this paradox, “where the sword united nations drew / Our countrymen were winning on that day” (3.313–4); where Europe is both “united” in a patriotic and international sense and at war with itself. Although he identifies a potential commonality in Napoleon’s defeat, Byron critiques the Emperor for “his continued obtrusion on mankind” and his “want of all community of feeling,” which prevented him from engaging with people and countries on anything other than his own terms.26 Like Mary Shelley’s “unfortunate” man, Napoleon is a failed cosmopolitan, who united and reformed Europe only by giving it a common enemy. Byron explores a similar idea in his poem “Napoleon’s Farewell (From the French),” which presents him alternately as a failed universalist (who sought to conquer and unify the world, but was ultimately vanquished by Allied unity) and as a patriotic hero, dedicated to specifically French glory and interest (France, “I made thee [. . .] the wonder of earth”).27 Percy Shelley is similarly preoccupied throughout 1815–16 with the “self-centered seclusion” of those who keep themselves aloof from human sympathies. In the preface to Alastor, he says that such people “languish, because none feel with them their common nature. [. . .] They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their countries.”28 These individuals also fail in a political sense because they are unable to engage with any kind of community or group identity. And yet he presents three different kinds of “community”: a shared intrinsic “common nature,” a cosmopolitan union of world citizens, and a community organized around national interest. In critiquing disengagement from society, he presents “community” in an ambiguous manner which reflects uncertainties over Europe’s post-1815 organization. However, analysis of the Napoleonic wars does not necessarily lead to uncertainty in one’s conceptualization of Europe. In The Field of Waterloo, written after viewing the battle-site in 1815, Sir Walter Scott presents a nationalist version of war-torn Europe. He emphasizes the rivalry between states to create an idea of Britain forged by Napoleonic conflict: “well hast thou stood, my Country”; “Britons” have “trampled down [. . .] tyrannic might.”29 For Scott, Europe is a space in which competing countries strive for mastery—it has no meaning or context other than as a scene for British–French rivalry. There is no mention of non-French, non-British participants in the battle itself, nor any analysis of how the war may or may not have affected international relations. Waterloo is merely a canvas for British heroism. It is precisely this national factionalism which disturbs Hobhouse when he writes that “the animosities of governments seem to have been communicated to whole nations, and, especially, as far





as concerns France and England, each individual has become a belligerent.” He worries that the war has provoked divisions and that those principles of civil and religious commonality have been violated “without any attention to the want of civilised intercourse or the decency of christian communion.”30 From the opposite political perspective to Scott, Ensor’s anti-allied postwar writings propose a very secure idea of Europe which reconciles considerable differences between states and their common interests. If all Europe would adopt “free government” (defined as “an express contract between the people and their rulers”), then each country would be free to rule itself as it chooses, and yet Europe would be unified in mutual respect for this “free,” contractual system. Significantly, Ensor suggests that the European system and the condition of France are inseparably connected: “such is the state of Europe and of France [. . .] when war, enmity and vengeance have been strewed through all the nations.”31 In this sense, the state of France defines the state of Europe, allowing a vision of European totality to derive from, and depend on, the circumstances of one constituent state. Indeed, this is the underlying assumption of many writers—the fortunes of a collected Europe rely upon the conditions of the French state, and by redesigning France, Europe can be similarly reimagined. In this sense, the divided Europe of separate states and the vision of a common or collected European system are intimately linked. Complicating this further, though, is the use of “Europe” as a collective term signifying opposition to France. When Castlereagh speaks of “the powers of Europe,” he means those states which have leagued together against Napoleonic France.32 In this way, he implies that France lies “outside” Europe—an aberration broken off from the main community. Moreover, by using Europe as a term for “anti-French alliance,” he evokes both the extent and seriousness of divisive conflict and the possibility of some European unity developing from those partitions. Even Hobhouse hopes that France will establish “peaceful relations with all the powers of Europe,” implying, like Castlereagh, that France has become divorced from the Europe embodied by the Allies.33 This use of the word “Europe” is especially problematic because it acknowledges the separations of states while simultaneously making assertions about what Europe should be like—collected together in a (largely undefined) “peaceful” system. For the writers I have mentioned, the experience of war has both shattered Europe into competitive fragments and enabled new imaginings of collective identity, redefining the problem of European community within the new parameters of the Napoleonic wars. In this respect, the long-standing issues of Europe’s relative unity and division are revised and recontextualized in a specific historical moment.



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Members of the Shelley–Byron circle often interpret post-Waterloo European politics through use of the words “freedom” and “liberty.” In particular, they attempt to delineate a “tradition of freedom”; that is, a shared trajectory for European countries which identifies their interconnected histories and future progress. In doing this, they follow established ideas about the relationship between “Europe” and “freedom.” Many eighteenth-century reference books devote considerable space to defining and outlining a European tradition of “free” government. For example, William Guthrie’s Geographical, Historical and Commercial Grammar describes Europe as “unrestrained” in commerce, government, and religion, especially when compared to the “tyrannical” regimes of Asia.34 This difference between European and Asian governmental traditions is explained in terms of environmental factors: Guthrie’s New System of Modern Geography (1792) suggests that the spread of despotism is prevented in Europe by the varied land-surface, forming “natural barriers which check the progress of conquest.” In Asian countries, the large extent of land makes despotism inevitable, since only one individual ruling by force can keep the country in order. In Europe, however, “the barren rocks and mountains are more favourable for exciting human industry and invention, than the natural unsolicited luxuriancy of more fertile soils.” For this reason, ancient Greece is where the human mind “began to avail itself of its strength” and where European “industry and invention” began, because it is the most variable and broken of territories. Greece’s development epitomizes Europe’s: it is an exemplar of “equity of laws and the freedom of political constitution.”35 Some eighteenth-century reference books even define the word “Europe” itself in terms of freedom. According to the anonymous Complete System of Geography (1747), as well as a large number of other sources, Europe “is called [. . .] ‘Alfrank’ by the Turks; ‘Frankoba’ by Georgians; and ‘Frankistan’ by Asian peoples.”36 As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the word “frank” has etymological connections with “freedom,”37 although it is not entirely clear whether non-Europeans genuinely saw Europe as the “land of the free,” or whether this was how Europeans imagined that others saw them.38 Nevertheless, the idea of Europe is being constructed through association with “freedom” and by contrast with the decadent tyrannies of Asia. In the early nineteenth century therefore, the ideological association between Europe and freedom had become well established. A Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica summarizes these current ideas by defining European liberty more precisely. It speaks of the freedom to worship as one



Liberty and Independence: European Freedom


pleases, freedom to trade, freedom to formulate one’s own laws, and freedom from a tyrannous government: advantages which are only found, it claims, in European states. Most importantly, it traces this European freedom throughout history—from “the freedom of Grecian states” to exist independently, to “freedom of commerce in modern day Britain.”39 The Supplement uses this notion to construct a shared European historical development and identity. In other words, the idea of political and commercial “freedom” is what connects ancient Greece, fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italian city-states and modern Britain together. “Freedom” is what makes Renaissance Italy the successor to ancient Greece and modern Britain the heir to the Renaissance; and this “freedom” therefore makes it meaningful to speak of a “European” cultural tradition transmitted through different periods and societies. Indeed, for the Supplement, “freedom” drives the gradual development of ever improving governmental systems and intellectual achievement in Europe. In 1815–16, the Shelley–Byron circle reinterprets this “libertarian tradition” to take account of the Allies’ victory over Napoleon. In the History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817), for example, Mary Shelley hopes that “fellow feeling” for liberty can reform all European countries after the recent victories of the monarchical powers: All those of every nation in Europe who have a fellow feeling with the oppressed [. . .] cherish an unconquerable hope that the cause of liberty must at length prevail.40

Mary Shelley’s use of “liberty” has a distinctly radical aspect: she employs the word to signify opposition to the “hostile garrisons” and “detested dynasties” of monarchy. Instead, the prospect of “free” (that is, nonmonarchical) government can potentially reform the war-torn remnants of Europe, uniting the separate nations behind common governmental principles. In using “liberty” to indicate desire for reform, Mary Shelley taps into a developing political vocabulary: “ ‘liberal’ in the sense of ‘favorable to constitutional change’ [was] a recently-established English usage” which first occurred in the early nineteenth century.41 Furthermore, the phrase “fellow feeling” evokes Margaret Cohen and April Alliston’s notion of the “sentimental community.” For them, popular eighteenth and nineteenthcentury texts by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Germaine de Staël, and others induce an “emotional connection that transcends nations” by appealing to a wide community of readers not limited by national borders.42 Mary Shelley gives this concept a political dimension: she suggests that “fellow feeling” for liberty allows one to comprehend Europe in terms of transnational political principles, rather than as separate national identities. In



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While Waterloo with Cannae’s carnage vies Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand, They were true Glory’s stainless victories, Won by the unambitious heart and hand Of a proud, brotherly and civic band, All unbright champions in no princely cause Of vice-entail’d Corruption; they no land Doom’d to bewail the blasphemy of laws Making kings rights divine, by some Draconian clause. (3.608–16)

In this meditation on European history, the tradition of freedom is evident in the battles of Morat and Marathon, victories, according to Jerome McGann, “of men fighting for their liberty.”43 In more recent times, the French general Marceau’s service in the Revolutionary Wars contributed to the cause of liberty: He was Freedom’s champion, one of those, The few in number, who had not o’erstept The charter to chastise which she bestows. (3.549–51)

For Byron, as for Mary Shelley, Europe’s achievements are defined by the liberty and common purpose associated with opposition to monarchical power. But Childe Harold also articulates another tradition which seeks to limit that freedom: the “Draconian clause” which resists the efforts of the “civic band.” Europe’s history and future is thus based on conflict between advocates and opponents of freedom. Caroline Franklin argues that Childe Harold is “a profound elegy for the permanent loss of political freedom in the cycles or ‘revolutions’ of European history.”44 In fact, however, Byron understands European freedom as a concept in flux, not just inexorable decline. Although Waterloo appears to be a victory for the “Draconian clause,” hope still exists: We do not curse thee Waterloo! Though Freedom’s blood thy plain bedew; There ‘twas shed, but is not sunk—



this way, Europe’s past and future are defined by “sympathy” for libertarian causes. Byron, however, seems less optimistic about the prospects for “free” government. In Childe Harold III, he identifies a tradition of freedom under threat:

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This poem, first published in the Morning Chronicle on March 15, 1816,45 seems to suggest that cause of “Freedom” has been set back by Napoleon’s defeat. Yet, Napoleon himself is described both as “Freedom’s son” (line 27), and as a proud monarch, a hero who “sank into a King” (33)—meaning that his downfall simultaneously marks the defeat of both “free” government and kingly arrogance. This ambiguous presentation of Napoleon expresses uncertainty over Europe’s direction: does Napoleon’s deposition indicate a continuation of or a disruption in the tradition of freedom?46 As the poem continues, the speaker strives to answer this question, eventually claiming that “Freedom rejoices” (73) because “France hath twice been too well taught / The ‘moral lesson’ dearly bought—/ Her safety sits not on a throne [. . .] / But in equal rights and laws” (77–81). This freedom can be found, not in the competition of nations (“Pouring nations blood like water, / In imperial seas of slaughter!” [89–90]), but in European “fellow feeling”: where “the heart and mind, / And the voice of mankind, / Shall arise in communion” (91–3). Despite the apparent victory of the Allied monarchies, Waterloo ultimately confirms the potential development of European liberty. In The Siege of Corinth (also published in early 1816),47 Byron is similarly concerned for the loss, and possible recovery, of freedom. The speaker laments how “Venice ceased to be / Her ancient civic boast—‘the Free’ ” (lines 84–5), before tracing the history (and future prospects) of that “freedom” back to Christianity and ancient Greece, now overrun with oriental despotism: “Till Christian hands to Greece restore / The freedom Venice gave of yore” (104–5). Like the Supplement to Britannica, the poem uses “freedom” to connect different periods and locations as part of a discernable tradition, but unlike the reference book, it also discusses manifest threats to that freedom, mainly from “the Moslem’s sway” (107). The use of Venice is particularly important here. Malcolm Kelsall suggests that, for Byron, Venice was not only “the meeting place of Occident and Orient in a direct imperial and religious conflict,” but also signifies the “transition of a former imperial power to colonial status,” particularly after Napoleon conquered and abolished the Venetian Republic in 1797.48 In this respect, Venice represents the intricate constructions and tensions of European history: empire and colony, Christianity and Islam, freedom and tyranny. Byron’s awareness of these complex interactions makes him cynical about



Rising from each gory trunk, Like the water-spout from ocean, With a strong and growing motion— It soars and mingles in the air. (“Ode (from the French),” lines 1–7)

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unthinkingly optimistic ideas of progress, but this skepticism does not, I would suggest, define his conception of post-Napoleonic Europe and its potential for “free” government. Hobhouse also muses on the complexities of the libertarian tradition: “it cannot be concealed, there is in the flight of Napoleon a precipitancy which nothing can escape; and we must sigh as Montesquieu did over the suicide of Brutus, to see the cause of liberty so easily abandoned.” Hobhouse identifies Napoleon with a tradition of freedom that extends deep into history, beyond the philosophes and back to the classical world. Like Byron, though, he is preoccupied by the prospective failure of that tradition. Indeed, Napoleon seems to embody both the possibility of greater liberty and the disappointments of its dissipation. If here he is the banished emblem of freedom, later his presence, rather than his absence, hinders liberty’s progress: “France would have now been free had not Napoleon come back.”49 In Letters Written During the Last Reign, Hobhouse elaborates further on exactly what he means by “freedom.” He identifies a “proper” tradition of monarchy which should operate uniformly throughout Europe, but at present exists only in England—where “the rights of the citizen” are respected and “the desire of freedom has made the capital [. . .] affluent in money and men, so their wealth gave them the ability to defend and confirm their independence.” Despite this stress on British “independence,” Hobhouse envisages this as a Europeanwide ideal, proposing that all states should strive for this condition. As an Empire, France had drawn closer to this model system, for despite “the tyranny of Napoleon,” “the circumstances of his elevation [. . .] confirm the notions of the power of individual exertion, and the original equality of man.” By contrast, Castlereagh’s political objective—to restore the “ancient social system” of monarchies—completely betrays the notion of European liberty by supporting despotic regimes and refusing to acknowledge that other states should be free to govern themselves. There is an inconsistency here: Hobhouse opposes Britain being “the arbitress of Europe,” but still upholds the British governmental system as the ideal model for the realization of European freedom. This leads him into slightly self-contradictory territory, arguing that both Britain and Napoleon’s France alternately represent and prevent the development of liberty.50 However, the term “freedom” is not merely used by radical thinkers like Mary Shelley, Byron, and Hobhouse. Horne rejoices that Napoleon’s downfall has “gladdened the heart of every lover of freedom,” since his usurpation was an offence to Europe’s ancient traditions. He calls the Napoleonic Wars “The Campaign of the Liberties of Europe,” suggesting that a “free” Europe is one which replicates the pre-1789 status quo.51





Castlereagh himself even employs this terminology to justify British government policy: “the powers of Europe,” he says, treating the subcontinent as a totality, “have been compelled, in vindication of their own liberties, and for the settlement of the world, to invade France.”52 This language recalls William Robertson’s use of “liberty” in the 1760s. In his “View of the Progress of Society in Europe,” Robertson refers to the balance of power in terms of liberty: “the method of preventing any monarch from rising to such a degree of power, as was inconsistent with the general liberty.”53 This associates the word with “stability,” a usage which contrasts with liberal and radical writers who employ “freedom” and “liberty” to refer to changes in governmental organization. Ensor, for example, contrasts “free nations” with “the abyss of monarchy.” Alluding to the precedent of ancient Athens, he asserts that monarchy, not Revolutionary France, is an aberration from the proper order of things.54 These writers base their understandings of European history and futurity upon different notions of freedom, using various interpretations of the libertarian tradition to analyze contemporary politics and to construct teleologies of what Europe should be like based on a conception of its “free” past. Percy Shelley, however, directly challenges the concept of a free tradition particular to European states. In a fragment known to editors as “The Elysian Fields” and written either in 1815 or 1816, the speaker says that: the English nation does not, as has been imagined, inherit freedom from its ancestors. Public opinion rather than private institution maintains it in whatever portion it may now possess [. . .] As yet the gradation [by] which this freedom has advanced has been contested step by step.55

These sentences make “freedom” iconoclastic, opposed to institutions and continually reimagined by each generation, not passed on in an identifiable tradition or progression. Moreover, because Shelley emphasizes both the Englishness and the locality of the “public opinion” which defines this freedom, his suggestions stand against that the more general “European liberty” identified by Byron and Hobhouse, which extends from ancient Greece to the Revolution as part of abstract tradition. They treat freedom as a progress theory, sometimes hindered, but gradually developing in a single direction. Instead, Shelley emphasizes the multiplicity of possible futures: how a momentary popular reassessment of freedom, disconnected from previous interpretations, can abruptly change society, or literally free it from its past. “Liberty,” then, often evokes a common European ideal—a notion of how Europe can be shaped through the alleged liberation of the Revolution or (for conservative writers) the freedoms of the “ancient social system.”



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However, liberty is also associated with ideas of state independence: that is, a Europe divided into rival national blocs with no shared tradition. Byron’s friend James Wedderburne Webster employs “freedom” in a strictly patriotic context in his poem “Waterloo” (1816), asserting the supremacy of England over its enemies: Wellington’s victory “Hath swell’d his Country’s Harp of fame” and subdued French tyranny by protecting “the free.”56 The struggle for freedom and the struggle for state self-assertion are thus connected. Mary Shelley makes a similar point when she observes that the Swiss could “make a brave defence against any invader of their freedom.” In other words, they can best defend their liberty by preserving independence and self-government.57 Hobhouse also connects liberty with independence by calling the Napoleonic conflicts “the late war against national independence”—a struggle for France’s self-assertion against an Alliance determined to crush its new freedoms. The success of this aggression may “serve for a precedent fatal to our own liberties.” Hobhouse here associates general European freedom with the capacity for states to operate independently, unmolested by other powers. This argument is clearly problematic, since it can be argued that French foreign policy before and during Napoleon’s reign violated the freedoms of other “independent” states. Nevertheless, Hobhouse advocates an idea of Europe based on “the principles of national liberty,” suggesting that greater international cooperation can be achieved by separately operating states, because powers would be discouraged from interfering in each other’s affairs. He looks forward to the moment when “the alliance will dissolve” and “the first decisive triumph of the principles of national liberty will be witnessed.” If this occurs, “a new system” of Europe can develop, based on the freedom of separate states. Once again, there is a radical agenda here: Hobhouse hopes that this revolutionary change will “embrace state after state,” eventually encompassing “the fairest portion of the civilised world.”58 As I will argue in Chapter 7, this association of liberty with revolution and national self-determination becomes an important part of Byron’s thinking as his interest in Greek independence develops in the 1820s. Before landing on the Greek mainland, he would justify his purpose using the language of nation-building (“I did not come here to join a faction, but a nation”) and the language of freedom (“the fruitful [. . . boughs?] of the tree of Liberty” will flourish).59 Calling on the support of the U.S. consul in Geneva, Byron says: “an American has a better right than any other to suggest to other nations—the mode of obtaining that Liberty which is the glory of his own.”60 In this sense, the cause of liberty helps create both independent nationhood and a transnational movement joined in opposition to tyrannous government. A similar idea is evident in some




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Popular writers had been encouraged to arouse and create patriotic feelings by the contrast between slavish submission to a detestable foreign tyranny, and the acquiescence of freemen in a constitution.

This excites anti-Napoleonic feeling by uniting the language of liberty and nationalism. But, it also moves beyond its German specificity to present an idea of Europe in which many countries are connected by their shared freedom, formed in opposition to Napoleonic hegemony. Britain’s victory was partly assured by “the liberalities of our political institutions” and other states, including Russia, have emulated this with “openness and success.” In this last case, “liberty” refers both to a national trait and to an idea which can potentially shape all Europe.61 Debate about what Europe is (or what it should be) thus hinges on a few key concepts—“liberty,” “freedom,” “independence”—which can be appropriated for a variety of ideological purposes. “Liberty” can be used to evoke a shared European tradition and a Europe of separate states asserting themselves against one another. These various usages of the term “liberty” might seem contradictory. However, they can be connected using the argument of William Hazlitt’s essay “On Patriotism” (1814). In the essay, Hazlitt theorizes a nationalism which legitimizes a wider, transnational, collective identity. Love of country, he says, “is little more than another name for the love of liberty, of independence, of peace, and social happiness.”62 In other words, patriotism inspires, not merely a devotion to a particular state, but also a universalist social vision, an ideal for all societies. As J. G. A. Pocock observes, “patriot” has a number of disparate meanings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It could signify devotion to the local nation, but also a person “who loved his or her country more than its ruling family or institutions” and who professed loyalty to a common identity not represented by the national government.63 In this sense, Hazlitt can use the word both to allude to and look beyond the nation, evoking shared principles (“liberty,” “peace”) which are not solely applicable to a specific state. Hazlitt’s arguments about liberty and patriotism rework some of Richard Price’s ideas in Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789). Hazlitt was well acquainted with Price’s thinking: Price corresponded with Hazlitt’s father, and Hazlitt’s own letters record engagement with his works.64 It is therefore likely that Hazlitt had read the Discourse, especially given its heightened public prominence (even notoriety) following Burke’s attack on the text in Reflections on the Revolution (1790).65 Indeed, Hazlitt alludes



assessments of Napoleon’s defeat. The preface to the 1816 Annual Register says that in Germany:


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I have lived to see nations panting for liberty which seemed to have no idea of it. I have lived to see thirty millions of people demanding liberty with an irresistible voice, their King led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his subjects.67

Price celebrates the specific triumph of the French state in freeing itself from despotic rule. This is the “liberty” of a state discovering its independence, freeing itself from the weight of past tradition and the disapproval of neighboring countries. In this respect, the French Revolution has helped legitimize specific new national identities: “Liberty is the [. . .] object of patriotic zeal [as] an enlightened country must be a free country.” However, Price also suggests that this “freedom” has implications for the whole of Europe: I see the ardour for liberty catching and spreading a general amendment in human affairs; the dominion of kings changed for the dominion of laws, and the dominion of priests giving way to the dominion of reason and conscience.

The blaze of Revolution “lays despotism in ashes, and warms and illuminates Europe!”68 “Freedom” establishes a patriotic identity, marking the uniqueness of France, but it also creates collective hopes for “Europe” based on the shared principles of law, reason, and opposition to despotism. For Price, as for Hazlitt, patriotism inspires not merely a devotion to a particular state, but also a universalist social vision, an ideal for all societies. Hazlitt’s patriotism, associated with (revolutionary) social change, therefore has both national and transnational implications. This is patriotism beyond the “local,” which hopes for universal “common liberties” extending across all Europe and beyond. These arguments provide a useful framework to understand Percy Shelley’s comments about “freedom” in 1816. Writing to Thomas Peacock, he connects freedom with national specificity while purporting to question precisely that connection: You live in a free country where you may act without restraint & possess that which you possess in security; for as long as the name of country & the selfish conceptions which it included shall subsist England I am persuaded, is the most free and refined.



to Burke’s disagreement with Price in The Eloquence of the British Senate (1807), when he mentions the “theories of Mr Burke and Dr Price on the subject [of revolution].”66 In the Discourse, Price interprets the French Revolution in terms of “liberty”:


Shelley identifies and seeks to move beyond a particularly English freedom: while declaring his patriotic attachment to “England, my country dear to me for ever,” he also critiques the limited experiences available to one “who has never passed the limits of his native land.”69 Percy Shelley advocates what might be called a “cosmopolitan patriotism,” which predicates itself on experience and appreciation of other countries. In celebrating and seeking to overcome the separations between European states, Price similarly exhorted listeners to: “explain the duty we owe to our country, and the nature, foundation, and proper expressions of that love to it,” but also warns against “contempt of other countries, and forming men into combinations and factions against their common rights and liberties.” 70 When they rail against despotism in France, Turkey or Russia, Price and Shelley patriotically assert Britain’s superiority, but also regret that “common . . . liberties,” a cosmopolitan notion of shared “rights,” have not extended there. For Price, Hazlitt, and Shelley, therefore, “liberty” has a parochial meaning related to state independence and a transnational meaning signifying the collective development of all Europe. More importantly, these meanings are not necessarily incompatible. For all three writers, it is perfectly possible to be patriotic, defend local independence, and hope for a “liberty” which unifies states across Europe under a common system. This is because the key tenets of radical “liberty”—opposition to despotism, to monarchical or religious privilege—are both national and transnational causes. That is to say, the independence of a specific country and the establishment of common “freedom” in Europe are part of the same radical project. The true patriot desires reform at home and abroad; he wishes to celebrate success in his own country and instigate changes based on common principles across all Europe. It is therefore possible to be both a patriot and a cosmopolitan simultaneously, because “love of one’s country” and the desire for international cooperation are based on commitment to the same radical principles.71 For the Shelley–Byron circle, ideas of state independence and common European liberty are not as disconnected as might first appear, since both are founded in a radical vision of the ideal society.

History after Waterloo: Experience and Interpretation Napoleon’s defeat is also an opportunity to reflect on the practice of history. In the preface to Letters Written During the Last Reign, Hobhouse points out that historical events are often misinterpreted: “the total perversion of facts” and “the partial selection of others” lead to “delusions”



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often spread by a government to justify its policies. Although Hobhouse purports to banish these falsehoods and reveal the truth instead, he admits that ideas of Europe can be political constructions: “our relations with the European cabinets” are beset by “many errors” and thus the British view of Europe is flawed by “dangerous or mistaken politicians.” 72 Even as he attempts to expose the true state of European relations, Hobhouse notes the inadequacy of claims to truth shaped by subjective opinions and ideological priorities. In Childe Harold, Byron’s narrator muses on how our understanding of history is shaped by the circumstances of its recording: What want these outlaws conquerors should have But History’s purchased page to call them great? [. . .] In their baronial feuds and single fields, What deeds of prowess unrecorded died! (3.429–30, 433–4)

The narrator recognizes an arbitrary element in writing and remembering history. This attitude perhaps explains why he interprets his European surroundings in complex subjective layers, which are made all the more intricate by the interwoven speaking voices of the narrator, Childe Harold, and Byron. A particular example of this fusion is the section on Lake Geneva (stanza 99), which combines Byron’s tour in June 1816, Childe Harold’s poetic experiences at the scene, remembrances of Rousseau’s relations there with Madame d’Houdetot, and allusions to Rousseau’s novelization of the region in Julie.73 By tapping into Rousseau’s popular work, these intertextual layers create another of Cohen and Alliston’s “sentimental communities”—a “cultural interaction” that transgresses national borders, the historical moment and particular characters to evoke sympathy in a wide community while remaining rooted in a specifically suggestive locale.74 Geneva is thus a transnational European space—constructed and understood through subjective experiences and literary allusions comprehensible to an international community of readers. Moreover, Europe is not merely a political and cultural concept to be analyzed—it is also shaped by personal experience, recollection and reimaginings. For Percy Shelley too, European history opens up a kind of mental and literary archaeology. Stephen Cheeke suggests that in Romantic writing “the materiality of a place” is “over-written and written-through with lived experience, with memory”: “just as the mind is layered and striated with memory,” so “the physical structure” of a place similarly reveals “crosssections of buried experience, of historical subjectivity.” 75 In his letters to





T[homas] P[eacock] in History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, Shelley investigates both real European history and his personal reflections, especially his recall of literary texts, in the spaces he confronts. Upon seeing the prison at Chillon, he says that “at the commencement of the Reformation, and indeed long after that period, this dungeon was the receptacle of those who shook, or who denied the system of idolatry. From the effects of which mankind is even now slowly emerging.” 76 The Swiss setting embodies for Shelley a European-wide history of theological oppression as well as the possibility of progress: “the records of classical, feudal and eighteenthcentury struggles between liberty and tyranny, and, relatedly, between imperial invading armies and those resisting them.” 77 It also taps into the controversy surrounding Julie, condemned by Edmund Burke and others as a “veritable source-book of revolutionary morality” since the novel’s account of an affair between a tutor and the daughter of a Swiss aristocrat apparently undermined “the tranquility and security of domestic life.” 78 In this respect, “Rousseau permeates Six Weeks’ Tour as a participant in a tradition of political thought [. . .] that is severely critical of the institution of monarchy.” 79 Other radicals associated Switzerland with more ideal forms of European government. Writing in 1798, Helen Maria Williams calls Chillon a “Swiss Bastille” and argues that Geneva pioneered its own revolution “founded on the great principle of liberty” before France. For her, Switzerland is a kind of utopia, a “picture of social happiness” where “I shall no longer see liberty profaned and violated.” She also links the grandeur of the Alps with revolution, “the highest attainments of political discovery.”80 For Hobhouse, the region recalls not only antiestablishment authors like Staël and Rousseau, but also the republican heroes of the English Civil War, especially the regicide Edmund Ludlow, who had sought sanctuary in Switzerland following the restoration of Charles II in 1660.81 Shelley’s experience of his journey—in Europe and around Lake Geneva—thus involves complex renegotiations of space and time. He connects the Swiss landscape to European politics as well as to recent literature, mentioning to Peacock how Napoleon’s second wife Marie Louise visited the area in homage to Rousseau. “A Bourbon dared not even to have remembered Rousseau,” Shelley declares, “She owed this power to that democracy which her husband’s dynasty outraged [. . .]. This little incident shews at once how unfit and how impossible it is for the ancient system of opinions, or for any power built upon a conspiracy to revive them, permanently to subsist among mankind.”82 In the Empress’s private love for Julie, he identifies a conflict between ancient and modern systems of European government, an ideological debate which encompasses both multiple possibilities for historical development and an ideal linear path



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for radical European progress. The Lake recalls Europe’s past and future; it becomes a real-and-imagined landscape relating to contemporary politics, the imaginings and researches of other writers, and the author’s personal understandings of those political and imagined circumstances. In creating ideas of Europe, therefore, political and personal perspectives are interdependent. Indeed, Byron sometimes seems to view European history and his own life in terms of one another: “Kingdoms and empires in my little day / I have outlived and yet I am not old.”83 At other times, however, members of the Shelley–Byron circle write about (their experience in) Europe as if they were outside politics or history. As Cheeke argues, Byron’s work exhibits a “contradictory desire” for both “consecrated spots” offering the “material facts” of historical events and for “spaces unburdened with the material of history.”84 In a poetic fragment composed in July 1816, Byron’s speaker is unsure whether to engage with history and investigate its signs, or whether the past is distant and untouchable: are the dead “The ashes of a thousand Ages spread / Wherever Man has trodden or shall tread—/ Or do they in silent cities dwell / Each in his own uncommunicative cell”?85 Can he connect with history, or is he confronted with the emptiness of history’s silence? In some of his letters from late 1816, including the “alpine journal” written for Augusta Leigh, Byron attempts a “de-politicization” of European space, writing that the region is a “paradise of wilderness,” seemingly detached from politics and history. In the journal, the Alps become a self-consciously imagined landscape: they are “all I have ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence” and “take on a fantastical aspect.” The region is somehow “outside” politics and the complexities of historical thought—instead it is a scene of intensely personal aesthetic experience, where dead trees “reminded me of my family” and where one can imagine “Death mounted in the Apocalypse.”86 Polidori also seems to treat his European journey in apolitical terms, commenting extensively on sightseeing scenes and aesthetically assessing buildings, paintings, and people while barely mentioning contemporary politics. Even the visit to Waterloo itself prompts comment principally on the tourist and commercial opportunities recently developed at the site: if it were not for the boys who eagerly sell buttons, books, and military equipment “there would be no sign of war” and “no one [. . .] would imagine two such myriaded armies had met there.”87 Polidori presents Waterloo as a genteel tour-site rather than a recent battlefield—it is a “gentleman’s excursion [. . .] geared towards the avoidance of permanent shock.”88 However, Polidori still engages with history, albeit in a somewhat evasive manner. Reacting to Scott’s Field of Waterloo, for instance, Polidori declares “he says Waterloo will last longer than Cressy and Agincourt. How different! They only agree in one thing—that they were both the cause of injustice.”89 The





phrasing is very tentative and ambiguous. What, exactly, is “the cause of injustice”? Is Polidori critiquing or supporting Scott’s idea that battles help define national identity—in which case why does Waterloo differ from Agincourt? Seen in this light, Polidori’s reluctance to engage in political commentary can be related to his uncertainty about the precise implications of Waterloo: as for Byron in Childe Harold, the causes and effects of conflict remain opaque. Polidori is unable to conceptualize the political repercussions and wider historical significance of the recent wars; and it is this which makes the magnitude of violence seem unimaginable. Although writers sometimes suggest that European travel facilitates escape from “all species of information,” political conceptions remain beneath such protestations of detachment.90 The last letter in History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, written by Percy Shelley, shuns explicit political comment and talks instead about “ecstatic wonder” and “Nature” as a “poet.” He makes, here, the experience of Europe almost mystical—an otherly land for spiritual reflection and philosophical escape not possible at home, where the surroundings are less “untameable and inaccessible.”91 However, drafts of Shelley’s contemporaneous poem “Mont Blanc,” reveal how European history intrudes upon these apparently apolitical meditations: The cities of mankind All things are changed with tumult & with sound Man even Wave rolling upon wave with restless swell [. . .] Power dwells apart The works and ways of man The cities of mankind The cities of mankind—their death & birth And that of him & all that may be, All things that move and breathe, with toil and sound Are born & die, revolve subside and swell— Power dwells apart in its tranquillity Remote serene & inaccessible!92

With its language of “remote” serenity and inaccessibility, the poem might seem to suggest the ultimate irrelevance of history in the face of “tranquillity” that stands beyond human politics. But the draft continually recalls “the cities of mankind,” “the works and ways of man,” and how “things are changed with tumult and with sound”; in other words, the scene brings to mind the Revolution and consequent European upheavals. As Cian Duffy puts it, within “the landscape’s emptiness [. . .] the mountain’s true,



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revolutionary ‘voice’ can be heard.”93 For all their apparent remoteness, Shelley’s Alps are inscribed with political significance: not only the possibility of past and future Revolution, but also rival reactionary “codes of fraud and woe.”94 Moreover, the Alps were the scene of Napoleon’s much mythologized crossing shortly after taking power and they, therefore, represent the start of his controversial impact on the Revolutionary legacy and European politics. For this reason, when “Mont Blanc” speaks of dwelling “power,” it alludes to barely concluded events in recent history and their enduring effects. Shelley acknowledges the impossibility of removing oneself from history in a letter to T. J. Hogg in August 1816: In considering the political events of the day I endeavour to divest my mind of temporary sensations, to consider them as already historical. This is difficult. Spite of ourselves the human beings which surround us infect us with their opinions: so much as to forbid us to be dispassionate observers of the questions arising out of the events of the age.95

Shelley implies that the process of thinking about contemporary events relies upon and produces particular understandings of history. In order to comprehend the present, one must consider it outside immediate “sensations” and place it within a deeper historical context. Yet, as Shelley says, no understanding of history is “dispassionate,” as it is always influenced by the “opinions” of oneself and others. This opens up the possibility of “multiple histories,” as each observer constructs his or her own unique perspective from personal experiences, reading, and reflection. But that very flexibility also facilitates a specific radical political agenda. For Shelley, as for Hobhouse, not all perspectives are equally valid. Some are “infectious,” that is to say, corrupting and unwelcome, which is why he and other members of the circle explore radical (or Whiggish) alternatives which can reapply existing notions of freedom and revolution in the post-Waterloo context. In this respect, their understandings of politics are inseparably connected to ideas about Europe’s past and future. For the Shelley–Byron circle, thinking about history, about political change, and about Europe are interrelated ideological processes.







“The Elysium of Europe”: Byron, Italy, and Europe, June 1817–July 1818

Introduction This chapter focuses on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto IV as well as other works written during its period of composition, notably Hobhouse’s Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold (1818). I argue that it is not sufficient to see Canto IV strictly in terms of sympathy for (Italian) nationalism, since this belies the important transnational themes of travel, literary fame, and classical inheritance that preoccupy the poem. But neither is it enough to interpret the poem solely in terms of cosmopolitanism, since this underemphasizes its concrete local contexts, namely Italian locations and the English language. Instead, a new approach is needed which shows how the poem presents both the locally specific as well as shared histories and traditions that cross local boundaries. The answer, I suggest, lies in analyzing how the poem constructs ideas about Europe, since analysis of that concept must account for both the local and the transnational. First, I explore how Byron uses specific places in the Italian states (especially Rome and Venice) to frame discussions of European history—that is, events and institutions which connect European countries together. Rome, for example, inspires reflections on imperial conquest, the prospect of (republican) change, classical inheritance, and Christianity. In other words, it presents culture and politics which cross national borders and can be traced across periods. Byron’s writing about Italy therefore articulates the interaction of local and transnational identity politics: he focuses on local rivalries and the uniqueness of individual locations,



Chapter 3


but nevertheless assembles this into an idea of a federal Italy, united by culture and history despite its divisions. Italy, in turn, becomes a symbol for understanding modern Europe, particularly the ongoing struggles of monarchy and “freedom,” and the spread of a shared religion and classical heritage. In this respect, Childe Harold constructs “Europe” and “Italy” simultaneously. Second, I note how Byron discusses travel, language, and literary texts in terms of both connection and separation: they can signify divisions between peoples and their different histories and traditions, but they can also facilitate new meetings of cultures, especially when texts are translated between languages, and individuals travel to unfamiliar places. Crucial too is the idea that writers can effect political change. For Byron, the construction of “Italy” and “Europe” is not merely an aesthetic process; it is also a contribution to actual political debate. This insistence on the political application of writing therefore foreshadows Byron’s increasingly tangible participation in contemporary politics, especially his criticism of post-Vienna diplomacy and involvement in the Greek Revolution. The “Dedication” to Childe Harold IV introduces many of these themes. Denying any distinction between the author and the protagonist (“the pilgrim”), Byron says “I had become weary of drawing a line which everyone seemed determined not to perceive, like the Chinese in Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, whom nobody would believe to be Chinese.”1 This is a significant analogy: Goldsmith’s book comments on the idiosyncrasies of life in Britain by using the device of a Chinese traveler writing home. Byron, as I will show, is similarly interested in the perspectives afforded by familiar and foreign perception. However, he also combines the image of the “citizen of the world”—the traveler at home everywhere—with that of the pilgrim: the traveler searching for something specific, and who has a particular goal. In this respect, the journey described in the poem is both specific in intention and unconstrained by borders and local loyalties. In an important but under-cited essay, Bernard Beatty notes that a pilgrimage is both a celebration of specific particularity—a tour of a local “special claim”—and a wider exploration of shared spaces and traditions. The site of pilgrimage is unique and incomparable, but also represents the shared history and culture of a much wider constituency. For Beatty, this undermines any interpretation of Childe Harold IV as a straightforward celebration of local specificity and hence of Italian nationalism. Instead, it reveals the “paradoxes of nationalism”: how nationalism is premised on the uniqueness of the local, but also “attaches unlimited value to time and place” to construct the wider idea of a national community.2 But perhaps there is another way of seeing this. Rather than resulting in a “paradox,” perhaps different particulars are integrated into a “European” register—as unique but connected contributions to a shared history. In other words, the language of “Europe” can help express the specificity of a place, or a 10.1057/9780230106307 - The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe, Paul Stock


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text, or a tradition, but can also see it in terms of its connections to other such places, traditions, and texts. For example, in the “Dedication” a series of remarks focus on the particularity of Italian identity, opening with a quotation from Alfieri: “La pianta uomo nasce più robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra” (The plant man is born more robust in Italy than in any other land).3 Byron names a number of Italians who “will serve to the present generation an honourable place in most of the departments of Arts and Science, and Belles Lettres [. . .] and in some the very highest—Europe—the World—has but one Canova.” He praises “the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius [and] their sense of beauty.” Byron appears here to be celebrating a national identity—but, of course, he is partly constructing an overarching Italian cultural identity in order to unify peoples of different locations, governments, and dialects. What I want to suggest is that this foreshadows the development of a European register later in the poem: Byron identifies places, historical events, traditions, and texts which traverse state and cultural boundaries, even while they reside in a particular locale. Addressing Hobhouse, Byron contrasts the “melancholy dirge” of Roman laborers mourning Rome’s decline with “the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from London taverns over the carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men you have exposed” in Letters During the Last Days. Ostensibly framing a contrast between particular circumstances, this is also a passage about the interaction of European states: about Britain’s interference in the affairs of others and also the transfer of imperial authority from ancient Rome to modern Britain. It is a passage about the power and oppression of certain states, but it also builds a web of European politics and influence which stretches across borders and periods. Later, Byron questions whether the Italian states have really gained anything from the post-Napoleonic “transfer of nations.”4 The phrase, of course, alludes to the diplomatic bartering initiated in Vienna. But it is also important, in this poem, to think of the cultural components of “nations”—specific texts, places, peoples—as being subject to “transfer”: that is, not restricted to certain local applications, but used to construct wider, transnational, ideas, and identities.

Venice, Rome, Italy, Europe Throughout Childe Harold IV, Byron talks in detail about specific places in the Italian states. But as well as remarking on the unique splendors of these places, he also uses them to reflect on European history, that is, events and 10.1057/9780230106307 - The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe, Paul Stock


The Elysium of Europe


institutions which connect European countries together and expose their interrelations. An example begins the poem: “Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, / The pleasant place of all festivity, / The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!” (4.25–7). This passage celebrates the uniqueness of Venice, but also uses it to construct and exemplify wider Italian cultural practices. Note too the phrase “revel of the earth,” which places Venice’s singularity in a global context and suggests that its symbolic functions are not restricted to Italy alone: Venice represents the pinnacle of worldly festivity as well as celebratory Italian culture. Elsewhere in the poem, the implications of Venice’s symbolisms are more specific: her daughters had their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East Pour’d in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deem’d their dignity increas’d. (4.14–18)5

There are two significant points here. First, Venice is a place of confrontation with “the East”: like Greece, Albania, and Gibraltar, it is a border-zone marking the separation, but also the close proximity, of European and non-European spaces. This is something which Byron emphasizes continuously in his writing of this period. In a “Fragment” on Venice, the speaker observes: The church of St Mark—which stands hard by With fretted pinnacles on high— And cupola and minaret— More like the mosque of orient lands. (lines 31–4)6

These lines portray Venice as a border-zone where Christian and Islamic cultures intermingle without becoming indistinct. “Venice: An Ode,” however, associates the city with staunch opposition to Islamic incursion: its overseas conquests “restored the Cross, that from above / Hallow’d her sheltering banners, which incessant / Flew between earth and the unholy Cresent” (lines 113–16).7 In Childe Harold, Venice is even called “Europe’s bulwark ‘gainst the Ottomite” (4.123), a phrase which makes the city both a frontier and the fulcrum of Europe’s defense from the Turks. In all these examples, Byron builds a particularized idea of Venice as a place like no other, but also uses that locality to generalize about “the Orient” and “Europe.” In this way, Byron constructs localized and European spaces from his reflections upon the significance of Venice.



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Byron is not alone in taking this perspective. In his note to line 19 of Childe Harold, Hobhouse calls attention to Venetian dialect variations of Tasso sung by gondoliers, thereby identifying unique local traditions. Significantly though the stanza he chooses to amplify his point also mentions a collective Christian community pitting itself against nonEuropeans: Canto l’arme pietose, e ‘ l capitano Che ‘ l gran Sepolcro liberò di Cristo [. . .] E in van l’Inferno a lui s’oppose, e in vano S’armò d’ Asia, e di Libia il popol misto (I sing of the merciful arms and of the Chief Who freed the great Sepulcher of Christ ... And in vain the Inferno opposed him, and in vain The mixed people of Asia and of Libya armed themselves).8

Hobhouse thus uses Venice and Tasso to articulate a local culture— albeit one under threat since the loss of Venice’s independence under Napoleon—and a collective Christian-European culture defined by opposition to Africans and Asians. His Venice is a unique place, but also represents the edges of Europe, simultaneously constructing particularized and transnational identities. Similarly for William Stewart Rose, whom Byron met in Venice in September 1817,9 the city is “a little world by itself, with arts of its own and manners of its own,” but also a place of unfamiliar non-European experiences, for example, a climate “charged with all the venom of Africa.”10 In this respect, Venice represents both the expansive possibilities of encountering different cultures and rivalries generated by those same encounters. The poet Samuel Rogers, for instance, notes the “mosque like roof ” of St Mark’s Basilica and the interaction of “the turk, the greek & the polish Jew” in the pursuit of trade, but also sees Venice as a symbol of confrontation with (and victory over) “the East”: St Mark’s square has “two grand columns from Constantinople, one a Lion looking to the East, the seat of empire emblematical.”11 Similarly, William Berrian, in Venice at the same time as Byron, notes “the varying physiognomy and dress of so many different people”: “Frenchman, Englishmen, Germans, Americans, Greeks and Turks.”12 Venice is a transnational place, but particular identities are also hardened as a result of those encounters, so that Berrian speaks of physical differences (“physiognomy”), as well as distinct fashions. For these writers therefore, Venice serves several interrelated functions: it





shows a cosmopolitan mixing of peoples, and it constructs specific identities, both on a local and national level, but also in shaping ideas about Christian-Europeans and their Muslim and Asian others. Returning to Childe Harold, I now wish to discuss the second implication of the quotation with which I began this section. Byron says of Venice that “her daughters had their dowers / From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East / Pour’d in her lap all gems in sparkling showers / In purple was she robed, and of her feast / Monarchs partook” (4.14–18). These lines, with their contemplation of empire and the allure of monarchical power, recall recent historical events, particularly the actions of Napoleon: his abolition of the Venetian Republic in 1797; his famed excursion to Egypt; his construction of a vast empire from “the spoils” of separate states; and the irresistible lure of an imperial crown. Byron uses Venice to reflect on these events; the city becomes a kind of case study in the interpretation of European history. Later, Byron notes: The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns— An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt, Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt From power’s high pinnacle. (4.100–4)

Byron alludes to the 1177 Peace of Venice, when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I ended hostilities with the Pope, contrasting this curb on imperial ambition with Francis I of Austria’s current reign over the city. Moreover, Venice’s decline from glory symbolizes the practices of post-Vienna politics, where smaller states like Venice and Poland are sacrificed to the victorious powers. Venice therefore exemplifies the course of European history, especially the growth, decline, and rivalries of empires. However, Venice is not only the perpetrator and victim of imperial power, it also symbolizes political freedom. Byron speaks of its “thirteen hundred years of freedom” and the Venetian “names no time nor tyranny can blight,” “herself still free” (4.113, 126, 122). Indeed, he grants Venice a prominent role in the fight against tyrants. After mentioning how the Attic Muse helped the Athenians to find freedom from captivity, Byron addresses Venice, suggesting that “proud historic deeds” and “Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot / Which ties thee to thy tyrants” (4.146–9). Such inspiration continues to present-day Britain: and thy lot Is shameful to the nations,—most of all, Albion! to thee, the Ocean queen should not



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These comments connect three states, separated by space and time, together into a continuous narrative about the struggle between liberty and tyranny. This is not a narrative of unambiguous progress or the inevitable triumph of liberty—after all, Byron alludes to the Athenians’ defeat by Syracuse and the current subjection of Venice. Instead, he outlines a tradition of shared problems, equally comprehensible now as in ancient times by a common language of “freedom.” Venice both echoes and prophecies other aspects of this connection, links which stretch across national and temporal boundaries, but which are not universal, as they are particular to the development of European history as Byron understands it. Byron is not alone in associating Venice with freedom, or in using the city’s history to draw political lessons for the present. In his notes to the poem, Hobhouse discourses at length on the wrongdoings of sovereigns, holding up Venice as a beacon of republican independence and describing the curtailment of Frederick I as a “triumph of liberty.”13 Similarly, John Moore’s A View of Society and Manners in Italy, parts of which Byron read in Venice,14 asserts that “the independence of Venice was not built on usurpation, nor cemented with blood, it was founded on the first law of human nature, and the undoubted rights of man.” For Moore, “a hatred of tyranny” and a “love of liberty” inspired the city’s foundation as “an asylum from the fury of Atilla”; its government subsequently reached “the highest degree of perfection” (although it has since become corrupt).15 Of course, these opinions were far from original: Venice had long been admired as a model of civic virtue, since it apparently preserved the “balanced” constitution of republican Rome and foreshadowed the separation of powers in modern Britain.16 As Beatty observes, many eighteenth-century authors define the idea of freedom “by all that is best in classical and European culture.”17 James Thomson’s Liberty (1735–6), for example, traces the trajectory of liberty from ancient Greece, through the Roman republic and Renaissance Italy to modern Britain.18 However, although Byron clearly works within this tradition, what makes his treatment of Venice more complex is the multiplicity of its different symbolic functions. Thomson constructs a smooth narrative in which the gradual triumph of liberty becomes ever more inevitable, but for Byron, Venice represents the interaction of many histories, political systems and potential futures. In “Venice: An Ode” he says: Glory and Empire! once upon these towers With Freedom—godlike Triad! how ye sate!



Abandon Ocean’s children; in the fall Of Venice, think of thine. (4.149–53)

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These lines acknowledge the multiple legacies of Venice: it represents both political freedom and the power of empires. It is a place of past glory, but also an exemplar of wider decline in Europe: “thirteen hundred years / Of wealth and glory turn’d to dust and tears”; “There is no hope for nations! [. . .] / The everlasting to be which hath been / Has taught us nought or little” (“Ode,” 15–16, 59–60). It is used to celebrate the “harmless conquests” (113) of imperial activity, but also to condemn the “blindfold bondage” (70) of monarchical government. And, of course, it represents the potential salvation of republicanism, and the dissolution of those hopes: “The name of Commonwealth is past and gone [. . .] / Venice is crush’d” (125–7). Byron thus uses this rich interpretation of Venice’s legacy to diagnose the complex politics of contemporary Europe, with its similar fluctuations between hopeful possibilities and eventual disappointments. In these formulations, Venice is both a unique location and a transnational space. When the speaker of “Venice: An Ode” laments that “when thy marble walls / Are level with the waters, there shall be / A cry of nations” (1–3), he mourns the potential demise of a distinctive place, but also understands the city in terms of “the nations” collective grief. Venice’s very uniqueness is what makes it valued by those other places, and in this sense, its individuality and its transnationality are interdependent. At the end of the poem, the speaker suggests that the United States inherits the failed political freedom of Venice and Britain: “Still one great clime, in full and free defiance, / Yet rears her crest, unconquer’d and sublime, / Above the far Atlantic!” (142–4). This is partly a nationalist point, but it also extends the familiar tradition of freedom across new boundaries to incorporate more states. In this respect, as well as representing various ideas about European politics, Venice is also a means to explore connections and contrasts with the extra-European world, interactions which are closely related to European notions of “freedom” and “tyranny.” It is insightful to note how some contemporary reviews react to this complexity. Many choose to focus on a chosen theme, belying the complexity of Byron’s writing. The British Critic sees in Venice’s decline a lesson for British power, whereas the Monthly Magazine and the Northern Star understand Childe Harold as a straightforward defense of “the cause of Freedom.”19 Walter Scott’s review for the Quarterly, however, offers more perceptive analysis. First, he recognizes Venice’s ambiguity as a symbol of political liberty, noting that the city also produced “the most jealous aristocracy that ever existed.” And second,,he critiques Byron’s



The league of mightiest nation in those hours When Venice was an envy. (lines 101–4)

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apparent call for “free and independent nations,” arguing that, if liberated from Austria, Venice would be unable to defend or support itself without recourse to worse tyrannical government. “What is to be wished for Italy,” he says, “is the amalgamation of its petty states into one independent and well-governed kingdom, capable of asserting and maintaining her place among the nations of Europe.”20 In advocating a united Italy, Scott uses Venice as a base from which to construct wider states and forms of collective identity. Despite his different politics, Scott, like Byron, recognizes the complex symbolic resonance of Venice: it represents independence from monarchs, as well as oligarchical tyranny; the implementation of Revolutionary principles and the collapse of those same ideals. Most importantly, it is a unique location which also signifies wider Italian and European communities. Many of these same issues are also important in the Byron circle’s treatment of Rome, which makes use of an even wider array of interpretative registers, notably republicanism, imperialism, and Catholicism. In this respect, the circle’s classicism is not based solely upon Hellenistic foundations, since it is indebted to, and complicated by, the rich ideological connotations of Roman history.21 In Childe Harold, the narrator says: “Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul! / The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, / Lone mother of dead empires” (4.694–6). Rome’s specificity is thus defined by its familial relations to other countries and “dead empires.” Moreover, the narrator’s declaration of particular attachment is complicated by his self-defined transnationalism: “I’ve taught me other tongues—and in strange eyes / Have made me not a stranger” (4.64–5). In this way, Rome is a home for cosmopolitans, its very uniqueness premised on its transnational legacies and appeal. Glossing these lines in his Historical Illustrations, Hobhouse calls Rome “the country of every man.” Although he mentions the “local sanctity” of the place, he also says that classical education qualifies “the traveller of every nation for that citizenship which is again become [. . .] what it once was, the portion of the whole civilised world.”22 Hobhouse’s book details at tremendous length the incomparable sights of the city, but Rome also symbolizes “the civilised world,” constructing an imagined community which extends beyond Italy, while remaining grounded in European Christianity and classical culture. Byron’s treatment of Rome is distinguished from his writing on Venice by the prominence granted to religion: Parent of our Religion! whom the wide Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! Europe, repentant of her parricide,




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Italy and Rome are cultural progenitors, the centerpieces of European religious tradition. But the implications are more complex: the lines also allude to religious divisions in Europe—the peoples who rebelled against Catholicism—as well as to former Christian unity and the prospect of redemption. In Italy, Europeans can find the means to reflect on their unanimity by acknowledging their common origin, but it also foregrounds the divisions and changes which are equally central to understanding European (religious) culture. Rome is the “Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods, / From Jove to Jesus” (4.1307–8). It is the holiest of sites “Since Zion’s desolation” (4.1380–1), representing the development of Judeo-Christianity and its accommodation with classical history. The city thus symbolizes how faiths cross borders and unite disparate peoples and periods. But it also shows how those cultures are themselves changed by such transnational movements. Sometimes they overlay and replace one another, creating more complex traditions as indicated by the multifarious religious resonances of Rome; and sometimes they fragment into competition, as evidenced by the “parricide” of the Reformation. A few of Byron’s contemporaries also emphasize the importance of Rome and Christianity in understanding Europe. Hobhouse notes that as “the metropolis of Christianity,” Rome had “tempted the ambition of every conqueror” and “sovereign of Europe,” as if the pretensions of absolute power could only be conferred “on the banks of the Tyber.” In this respect, Hobhouse argues that mastery of Europe has traditionally been understood in terms of Rome, a connection which continued to modern times when Napoleon crowned his son the King of Rome.23 Hobhouse’s antagonist John Chetwode Eustace uses Rome in a similar fashion.24 In the preface to his Classical Tour, Eustace openly asserts his devout Roman Catholicism, making it central in his investigation of the classical past and its implicit lessons for modern government and political liberty.25 In this way, the preface retrospectively invigorates a shared European culture in terms of religion and classical inheritance. Like Hobhouse’s conquerors, Eustace authorizes his mastery of European classical history by confirming and celebrating his own devotion to Roman traditions. However, such foregrounding of religious identity in Europe is not entirely uncontroversial. Jeremy Black emphasizes the importance of antiCatholicism in eighteenth-century British travel writing: tourists would often decry the autocracy, superstition, and clerical oppression of Catholic countries, inviting positive comparisons with the idyll of home. For some



Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, Role the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. (4.419–23)

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moralists, travel itself was dangerous as it could expose impressionable people to the woes of “Popery.”26 For this reason, the British Critic objects strongly when Byron names Rome the “Parent of our Religion” on the grounds that it undermines the poet’s religious and national loyalties: “had he condescended to have informed himself what the religion of his country was.”27 The reviewer tries to re-erect the national and religious boundaries which Childe Harold ’s reflections on Rome and Venice seeks to complicate. Nor are these anti-Catholic remarks a sign of reactionary xenophobia. Even the radical Hobhouse abuses Catholicism as a corruption of early Christianity, which engages in “ridiculous” practices.28 This succeeds in making Rome strange and otherly—no longer the symbol of a shared culture, it is now an alien and foreign place, wedded to religious superstition and despotism. Thomas Moore, visiting Italy in 1819, also notes the ambiguous role of Catholicism in radical politics. The “Liberals in Italy,” he says, “dread the grant of emancipation to Catholics [in Britain] as it would give such a triumph to the papacy, their great object of their detestation.” Moore goes on to remark on what “different colours a general question may receive from local interests.”29 In other words, apparently transnational issues—like the radical hopes for governmental reform—are often presented and interpreted in local terms. It is therefore necessary to remember the interaction of locality and transnationality in the Byron circle’s writings: ideas about Rome have an import beyond their local setting, but the consequent reflections on European history and governance are still refracted through specific geographical and historical circumstances and connotations. Rome and Europe, in other words, help construct one another. In addition, Moore’s comments show how Catholicism is a controversial political issue for writers of all persuasions, likely to evoke sectarian sentiments and accentuate ideas about (national) difference for a British readership. Byron’s placement of Rome and Catholicism at the center of his understanding of Europe is therefore a somewhat daring strategy—one made all the more remarkable by the treatment of Catholicism in Beppo. Here, Catholicism is used to highlight the alien experience of life in Venice and Italy: “if your religion’s Roman, / And you at Rome would do as Romans do, / According to the proverb,—although no man, / If foreign is oblig’d to fast” (lines 65–8). In Beppo, Catholic practices indicate the local specificity and unfamiliarity of the foreign, whereas in Childe Harold, they also stand for the potential unity of shared religious belief across Europe. As with Venice, writing about Rome is also an opportunity to reflect on ideas about imperialism, liberty, and governance, both in the past and in contemporary Europe. Looking upon the Coliseum and thinking of its gladiatorial contests, the narrator of Childe Harold mourns the “young





barbarians” captured from the Danube and “Butcher’d to make a Roman holiday” (4.1263–9). Rome here is driven by its thirst for blood, both in terms of the contests themselves and the imperial expansion required to facilitate them. Yet, the poem also notes the transnationality of the Empire—the “buzz of eager nations” witnessing the fight at the Coliseum where “burning nations choked the ways” (4.1243, 1271). Byron explores the ways in which the empire both antagonizes and tries to erase borders between peoples; it spreads certain cultural practices which connect “nations” as well as the violence and coercion necessary to sustain it. And, of course, these reflections also pertain to recent history—the empire of Napoleonic France being replaced by the ambitions of other imperial powers. When Byron mentions the ancient conflict between Rome and Carthage, he does so using the modern terminology of “national” conflict, alluding to current problems in Europe: “such is the hate when warring nations meet!” (4.567). Likewise, the interpretation of ancient empires is overlaid with recent conflicts between nation-states: the past and the present are understood in terms of one another. However, like Venice, Rome represents the (lost) opportunities of liberty. Byron mourns the death of Brutus and the days “when Rome was free” (4.730–8), a lament which alludes to the dawn of the Roman Empire, but also concerns the disintegration of liberal hopes during the restorations, especially renewed Austrian influence over the Italian states.30 Later, he emphasizes the republican implications of this “freedom” by discussing powerful figures who rejected monarchy, namely Sulla, who resigned as dictator of the Roman Republic and Oliver Cromwell: “Sulla was first of victors; but our own / The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell” (4.757–8). Of course, these are not unambiguous examples: Sulla marched against the Senate and Cromwell assumed considerable personal power, so neither is a simplistic republican hero. Instead, Byron uses the complex legacies and connotations of Rome to debate the interaction of liberty and tyranny throughout European history. He thus asserts the endurance of “Freedom,” which lives on like a fallen tree: “The tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind, / Chopp’d by the axe, looks rough and little worth, / But the sap lasts,—and still the seeds we find / Sown deep” (4.878–81). Yet, Rome also represents the extinction of those hopes: The field of freedom, faction, fame and blood: Here a proud people’s passions were exhaled, From the first hour of empire in the bud To that when further worlds to conquer fail’d But long before has Freedom’s face been veil’d. (4.1009–13)



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These reflections on freedom and its discontents are grounded in the space of Rome, which facilitates the simultaneous consideration of different political themes and possibilities affecting both ancients and moderns. In the Historical Illustrations, Hobhouse tries to simplify the politics of the poem: “we have heard too much of the turbulence of the Roman democracy and of Augustan virtues. No civil tranquillity can compensate for that perpetual submission, not to laws but persons, which must be required from the subjects of the most limited monarchy.”31 As in the poem itself, Rome prompts reflections on modern politics, but Hobhouse’s explications fail to acknowledge the full complexity of Byron’s Rome: it is simultaneously a decaying and declining place of vanished glories and a living progenitor of cultural traditions and political possibilities which continue to inspire. Of course, these ruminations are not unique to Byron or his circle. Stephen Cheeke notes the various “commonplaces” typical to visitors to Rome, including solemn reflections on fortune, on the transience and decay of power, and on “the continuity of past and present through the notion of an enduring legacy.” These sentiments are clichés, but also offer “an experience that is somehow repeated or renewed [. . .] in a place ‘common’ to each visitor,” thereby creating a transhistorical sense of community built though that familiarity.32 Byron clearly works within a tradition, which sees in Rome the interplay of “poverty and squalor,” the impermanence of greatness,” and the “transfer of intellectual pre-eminence” to the present.33 There is a political element to this too. As Malcolm Kelsall demonstrates, Byron applies to post-Napoleonic Europe traditional Whiggish arguments which combine faith in “the historical progress of liberty” with “pessimism about the contemporary scene” and which used the classics to explore the conflict between freedom and tyranny. In this way, Childe Harold IV ’s “central intellectual problem” is to place modern politics—the Revolution, Napoleon, the restorations—within a familiar pattern: the “Roman theme of the rise and fall of liberty.”34 With this in mind, it is instructive to look at a few other contemporary writings and guidebooks about Rome. For many of these texts, classicism “mandated a fair portion of the traveler’s itinerary and guided his responses to many sights and cultural artefacts.” The purpose of travel was to familiarize oneself with “the Classical Mind,” a task which could be aided by visiting places associated with admired classical authors.35 For John Moore, the attraction of Rome is determined mainly by “reading the classics, and the history of the ancient republic” while in Henry Coxe’s guidebook, the landscape is “the seat of valour and the cradle of the sciences and the arts”: it “awakens all those classical recollections which formed the delight of our youth.”36 Modern Italy is thus constructed in terms of the ancient past, and this has led some commentators to suggest that travelers of the period were





broadly uninterested in contemporary Italian politics. Jeremy Black identifies a retreat “into the past” in travelers’ accounts of their journeys: tourists, he says, “knew little and cared less about [Italy’s] current culture and society.”37 J. R. Hale even detects a political and aesthetic conservatism in contemporary guidebooks. Partly because older eighteenth-century texts were reprinted to meet the sudden demand after 1814, published guides tended to preserve much earlier aesthetic values, as well as focusing heavily on the classical past. According to Hale, “the greatest pleasure lay not in coming across the unexpected, but in a measured reaction to the familiar.” In Italy, “every stone, every road had its historical association [. . .] a scene could not be fully appreciated unless the memory peopled it with illustrious shades” of ancient times.38 These conventions would seem to suggest that a search for the past overwhelmed interest in the present for many contemporary tourists and their guidebooks. It is possible, however, to exaggerate the extent to which travel books were disinterested in modern politics. Eustace’s Classical Tour opens by stating that the object of his work is to “trace the resemblance between Modern and Ancient Italy, and to take for guides and companions in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the writers that preceded or adorned the first.”39 In other words, modernity and antiquity are mutually illuminating: Eustace is interested in the “resemblance” or correspondence between them. Rather than allowing the past to become fossilized, he promotes the relevance of classicism to nineteenth-century concerns, even seeing the past and modern politics in terms of one another. Indeed, his view of Roman governance is colored by his political views: his selfconfessed sympathy for republicanism is motivated by “Liberty, the source of so many virtues” and “the general tendency of [republican] principles to the cause of freedom.” These same qualities also inspire “the Commonwealth of England,” which combines “the excellencies of all the ancient commonwealths, together with the advantages of the best form of monarchy.” For Eustace therefore, ancient and modern systems of government operate according to analogous values, meaning that they can illuminate one another. Classical study confirms Eustace’s Whig sensibilities: the English monarchy, like the Roman Republic, avoids the twin evils of “royal encroachment and popular frenzy.”40 A broadly similar process occurs in Henry Sass’s A Journey to Rome and Naples Performed in 1817. Sass treats Rome in terms of the vanished past: “I am upon the spot—on the spot only—where it formerly stood—the illusion is dissipated [. . .] Rome, with all its greatness, has vanished from the earth.” But the account is also a cause for reflection on modern politics: for example, he praises France for “improving Italy,” not only in terms of roads, communication and security, but also “the general state of society.” He also



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discourses on political theory, speaks of a contract between the government and the governed, and hopes for the demise of despotic kings and emperors in favor of “the proper object of government”: “the safety and happiness of the people.”41 In this respect, Byron and his circle operate within existing modes of thought which connect Italian travel with modern politics and which assert the relevance of classical tradition to the contemporary world and its problems. However, what I wish to emphasize is how Byron uses Rome to represent ideas about Europe: the Roman exemplar stands for the whole, while at the same time, European events are understood according to Roman examples. In Childe Harold, therefore, Napoleon is described as an imitator of the Roman past, a “kind / Of bastard Caesar, following him of old / With steps unequal” (4.802–4). At stanza 145, the narrator paraphrases Gibbon’s Decline and Fall: “ ‘When stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; / When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; / And when Rome falls—the World’ ” (4.1297–9). Rome is here explicitly equated with the state of the (Eurocentric) world, and it is this evocative connection which allows the poem to proceed so frequently from discussions about specific places and events to generalizations about the course of history and modern Europe. At one point, for example, the narrator reflects on Napoleon’s downfall: Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be, And Freedom find no champion and no child [. . .] Or must such minds be nourished in the wild, Deep in the unpruned forest, ‘midst the roar Of cataracts, where nursing nature smiled On infant Washington? Has Earth no more Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore? (4.856–64)

The discussion here expands to diagnose problems in contemporary Europe: the narrator says that French history since the Revolution has been “fatal” “To Freedom’s cause, in every age and clime” (4.866–7), a statement which universalizes the post-Revolutionary legacy. This strategy allows Byron to talk about both specific locations and periods—ancient Rome, modern France—and generalize them into European themes about tyranny, republicanism, and the struggle for freedom. The idea of Europe is thus built upon these specifics, but the resultant implications are not restricted to them, and hence, it is possible to transfer ancient debates about despots, rebellion, and governance to the modern circumstances of Europe.




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Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line, Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, Her Coliseum stands. (4.1144–7)

In other words, the complex and contradictory components of Roman history are assembled together into a single edifice. This is a useful way to explain how Byron constructs his intricate idea of Rome, but it also indicates how Rome itself is a component in the construction of still larger concepts, namely Italy and Europe. Continuing the archaeological metaphors, the poem continues: “A ruin—yet what ruin! from its mass / Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared” (4.1279–80). To put it differently, the fragments of Rome supply the materials and inspiration for other social and cultural legacies. Rome helps build the structure of Byron’s Europe: the struggles of monarchy, empire and freedom, the spread of a shared religion, and classical heritage and so on. It is both the product of these combinations, and a kind of model for wider European historical and political themes. James Buzard talks about the “symbolic” significance of particular places for nineteenth-century tourists in the definition of “culture.” Quoting Coleridge’s maxim on the picturesque—“where parts are seen and distinguished, but the whole is felt”—Buzard suggests that ideas about “foreign” cultures are fashioned from observation of its parts, so that a specific place gives evidence of the totality.42 Rome is an especially complex case because its symbolisms also represent the familiarity of a shared culture. Not only is the city an assembly of constituent histories and legacies, but Rome is itself a “component” which gives evidence to a European culture. Byron engages in a kind of archaeological “layering,” in which different pasts and potential futures are superimposed over one another to make shared spaces and communities. As Stephen Cheeke argues, these understandings are “produced by the fact of being present on the spot, where the hidden and buried connections of history become manifest, where the very knowledge of interconnection becomes possible through contemplation of one’s own presence in a particular place.”43 In other words, layered constructions of communal European history are grounded in local particularity, and a reading of Byron’s work must give equal consideration to both these factors.



However, it is important to note that this construction of Europe remains grounded in the material and the specificity of certain spaces. Writing about the Coliseum, the narrator of Childe Harold says:


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The master-mould of Nature’s heavenly hand, Wherein were cast the heroic and the free, The beautiful, the brave—the lords of earth and sea, The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome! And even since, and, now, fair Italy! Thou art the garden of the world, the home Of all art yields. (4.220–7)

The passage identifies the distinctiveness of Italy, but this cannot be equated with simplistic nationalism because Italy also serves as a “model” which has more extensive applicability. It is an exemplar and an ideal of universal artistic standards, as well as a special and unique location. In the language of one review of Childe Harold, Italy is the “Elysium of Europe”: the abode of the illustrious dead so important to Europe’s classical inheritance, but also a place which perfects and encapsulates the “ideal” of European culture.45 The phrase “commonwealth of kings” is important too, because it alludes to enduring debates about government which have continued from antiquity to the post-Napoleonic period. But while the phrase partly implies rivalry, it also expresses a federal unity: it gathers the Italian states into a common unit. This shows how Byron also uses Italy, Rome, and Venice to frame ideas about Europe: the independence and exceptionality of these places is analyzed alongside those historical episodes and cultural traditions which connect them to others. Hobhouse expresses something similar when he says that “there is no country which can contend with Italy,” but also notes the attractiveness of the region to “the pilgrims of united Europe.” He acknowledges the “territorial divisions and subdivisions” in the states, but sees that local particularity in the context, not only of a collective Italy, but also of a “united” European culture, all countries being “the children of the same mother.”46 When Byron mentions the “genius of the place” (4.1039), the phrase therefore has a double implication. It refers not only to the qualities which make that location distinctive, but also to the etymologically related “genus” of the place; that is, the “common characteristics” which define the place’s membership of an interconnected familial group. It is important to recognize that these constructions of Italy and Europe contribute to existing lines of argument. Italian states had long been a



In summary then, Byron partly memorializes a project for the Italian nation: he gathers “a set of literary and historical figures under the transcendent sign of a national ‘spirit’ ”.44 But this is not all. Italy is also:


key component in “Whig philosophies of history,” providing rich source material for the struggles of liberators against tyrants.47 Furthermore, in the early nineteenth century, Italy had become a kind of proxy in British debates about the reorganization of Europe: “the Tories wanted reform to prevent revolution, the Whigs wanted Austrian influence checked, the more extreme liberals wanted revolution to expel the foreigner from Italian soil.” Italy’s association with British radical politics intensified in 1814 when Lord William Bentinck, contrary to British policy, encouraged the Genoese government to restore the radical 1797 constitution. After the Congress of Vienna, the so-called betrayal of Genoa made Italy a “popular liberal cause” for opponents of the government.48 But this should not imply that interlocked understandings of Italy and Europe were standard or unremarkable. John Moore makes no attempt to theorize a unified Italy, preferring to concentrate on the dissonance between different states: Venice’s rivalries with Lombardy and Padua, and Venice’s subsequent role in disputes between Austria and France.49 William Rose even denies the possibility of a united Italy, writing that such hopes were not widely held except by “a few young men,” and that a federation could only occur under the coercion of a larger state with sufficient means “to bribe or force the others into union.”50 In The Beauty of Inflections, Jerome McGann suggests that Byron “transforms Italy into a geo-political myth through which he can criticize the deficiencies of contemporary Europe on the one hand, and initiate more generous and vital forms of human civilization on the other.”51 Yet, his conception of Italy is also grounded in the material, making the resultant construction both “real” and “imagined.” Furthermore, Byron also configures the ideas of Italy and Europe being critiqued, a process which continually evolves throughout his writing. At the end of Childe Harold IV, he mentions “Calpe’s rock” (Gibraltar) and the “Symplegades,” two islands in the Bosphorus (4.1574–6), returning to the spatial demarcations at the edges of Europe that had preoccupied him in Canto I. But at the moment of this familiar return, he also offers a new spatial reconceptualization of Europe: The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, [. . .] Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed their power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey



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Rather than seeing Europe in terms of the conflicts, borders, and journeys of land, here the Mediterranean takes center stage as the space which connects temporarily distant empires and facilitates their interaction.52 The sea symbolizes the mutability of Europe’s history, but also the enduring concepts, conflicts, and encounters which remain crucial to understanding the ancient past and the culture and politics of the European present.

Language, Writing, Internationality Childe Harold IV is not only grounded in specific locations, it is also shaped by a particular language. This is significant because Byron suggests that speakers of different languages possess distinct mentalities. Informing Richard Belgrave Hoppner about Italian customs, Byron says: “our modes of thinking and writing are so unutterably different that I can conceive no greater absurdity than attempting to make any approach between the English and Italian poetry of the present day.”53 Indeed, in Childe Harold, the narrator says “I twine / My hopes of being remembered in my line / With my land’s language” (4.76–8), defining himself in terms of a native language and literary tradition. However, these demarcations of a literary-cultural border are not the full picture. The narrator also boasts that “I’ve taught me other tongues—and in strange eyes / Have made me not a stranger” (4.64–5), and he wonders whether his fame will echo “from out the temple where the dead / Are honoured by the nations” (4.83–4). This process of “honouring” is an international one, and an author’s reputation is therefore not founded strictly upon one vernacular language. Instead, Byron is interested in how languages and literary texts can signify divisions, but can also connect peoples together by crafting new, transnational identities. Writing to the Italian translator of Childe Harold, Byron acknowledges the difficulties—even the impossibility—of transferring expressions perfectly from one idiom to another: “[I] return my thanks in my native language—that I may not do injustice to yours.” But he also asserts the communicative possibilities of translation for transcending such divisions: “in common with every English reader of your language I feel highly indebted for the honour you have done to ours in your versions of the most Classical of our poets [Milton, Shakespeare, Otway] and I should



The stranger, slave, or savage, their decay Has dried up realms to deserts—not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play. (4.1621–36)


be [. . .] gratified by your continuance to give them to Italy.”54 For Byron, languages can divide speakers, but texts, literary traditions, and ideas can also cross those barriers as they are reformulated for different languagecommunities. Byron discusses travel in a very similar way, as both strengthening and overcoming separations between peoples and spaces. In Venice, he rails against English tourists who “infect” Italy: “I abhor the nation—& the nation me [. . .] it may suffice to say—that if I met with any of the race in the beautiful parts of Switzerland—the most distant glimpse or aspect of them poisoned the whole scene.” He stays at Venice, he claims, chiefly because “it is not one of their ‘dens of thieves’ and here they but pause and pass.”55 These harsh words set up boundaries between (national) cultures: the British are a foreign “tribe,” invading the spaces of other peoples. But Byron also looks to escape such national particularity even as he purports to promote it. By denouncing the British so aggressively, he disassociates himself from them, thereby placing himself outside the nationalist boundaries that he simultaneously emphasizes so strongly. Incompetent and insensitive tourists such as the poet William Sotheby blunder “through Italy without a word of the language,” but Byron implies that he himself has achieved a finer comprehension and a more subtle engagement with Italy and its cultures.56 In this respect, Byron makes a case both for and against transnationalism, identifying how travel can harden perceptions of difference, but also seeing his own lifestyle as an exemplar of intercultural adaptability and as a rejection of parochialism. “I have lived much with Italians” and “I understand Italian and speak it (with more readiness than accuracy)” he informs Thomas Moore. This affords him a perspective unconstrained by monolingualism, while also allowing a more “authentic” local encounter with the particularities of Venetian and Italian life.57 For this reason, Byron describes his travel in Italy in terms of both cosmopolitanism and a localized attachment to specific places. In Venice, “I have books—a decent establishment—a fine country—a language which I prefer—most of the amusements & conveniences of life—as much of society as I choose to take.”58 This is not simply a case of reveling in a newfound rootlessness, because Byron also takes pride in a new place and its unique attractions. For Byron, travel creates and shapes new local associations even as it disrupts other localisms, and it is necessary to understand his travel writing in terms of attachment to specific places, transnational opportunities, and their consequent tensions. When Byron reports his participation in a conversazione to Moore, he emphasizes the cosmopolitan mix of people in attendance, “a motley crew of Austrians, Germans, noble Venetians, foreigners,” but he also speaks of Britain as “our” country, thus identifying a homeland for himself. By including Moore in this community, he



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complicates matters still further; he goes on to call Moore’s native Ireland “your” country and emphasizes its distinctiveness from the other British Isles.59 He thus grants Moore a localized identity, while also drawing him into an (inter)national community of which they are both a part. In making these statements, Byron is, of course, tapping into longstanding views of travel as a patriotic exercise in bolstering national pride and as an opportunity for transnational encounter. As Buzard writes, the Grand Tour “could broaden one’s horizons, making a ‘citizen of the world’; or it could make one a better citizen at home, confirming the superiority of British social arrangements over those found elsewhere.”60 John Moore celebrates the first possibility, suggesting that “the reciprocal exchange of good offices with those whom he considered as enemies” will help a young man look “beyond the limits of his own country.” “Seas, mountains, rivers,” Moore continues “are geographical boundaries, [which] never limited the good-will or esteem of one liberal mind,” constructing a transnational imagined community of polite manners.61 Coxe also advises that a traveler should “avoid one’s own countrymen” and “take no English carriage or servants” in order to divest himself of national prejudices and partisan comparisons. Instead, “a traveller should never interfere with the received opinion of the country where he is a stranger”; he should become less attentive to cultural differences in order to gain the most from the trip.62 But for Samuel Rogers, even though travel can help “our prejudices [to] leave us,” this new-found worldliness should be channeled to a patriotic purpose: “must we not return better citizens than we went? [. . .] for the more we become acquainted with the institutions of other countries, the more highly we must value our own.” According to Rogers, cosmopolitanism itself is a patriotic instrument.63 William Rose cannot find even this consolation as he details the frustrating experiences of life away from home. He focuses especially on problems crossing borders: “informalities” in his passport and prejudice “against the English” prevent him from moving around freely; border-sentries—“the guardians of the frontier”—charge extortionate fees “on the grounds that we were foreigners.” Rose’s travels outline the existence of bordered national spaces, and even the act of crossing those borders reminds the traveler of his outsider status. Perhaps influenced by these inconveniences, Rose’s own assumptions contribute to the policing of cultural boundaries: he supports protectionism “for the purpose of encouraging national industry,” and also remarks on the “superior order of the English people.”64 Moore’s experiences were not necessarily unusual. Since the 1790s—and certainly since the Napoleonic wars—a modern passport system had developed in Britain, France, and Germany “which imposed a new type of state control on travel and introduced a new administrative distinction between citizens and aliens.” Motivated mainly





by “fears of external military threat and of subversion,” as well as indicating greater centralized authority, these new procedures cemented a legal distinction between locals “who did not need permits, and ‘foreigners’ from outside the district, who did.”65 In the Italian states, border controls could be onerous: a relatively short journey from the Simplon Pass to Florence via Bologna, would involve at least six passport and customs stops, not counting the impounding of papers in exchange for residence permits at cities.66 Often, however, “rank and status” remained “much more important than nationality” in obtaining papers and permitting passage—perhaps explaining why Byron never complains about such routine problems despite his and Rose’s similar itineraries.67 Most interesting, however, are travel books’ observations on the divisive and communicative possibilities of travel. Henry Sass, another traveler in Italy in 1817, suggests that the visitor abroad “should endeavour to divest himself if all prejudice, that he may relate what he sees with impunity.” But even he cannot resist “force of habit,” indulging in rather absurd stereotyping: “there is a neatness and cleanliness in the French [. . .] they are greatly superior to the Italians, who are in general very filthy [. . .] The French are lively and industrious: the Italians [. . .] extremely indolent.”68 James Sloan, who toured the Italian states in 1816–17, distinguishes between “national characters” with a comparable aggressiveness: “we are too apt to confound in one general idea the Italian and the French character,” he says. “The principle of vanity” is at the root of French conduct, while Italians are undone by “indolence” and “effeminacy.” However, Sloan also draws these divisive denunciations together to form collective identities. He suggests that the Italian peoples have a “uniform aspect,” and that this precipitates a unified state; he even argues that a federal Italy might be “a respectable and efficient member” of the “European commonwealth.” Sloan therefore articulates the potential for a community beyond the regional characteristics that preoccupy his observations. In some respects, however, his notion of a “European commonwealth” merely develops the implications of his focus on an Italian common character. Like his construction of “Italy,” this idea of Europe gathers regional localisms into a larger identity which remains defined by specific spaces and histories. Sloan’s ideas about Europe and distinct nations are interrelated because they are founded on similar principles and assumptions: “like all the old governments of Europe,” he generalizes, “[Austria] is pregnant with abuses and stands in need of reform.”69 What interests me here is how these perspectives on regional and collective identities shape ideas about Europe as a place divided by contrasts, but which still retains shared traditions, texts, and places. For Byron, foreign places are different and unique, but are also transnationally constructed.



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On visiting Verona, for example, he says that Shakespeare “has done more for [the city] that it ever did for itself. They still pretend to show, I believe, the ‘tomb of the Capulets.’ ” 70 Verona here presents itself in terms of the foreign imagination, and it is thus understood in terms of its transnational representations. An idea of pilgrimage is at work too: Verona’s very uniqueness is founded upon its cross-border appeal and its veneration by traveling foreigners. A similar process occurs in Childe Harold IV when Venice reminds the narrator of “Shylock and the Moor, / And Pierre” (4.33–4), that is, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Otway’s Venice Preserv’ d. Later on, he notes that “Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare’s art, / Had stamp’d her image in me” (4.158–9); his expectations of Venice are shaped by literary representations of the city in other languages. In this way, Byron constructs not just local and European spaces, but also European writing and writers. These writers themselves formulate ideas about Europe, but are also part of those formulations in the sense of belonging to a shared culture not restricted by national or linguistic boundaries. Byron values certain individuals and their work as symbols of their locale and for having wider influence beyond those boundaries. In Childe Harold, for instance, the narrator laments that Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are not commemorated locally: “have their country’s marbles nought to say? / Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?” (4.502–3). Byron tries to revitalize these figures as local heroes, but he also reflects on how they transcend parochial connections: “the crown / Which Petrarch’s laureate brow supremely wore, / Upon a far and foreign soil had grown” (4.510–12). Byron comments on how Petrarch established Italian as a literary language, thus contributing to an idea of Italian community—“He arose / To raise a language, and his land reclaim / From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes” (4.266–8). But Hobhouse’s note reminds us that this is not a straightforward assertion. Petrarch is identified with “the country where he was born [Florence], but where he would not live”; he had an “aversion” for his “native country.” Hobhouse presents the poet as a figure on the borders, as an exile and a wanderer between city-states, flitting between Rome, Padua, Parma, and Venice. Petrarch thus highlights the fractious rivalries and local pride of the Italian states, as well as the possibility of traversing those divides. Indeed, Hobhouse’s cataloguing of memorials to Petrarch in various cities indicates both aspects of the poet’s symbolic significance. Hobhouse’s note on Boccaccio similarly complicates a “nationalist poetics” by esteeming him as a European figure. Like Petrarch, he “founded, or certainly fixed, a new language,” but he also transmitted the “science and poetry of Greece” to Italy and was esteemed “by every polite court in Europe.” 71 Byron and Hobhouse are interested in the transnational importance of these authors without losing





sight of their local contexts. Byron calls Dante “the southern Scott” (4.357) and Walter Scott himself “the Ariosto of the North” on the grounds that his themes—“chivalry, war & love”—resemble those if the Italian poet. Clarifying his remark to Murray, Byron denies that this is a “sad provincial eulogy”; instead, the comment offers an appreciation of Scott which goes beyond provinciality, while simultaneously remaining rooted in it: Scott’s poems speak particularly to “all countries that are not in the South.”72 In one of his own notes to Childe Harold, Byron takes this a stage further still, suggesting that authors somehow inhabit a world beyond age, nation, and gender: “writers of all ages and nations, are, as it were associated in a world of their own,” where “the individual will gradually disappear” and the distinctions of gender are unimportant (“the dead have no sex”).73 Unlike his other comments, Byron proposes that writers escape their circumstances of particularity—he moves toward an idea of universality which, as I argue in Chapter 5, is a central part of Percy Shelley’s notions of both authorship and Europe. All of this owes much to the eighteenth-century notion of the voyage littéraire, in which a cultured tourist would visit antiquities, memorial sites, and living scholars in order to assert his or her membership of an international intellectual community.74 Indeed, in his work of this period, Byron presents himself as a transnational author, thereby associating himself with admired writers of the past and present. Childe Harold IV originally appeared with two other poems written in early 1817. One is a translation from the poet Jacopo Vittorelli, the other is “A Very Mournful Ballad on the Siege and Conquest of Alhama” which describes a confrontation between Christians and Muslims. The latter purports to be a translation from Arabic source material, although McGann conjectures that Byron’s source material was more likely Spanish; either way, it “was unknown to English readers before Byron’s translation.” 75 In this respect, the poem narrates a cultural conflict but is simultaneously an example of cultural transmission. In his note to the poem, Byron says that “it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors, on pain of death, within Granada.” He moves the poem beyond this super-specific context which details its circumstances of utterance and allows it to be comprehended more widely, without losing sight of its particular connotations. In this way, he produces works which combine materials from different languages and traditions for a new readership.76 Stephen Cheeke suggests that Byron’s work is in part “an exploration of the strange process of acculturation and translation.” The Prophecy of Dante, for example, employs Dante himself as the speaker and this “double-voice” represents “intertextual relationships in European literature.” The work is both “an English poem disguised as an Italian poem” and “an Italian poem disguised as an English poem”; it crafts an



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“Anglo-Italian” perspective which crosses national borders, however much the poem also champions hopes for Italian unity: “What is there wanting then to set thee free, / [. . .] Her sons, may do this with one deed—Unite” (Canto 2, lines 142–5).77 Beppo is an important part of Byron’s transnational poetics too, especially when seen as a response to John Hookam Frere’s Whistlecraft (1818). That work comically trumpets a national agenda. “I think that Poets (whether Whig or Tory),” says the narrator, “Should study to promote their nation’s glory.” He therefore wishes that “I could write a book / Such as all English people might peruse” and which could “raise the nation’s spirits.” 78 Frere’s poem is important, not simply for influencing Byron’s subsequent comic work, but also for “adapting an Italian medley style in ottava rima to English verse.”79 In other words, this satirical Specimen of an Intended National Work must be understood in terms of its transnationality. Similarly, Beppo bases much of its comedy on comparisons between English and foreign cultural practices: “Venice” says the epigraph, “was then what Paris is now—the seat of all dissoluteness.” The narrator talks about how “countries of the Catholic persuasion” have different recreations and morals, as if addressing a hopelessly parochial English readership: “within the Alps,” for example, a woman is permitted “to have two men” (lines 280–2). However, this easy demarcation of cultural borders is not straightforward. Sometimes, the narrator talks about particularly Venetian practices—gondoliers, masked balls, and the like being especially suited for assignations impossible elsewhere. But sometimes he identifies wider regions for comparisons with the London and English social scene: the area “from Venice to Verona,” the Italian states generally, Catholic countries en mass, or even all places south of the Alps (lines 129–33, 280–2, 322–8, 343–4). The scope of the poem’s local attachments and identifications is thus more complex than it first appears to be; it overlays a number of different civil, regional, national, and religious identities, showing how these can all coexist in a specific place (in this case Venice), and how that place cannot be defined or compartmentalized by one such identity in isolation. Indeed, the poem shows Venice to be place of cultural contact, where the unique masked celebrations reflect the cosmopolitanism of the city: “Turks and Jews [. . .] / Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles and Hindoos” (18–20). Furthermore, the poem’s plot concerns a man who moves across borders and who is defined by his cosmopolitan array of local attachments and guises. Beppo holds multiple identities simultaneously, able to alternate between Turkish and Christian appearances and forms of conduct. For his wife Laura, he is at once one of “us” and “them”: “Are you really, truly now a Turk? [. . .] / Is’t true they use their fingers for a fork?” (729–31). In other words, particular identities and places are fluid; cultural boundaries, while





never negligible, are established only to be overturned or complicated. The local and the transnational are implicated within one another. Many contemporary reviews do not pick up on this complexity and instead denounce the lack of explicit patriotism. The British Review worries about a growing “denationalising spirit” and suggests that Beppo, with its flippancy and foreign setting, undermines the support structures of “our nationality and our morality.” “We dread an amalgamation with the Continent” and “the contagion of French or Italian manners,” the review thunders, treating the poem’s transnationalism as a kind of cultural invasion.80 The same reviewer critiques Childe Harold IV for “injuriously comparing the society, government, laws, and usages of our own country, with the rights, privileges and immunities of other nations, licensed by ignorance and superstition.”81 To put it differently, the poem undermines British national identity by promoting other states, although there is a slight difference between this position and that of the Beppo review. Whereas that piece is concerned about national “corruption,” the reviewer here is exercised by unflattering comparisons between essentially stable national identities. The Literary Gazette even objects to the use of classical allusions: “it ill becomes Lord Byron, or any Englishman, to exalt the melancholy dirges of modern Romans for the loss of independence” given that “Waterloo, a victory glorious to Britain did more for the independence of mankind” than “millions of years” of Italian efforts could ever achieve.82 There is, of course, an irony in this condemnation: the reviewer’s determination to assert the uniqueness of Britain tips over into universalist assumptions, whereby the country’s particular advantages and achievements are applicable to the whole world—in other words, beyond the borders that he wants to make impassable. However, not all contemporary views were so harsh. John Wilson’s review of Childe Harold compares Byron with Rousseau, another popular author to whom “the spirits of men, from one end of Europe to the other,” had turned. Rousseau, like Byron, “filled his works with expressions of his own character,” and these insights “commanded and enforced a profound and universal sympathy, by proving that all mankind [. . .] the lofty and the low, the strongest and the frailest, are linked together by the bonds of a common but inscrutable nature.”83 In other words, what makes Rousseau and Byron attractive to readers across Europe—what makes them “European” authors—is the way in which they capture both the universal and the particular: they write about experiences which are unique and personal, but which also tap into a shared common nature. This is the key to their European appeal, since the idea of European culture is similarly dependent on unique, shared traditions, and identities that extend beyond national or state borders. “A great poet,” says Wilson, is “free and



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unconfined,” ranging “over the earth and the societies of men.” He thus praises Byron for refusing to be constrained by (national) place or history, though this does not distract from Childe Harold ’s precise circumstances among “the august fabrics of the genius of England.” Still more interestingly, he sees this as part of a trend: “the Italian, Grecian, Peninsular, Ionian and Ottoman feeling which pervades Childe Harold [. . .] was not first brought upon the English mind by the power of that genius, but was there already in great force and activity,” part of “the general motion of the mind of that society.”84 This tries to locate Byron within existing traditions of thought about Europe, politics, and international “feeling,” although aside from the comparison with Rousseau, Wilson does not detail the trajectory of this modern pattern. Why, then, is the Byron circle so interested in questions of national identity at this time? And why does Wilson identify this interest as part of a broader cultural trend? A clue can be found, I think, in one of Byron’s notes to Childe Harold which mentions Germaine de Staël. When Byron argues that authors inhabit a world beyond age, gender, and nation, his comments have a specific context because they feature in a passage praising Staël, especially her novel Corinne, ou l’Italie (1807). Similarly, Hobhouse’s conception of a transnational literature in Historical Illustrations bears evidence of Staël’s influence. In the “Essay on the Present Literature of Italy” which concludes the volume, Hobhouse argues that modern writers have been inspired by “the most extraordinary change [. . .] that had ever affected the moral or political world”: “the great convulsions which shook not only ‘mightiest monarchs’, but also the mind of man, in all the countries of Europe.”85 In other words, Italian literature is comprehensible only in a European context—its specific development is determined by nonlocal events. Later, Hobhouse makes explicit reference to Staël’s theory of literature and its European contexts: A great question at the moment divides the learned world in Italy into the partisans of classical poetry, and of the poetry of romance. The first, of course, range Homer in the front of the battle; and the others, who have adopted the division of Madame de Staël, and talk of a literature of the North, and a literature of the South, have still the courage to depend upon Ossian for their principal champion.86

Hobhouse alludes to Staël’s De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (Literature Considered in Relation to Social Institutions) (1800). This work examines the relationship between literature and its geographical, political, and social contexts; most notably, it distinguishes between the literature of Mediterranean countries,





especially Greece and Rome (the South) and northern Europe. Her thesis has a nationalist element in that it seeks to identify not only characteristic traits of particular nations and their writings, but it also constructs supranational categories—North, South—which are not curtailed by state boundaries. Staël had applied these ideas more specifically to the Italian context in her essay “De l’esprit des traductions” (1816). This essay in part asserts the special qualities of certain languages and countries: “Il faut que toutes les nations aient un principe actif d’ intérêt [. . .] Les Italiens doivent se faire remarquer par la littérature et les beaux-arts” (It is necessary that all nations have an active principle of interest . . . The Italians must make themselves remarkable for literature and fine arts).87 In particular, says Staël, Italian is the most suitable language for conveying the subtleties and continuing the traditions of Homeric Greek. However, she also champions the possibilities of translation: “Il n’y a pas de plus éminent service à rendre a la littérature, que de transporter d’une langue à l’autre les chefsd’oeuvres de l’esprit humain.” (There is no more eminent service to give back to literature than to transport the masterpieces of the human spirit from one language to another). Translation can contribute to a “circulation des idées,” and she recommends that Italian intellectuals busy themselves with translation from English and German, “non pour emprunter, mais pour connaître” (not to borrow, but to know [with the implication of “meet”]).88 A. W. Schlegel, for example, has translated Shakespeare with “exactitude” and “inspiration” to create a new literature equally grounded in its German language and English source material. Staël advocates a transnational literature facilitated through translation, and by alluding to her ideas, Hobhouse intervenes in a very current controversy. Giacomo Leopardi, Ugo Foscolo, and others, in direct response to Staël, denied that Italian literature needed foreign influence and asserted the strength of its native traditions.89 Hobhouse’s mention of Staël, as well as his professed expertise in Italian literature, drew him further into this debate; Ludovico di Breme, “a man of some prominence in Italian letters,” even wrote to express dissatisfaction with the essay’s treatment of the dispute.90 Although Staël’s essay had reignited an immediate interest in national and transnational literature, such ideas had long been a part of her thought, especially in the influential and successful Corinne. This novel, says John Isbell, contains the first appearance of the word “nationalité,” which makes it stand at the forefront of “modern nationalism.”91 Staël pioneered what Blackwood’s Magazine called in 1818 “the art of analysing the spirit of nations.”92 Yet, the novel also complicates these national identities. Corinne herself is a “symbol of Italian culture and history,” but her Anglo-Italian heritage and mastery of many languages makes her exemplify a “cosmopolitan ideal.” For Staël, “the vitality of each European nation depends



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upon the preservation of its cultural identity as well as its acceptance of creative stimuli from other cultures.” Art—for example, Corinne’s Italian translation of Romeo and Juliet, itself sourced from Italian materials—is a “hybrid” of languages and literary traditions.93 In this way, Corinne makes a case for both nationalism and transnationalism. On the one hand, “l’esprit et l’ imagination se plaisent dans les différences qui caractérisent les nations” (the mind and imagination delight in the differences which characterize nations). And on the other, “qu’un homme qui sait quatre langues vaut quatre hommes” (a man who knows four languages is worth four men), since multilingualism can open up “une nouvelle sphère d’ idées” (a new sphere of ideas).94 For Pierre Macherey, Corinne is “a celebration of a cosmopolitan culture which can transmit across frontiers the characteristic values of quite alien sensibilities: those values complement one another, mingle without merging and project their values outwardly without renouncing the particular that constitutes them [. . .] A new culture is born after having undergone the ordeal of a linguistic [. . .] migration.”95 All this is especially important due to the close links that scholars have identified between Corinne and Childe Harold IV. McGann suggests that Byron’s Roman stanzas are “written in conscious recollection” of the equivalent Roman chapters in Corinne.96 The poem therefore embodies its own theories about transnational authors and culture, by transfiguring the concerns and approaches of another text into a new language. Joanne Wilkes identifies even more precise parallels. Staël originally translated a sonnet by Vincenzo da Filicaia into French for inclusion in Corinne, although she eventually left it out for fear of censorship given that the poem laments Italy’s vulnerability to attack—a charged point when the states were under French rule. It is this same sonnet that Byron adapted into English for stanzas 42–3 of Childe Harold IV (“Italia, oh Italia”). Both texts comment on the Rome’s ruins, its “political eclipse,” Europe’s “cultural debt to Italy,” and both hope for the eventual independence of the Italian states. There are even parallels in the way that they represent St Peter’s: “in both texts, St Peter’s is portrayed as incomparable as a man-made structure, to the extent that it seems to have been created by nature rather than by human beings.”97 Corinne and Childe Harold are similarly interested in the interaction of nationalité and mobilité across (national) cultures: they write of the experiences of exile from one’s homeland and the strangeness of the unfamiliar; but also about the interaction and mingling of shared cultures. The difference between them, says Wilkes, is that Staël highlights the suffering and “conflicting aspects” resulting from Corinne’s dual heritage, whereas for Byron, “mobilité” is the “capacity to adapt easily to the demands of different social environments, a ‘playing of parts’ ” rather than “a sign of inner depth.”98 In Byron’s case, however, this might imply a certain superficiality





to what is actually a sustained and complex interest in (trans)nationality and acculturation. What I wish to stress, therefore, is that Byron and Staël are equally interested in national and transnational perspectives and identities, and that ideas about Europe stem from this interaction. “Europe” depends on the specificity of places and identities, but also evokes the complexities of cultural connections and rivalries. Byron’s and Staël’s construction of European culture, literature, travel, and so on encompasses both these aspects; their Europe is comprised of unique and commonly shared cultures which are interconnected yet regionally divisible. These issues also have a political application. In Childe Harold, Byron emphasizes the tangible role paid by poets in the struggles for liberty. “Thy love of Tasso,” he tells the Venetian people, “should have cut the knot / Which ties thee to thy tyrants” (4.148–9). In The Lament of Tasso, written in April 1817, Tasso the narrator predicts the demise of tyranny and upholds himself as the symbol of resistance: I make A future temple of my present cell, Which nations yet shall visit for my sake While thou, Ferrera! when no longer dwell The dual chiefs within thee, shalt fall down, And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless halls, A poet’s wreath shall be thine only crown, A poet’s dungeon thy most far renown. (lines 219–26)

Byron’s Tasso denounces local corruption, but he also sees himself as representing a wider resistance to despotism which extends beyond his specific location and will be recognized by the “nations.” For Byron, poets are instruments of political reform—a tradition which he participates in himself by writing such calls to arms. Hobhouse also argues for a reciprocal relationship between literature and politics. Literary production, he says, is shaped by political history, especially experiences of revolution, tyranny, and invasion: “the frequent domestic revolutions, the repeated corruptions, the arms and arts of strangers, succeeding each other rapidly and imperceptibly, and bringing with them new laws, and manners, have occasioned in Italy more vicissitudes than are to be found in the literature of any other country.”99 However, as well as being affected by politics, writers can also orchestrate political change. Hobhouse identifies past and present authors who have contributed to the cause of European freedom: Boccaccio is a “republican, philosopher and free man”; Machiavelli is a “libertine”; Alfieri a “bard of freedom”; and Tasso possesses a “love of



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liberty.”100 In a note to Childe Harold, Hobhouse says that Machiavelli’s “memory was persecuted as his life had been for an attachment to liberty, incompatible with the new system of despotism.”101 He turns Machiavelli into a symbol of contemporary causes; his politics are reinterpreted to match Hobhouse’s own preferences for non-monarchical, non-hereditary forms of republican government. Writers, Hobhouse wants to emphasize, are radical political agents who can reshape the “revolutions” of European history as much as they are affected by them. These ideas are important as reminders that, for the Shelley–Byron circle, constructions of Europe have explicitly political connotations and that literary works can have tangible political consequences. As I shall argue in the following chapters, these assumptions become more crucial as the poets’ careers develop. For Percy Shelley, writing about Europe is inseparably connected to ideas about revolution and radical change. And for Byron, the prospect of a new and different Europe is central to his skepticism of post-Vienna politics and to his involvement in the Greek War of Independence.







Europe and the Universal Revolution: Percy Shelley’s Europe, 1817–22



Part 2




“Revolution in a European Nation”: The Shelley Circle, January 1817–March 1818

Introduction This chapter explores how the Shelleys and their circle—Leigh Hunt, T. J. Hogg, and Thomas Peacock—formulated ideas about Europe between January 1817 and March 1818. During this period, Percy Shelley wrote and published Laon and Cythna, a poem which purports to analyze the conduct and aftermath of the French Revolution, while also imagining a new, radical ideal for Europe’s future. These concerns are interrelated: the Shelley circle engages closely with radical texts of the 1790s, for example, Wollstonecraft’s Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution and bases ideas about Europe upon this interest in revolutionary politics and the possibility of utopian social progress. For this reason, Laon is partly a commentary on a specific (and problematic) moment in European history and partly, an idealized version of that history: a vision of what Europe should be like, if it were appropriately reshaped by revolutionary writers and activists. In this respect, the circle is interested in the revolutionary potential of print-culture—notably the idea that writing can change history and thus reshape Europe. Second, the chapter analyses how the circle understand Europe in terms of non-European spaces. Set in Constantinople, a border-zone between Europe and Asia, Laon uses the language of collective identity both to construct Europe and question the absoluteness of its separation from Asia. The circle evokes America in a



Chapter 4


similarly double-sided manner: as a non-European “other” and as a more ideal version of Europe, uncorrupted by post-revolutionary disappointments. Last, based on a remark in a letter from William Baxter to Shelley about “European marriage,” I examine the connection between Europe and sexual mores. If, for the Shelleys, debates about Europe are related to revolution and radical change, the term “European” also has very different connotations connected to orthodox moral and sexual conventions. In this respect, ideas about Europe in the period encompass wider complexities beyond the immediate political concerns of the Shelley circle. I wish to begin, however, by showing how Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, finished and published during this period, articulates some of these anxieties about Europe, non-Europeans, and the prospects of progress. “European” is the first adjective used to describe Frankenstein. Chancing upon the scientist and his creation in the Arctic wastes, the explorer Walton frames their relationship in terms of a confrontation between European and nonEuropean: “he was not, as the other traveller [the Creature] seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but an European.” Frankenstein emphasizes this difference throughout the novel, insisting that the Creature “quit Europe forever, and every other place in the neighbourhood of man,” as if he has no right to live alongside Europeans. Frankenstein’s fear of the non-European outsider is all-consuming; he worries that if the Creature and his bride “were to leave Europe, and inhabit the deserts of the new world [. . .] a race of devils [would] be propagated upon the earth.” Yet, as his obsession grows, he becomes an outsider himself, “banished from my native country,” “a friendless outcast over the earth.”1 Walton defines him as a European, but Frankenstein becomes increasingly estranged and isolated, wandering in the border regions of “Tartary and Russia,” at the very edges of European society. But what is specifically “European” about Frankenstein? According to his own testimony in Chapter 1 of the novel, he hails from a multinational family; he speaks many languages and is very well traveled, building precise (and rather exacting) criteria for who a European might be. More importantly, his residence in Ingolstadt associates him with radical causes. Revolution-era works like John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy (1797) and Augustin Barruel’s History of Jacobinism (1797) traced the founding of the Illuminati order to Ingolstadt and purported to demonstrate how that shadowy society had masterminded the French Revolution.2 Frankenstein’s experimentation is therefore associated with the unorthodoxy and social radicalism of Revolutionary ideas, just as “the raising of ghosts or devils” was thought to be the province of “revolutionary sympathizers.”3 Introduced as a European, Frankenstein’s activities are ideologically connected with radical attempts to reshape European society



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and also connected with the controversial trajectory of recent history. For this reason, some critics have interpreted the novel’s plot in terms of wider societal tensions. Frankenstein’s relationship with the Creature, says Franco Moretti, resembles that between the bourgeoisie and subordinate workers who desire equal participation in society, but who are restrained by exploitative social structures.4 Moretti’s argument underestimates, however, the extent to which Frankenstein’s own actions have Revolutionary implications—how his experimentation is connected to the wider upheavals of European society, and how his original and daring triumphs rapidly degenerate into disappointment and self-destructive violence. To this extent, Frankenstein’s career alludes to the degeneration of other radical ideas, similarly identified in contemporary works with the unorthodox thinkers of Inglostadt University. Like Prometheus, Frankenstein is an overreacher, whose glorious successes precipitate disastrous failure. He becomes aware of the destructive potential in his ambition early in the novel, observing that “the pursuit of knowledge” “has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste. [. . .] Study [can be] unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.” However, he concludes, this drive for potentially destructive knowledge has fuelled the course of civilization’s progress as well as its mistakes: If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would not have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.5

In other words, this notion of “over-reaching,” of a drive for knowledge and power which leads to conflict or disaster, characterizes Europe’s development and particularly its relations with the non-European world. “Overreaching” is thus particularly associated with European history: through Frankenstein the European, the novel explores a radicalism that both redefines European progress and creates a terrifying non-European “other.” Frankenstein has sustained fruitful postcolonial readings which show how the novel is complicit with, but also interrogates, the assumptions of imperialist identity politics. Joseph Lew, for example, observes how the Creature’s physical appearance, notably its skin color, links it to the subjects of imperialist rule in British India. Yet, its “cultural identity” is shaped “through acquaintance with and internalization of [. . .] Western Culture,” especially ancient and modern literature: Goethe’s Werther, Plutarch’s Lives, Paradise Lost, and Volney’s Ruins. The Creature also learns



Revolution in a European Nation


about human society by eavesdropping on the tuition of Safie, daughter of a Muslim and a “Christian Arab.” In this way, Frankenstein reflects on the complexities and contradictions of identity formation; the Creature is a being beyond categorization, literally “a species unto itself.”6 This intricate approach to identity politics also informs the novel’s understanding of Europe: it associates “European” with potentially dangerous radical thought; it reflects on the problematic interactions of Europeans and nonEuropeans; and it anxiously questions European social progress theory. In offering this uneasy analysis of what defines and shapes Europe, Mary Shelley exemplifies the key concerns of her circle in this period.

The “Beau Ideal” of Europe: Writing and Revolution The French Revolution, Percy Shelley told Byron, is “the master theme of the epoch,” “involving pictures of all that is best qualified to interest and to instruct mankind.”7 Laon and Cythna sets out to address this grand topic. Writing to a potential publisher in 1817, Shelley described his poem as: a tale illustrative of such a Revolution as might be supposed to take place in an European nation, acted upon by the opinions of what has been called (erroneously as I think) the modern philosophy, & contending with antient notions & the supposed advantages derived from those who support them. It is [. . .] the beau ideal as it were of the French Revolution.8

Shelley advertises the work first as a kind of historical commentary on European history, exploring how writing and debate causes revolution, and second as an idealized version of those events—a vision of what Europe should be like. The preface to Laon and Cythna continues this double purpose: the poem “is an experiment on the temper of the public mind, as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live.” It thus engages with the effects of history, but also attempts to change that history by “kindling within the bosom of my readers, a virtuous enthusiasm for the doctrines of liberty and justice.” In other words, the poem has a determined project: it creates a metahistorical European narrative based on the interpretation of the past and then projects that narrative into an idealized vision of Europe’s potential future. This is not to imply a blinkered optimism: the preface notes how



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the historical revolution was not “in every respect prosperous,” since “successive tyrannies” established themselves afterward.9 Instead, the poem reconfigures recent European history, emphasizing both its fictionalized “beau ideal” and its grounding in historical reality. The first Canto, for example, portrays an allegorical conflict between the “great Spirit of Good” and its Manichean opposite, “King, and Lord and God,” or “Fear, Hatred, Faith and Tyranny” (lines 378, 386). The narrative interprets history in the light of this conflict: in the Revolution “thrones then first shook, / And earth’s immense and trampled multitude, / In hope on their own powers began to look” (402–4). Subsequently however, the “oppressors” have struck back by reestablishing convention: “Justice and truth, with custom’s hydra bond, / Wage silent war” (419–20). The plot converts recent historical events into a fictionalized “beau ideal,” relating first the joy of revolutionary success, when disparate factions are “reconciled” by the “love of freedom’s equal law” (1865–72), and then the crushing disappointments of the restoration, facilitated by “the armies of the leaguéd kings” (3825). In narrating this transition, the poem alludes to how ideas of Europe have been in dispute, vacillating between a new vision of “nations [. . . free] of bondage” (2118–20) and a Europe defined by “despots” and “banded slaves” (3824–8). This engagement with the Revolution has two important implications. First, it revives the political language and concerns of the 1790s: William St Clair has identified numerous verbal parallels between the preface to Laon and Cythna and the preface to the first edition of William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).10 Laon reinvests late eighteenth-century debates about “monarchy,” “freedom,” and the state of Europe with a new immediacy, hoping that poetry can both diagnose oppression and offer hope for “Man’s free-born soul” (3258). In doing so, Shelley evokes the forthright style of Wollstonecraft’s Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (1794), which he and Mary Shelley read in 1814.11 Here, Wollstonecraft identifies historical episodes that reshaped society, from the crusades to the recent Revolution, searching for a form of historical analysis that moves beyond individual states to talk about Europe as a totality. She establishes a progress theory for the subcontinent, arguing that “all Europe” was enslaved by feudalism, but “the discovery of useful truths” has rapidly spread—especially from Paris, “a thoroughfare to all the kingdoms on the continent.” The “Revolution did not interest frenchmen alone,” she says, “for it’s [sic] influence extending throughout the continent, all the passions and prejudices of Europe were instantly set afloat. That most favoured part of the globe had risen to an astonishing pre-eminence.” As Shelley does, Wollstonecraft presents this process as “the natural consequence of intellectual improvement,” foregrounding





the influence of writers and thinkers (“the confederacy of philosophers”) in directly reshaping Europe.12 However, Laon and Cythna was not alone in revitalizing this 30-yearold debate; the language of the French Revolution was also used to justify contemporary policy initiatives. According to Leigh Hunt’s Examiner, the British government defended its program of repressive legislation in 1817 by comparing the recent stoning of the Prince Regent’s coach to the dangers “of 1795, [. . .] when the pretence was a dread of France and of Revolution.” Later, in the same month, the newspaper couches its own reformist agenda in revolutionary language, titling an anti-taxation article “Friends of Revolution” and complaining about the post-Napoleonic “Settlement of Europe.” In April, it mounts an extended satirical attack on those who believe that “all crimes and sufferings begin with the French Revolution,” offering instead a history of monarchical deviance.13 Like those it criticizes, the Examiner uses its own interpretation of revolution to diagnose present political problems and project hopes for society’s future. Central to all these conjectures is the idea that the Revolution had changed Europe. In her work France, published in 1817 and read by the Shelleys in the same year,14 Lady Morgan concludes that the Revolution redefined Europe: “the bond of society was rent asunder [. . .] consecrated by the vows of all that was enlightened and liberal in Europe.”15 Like Shelley and Hunt therefore, Morgan bases her understanding of Europe on specifically French politics and the consequences of the Revolution. When analyzing the “State of Europe,” however, the Examiner alternates between emphasizing the great changes undergone since 1789 and complaining that, after the restorations, the ancien régime remains in place. An editorial entitled “Impossibility of the Continuance of the Present State of Things in Europe” rails against the apparent intractability of “Bourbonite” regimes, but simultaneously asserts that Europe has irreversibly altered and “would not bear any sort of dictation.” The paper’s consistent editorial position is that the Allies betrayed a promise to “secure the independence of the State of Europe,” replacing Napoleonic rule with monarchical despotism and refusing to countenance constitutional reform. It even uses the word “Europe” to refer specifically to monarchical government: “[Napoleon] pushed Europe to arms in defence of her existence”; “the Sovereigns of Europe hate him.”16 What should be clear from this is that discussions about the “State of Europe” and the conduct and legacy of the French Revolution are part of the same debate: writings about the Revolution, from policy documents to mythologized histories like Laon and Cythna, are deeply engaged with creating and shaping ideas of Europe. Indeed, Laon’s participation in this debate is acknowledged by contemporaries. The Monthly Review labels the



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poem as a Revolutionary document, announcing that “the wild burst of the French Revolution called out ten thousand fancies and furies [. . .] not only were politics rhapsodised in the cause of that tremendous occurrence, but rhapsodies became political.”17 Although John Gibson Lockhart, at first, attempts to depoliticize the poem (“a great part of it has no necessary connexion with politics”), he later acknowledges the radical theme, mentioning the “Revolutionised city” and the “men weary of political, and women sick of domestic slavery,” mischievously choosing to praise Shelley’s work with monarchical language (“the noble and majestic footsteps of his genius”).18 Hunt even identifies a utopian purpose to the poem: it opposes “tyrannies and terrors” and “the vices and sorrows made by custom,” and advocates “the virtues and enjoyments which mutual benevolence may realise.” Kevin Gilmartin has shown that this sense of activism is central to Hunt’s conception of all literary writing: “Literature and Legitimacy have nothing in common [. . .] the pretensions of literature are essentially levelling and jacobinical, and can acknowledge no other superiority than merit.”19 In this way, Hunt turns Laon and Cythna into a kind of manifesto. He goes on to explain how writing and printing can affect the future of Europe: “the Press, which has got hold of Superstition and given it some irrecoverable wounds already, will, we hope and believe, finally [. . .] crush it as a steam-engine would a great serpent.”20 The imagery of Biblical evil dispatched by technological progress is significant, but unlike William Robertson, who saw print technology as potentially facilitating “multiple” histories, Hunt suggests that printing necessarily disseminates a singular idea of progress—the defeat of “custom” by “a happier condition of moral and political society.” This relationship between social change and poetic development is mutually interdependent. Hunt credits the Revolution with pioneering a new poetic style: the downfall of “cold and artful compositions” has been caused by “the political convulsions of the world, which shook up the minds of men.”21 In celebrating the capacity of words and literature to affect, and be affected by, social change, Hunt discerns an important theme in Laon and Cythna. In the preface, Shelley writes that “Gloom and misanthropy have become characteristics of the age in which we live [and . . .] this influence has tainted the literature of the age.” In other words, literature is subject to “a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which we live.”22 Shelley historicizes his poem, but also insists that it projects its own idea of history and the future: it offers, as the subtitle claims, “A Vision of The Nineteenth Century.” The act of writing itself is a central component in realizing that vision. Canto II continually alludes to the power of words: “As from a magic store, I drew / Words which were weapons” (lines 841–2); “Hymns





which my soul had woven to Freedom” (915); “All things become / Slaves to my holy and heroic verse” (933–4). When detailing the old man’s story in Canto IV, language is a crucial medium in the struggle for political freedom: “every tongue / Was as a sword of truth” (1500–1); “I collected language to unfold / Truth to my countrymen” (1517–8); “The tyrants of the Golden City tremble / At voices which are heard about the streets” (1531–2). Otho the tyrant, similarly aware of the power of storytelling, compels his victims to silence (see 3678–9 and 3878–9), and acts the revisionist historian, bribing poets to tell “how glorious Athens fell, / Because her sons were free” (3589–90). In seeking publicity for Laon, Shelley sought out individuals linked to earlier publishing and political controversies, emphasizing the close relationship between radical words and Revolutionary events. He engaged as co-publishers Sherwood, Neely, and Jones. Sherwood had particularly longstanding connections with the radical publishers of the 1790s, working at one point for H. D. Symonds, who was imprisoned and fined for publishing Paine’s Rights of Man. It was also this firm that controversially published Robert Southey’s early radical drama Wat Tyler in 1817, causing much embarrassment for the Poet Laureate.23 While at Marlow, Shelley wrote A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote, calling for reform of the British electoral franchise. He persuaded his publisher Charles Ollier to send the pamphlet to prominent Whigs and radicals, hoping to invest poets with the moral authority to affect social and political change.24 Shelley also sought to create a coterie of people convinced of their authority, as poets and writers, to comment on and influence the world of politics. Reassuring Ollier about the blasphemous and incestuous content of Laon, he suggests that the Government “would hesitate before they invaded a member of the higher circles of the republic of letters”—implying that he and other writers occupy a political vantage point outside the reach of governments.25 He makes a similar point when anonymously reviewing Godwin’s Mandeville (1817) in the Examiner, investing the author (along with Wollstonecraft) as part of a European community of radicals: “the other nations of Europe [. . .] have anticipated the judgement of posterity [. . . their writings] have been translated and universally read in France and Germany, long after the bigotry of faction had stifled them in our own country.”26 Hunt’s Examiner shares Shelley’s views on the political import of writers. One editorial argues that “enthusiastic modern Germans, conquerors of the French” were inspired to change society by “Arndt and Schiller, Mozart and Wieland.” Although this article, unlike Shelley, emphasizes nationalist struggle against foreign oppression, it still upholds artists and writers as potential instruments of “freedom,” shaping public opinion. Later, in the year, Hunt addresses his readers as descendents of



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“the SHAKESPEARES as well as HAMPDENS [. . .] of CHAUCER, of MILTON, of the BACONS, the BURLEIGHS.” He conflates political and literary figures “who overturned the despotism of the schools, and prepared mankind for the vindication of common sense and justice.”27 The mention of anti-royalist figures in the English Civil War is significant too. Michael Rossington observes that the Shelley circle retraced “the contours of seventeenth-century English history” while living at Marlow, visiting, in Peacock’s words, “the spots which are consecrated by the memories of Cromwell, Hampden and Milton.”28 For Rossington, this results in a “conflation” of potential “revolutionary moments,” whereby the Civil War, the French Revolution, and political events in 1817 are understood in terms of one other.29 In the Examiner, Hunt uses Hampden’s opposition to Charles I’s ship tax as a precedent for his critique of the present government and its taxation policies. Furthermore, individuals who combine reformist principles with concrete action are still influential in modern causes: “philosophy” (that is, writing and new ideas) has helped abolish the “diabolical traffic” of slavery.30 If the Examiner identifies historical coteries of writers and activists who altered social norms and inspired political change, then Hunt’s Foliage attempts to do the same with his own contemporaries. “In the volume,” says Jeffrey Cox, “Hunt offers his own circle as a prefiguration of a world freed from the shackles of bigotry, the cash nexus and sexual repression.”31 By addressing poems to his friends, he establishes a group inspired by “the political convulsions of the world” to offer new visions of the social order.32 In his epistle “To the Right Honourable Lord Byron,” for example, Hunt apostrophizes Italy as “Copier of Greece” but “born again / In Gothic fires / [. . .] Fit for the Queen of Europe’s second spring.”33 The poem traces the revitalization of European aesthetics, bequeathed from Greece to Italy and from there to England, through the efforts of Milton, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Spenser. Moreover, many poems (for example, “To Charles Lamb”) relocate Greco-Roman mythology and imagery to the north London context of Hunt’s immediate circle, suggesting that they are the last links, not only in a European aesthetic inheritance, but also in the poetry-politics tradition of Chaucer, Milton, and the rest. In The Round Table (a collection of Examiner essays by William Hazlitt and Hunt, reprinted as a separate volume in 1817), Hunt strengthens his poet-politics convictions, asserting that “the two poets who have done more harm, perhaps, to the reputation of their professions [. . .] than all their brethren put together, are Virgil and Horace, both of the flatterers of Augustus”—that is, supporters of monarchical and imperial government.34 Poets are thus to be judged by their politics, just as regimes are to be judged by their cultivation of the arts: the Examiner says that the





restored monarchies have disowned their rich artistic traditions, creating a European space bereft of “talent and knowledge” and beholden to “dullness and bigotry.”35 Hazlitt, however, scorns this connection: bookish people create fantasy worlds in which they imagine their own participation—“It is the province of literature to anticipate the dissipation of real objects [. . .] It creates a fictitious restlessness and craving after variety, by creating a fictitious world around us.” For this reason, “poetry dwells in a perpetual Utopia of its own, and is [. . .] very ill calculated to make a Paradise on earth.” Reflecting on the legacy of the Revolution, or formulating ideas of “proper government,” Hazlitt implies, are activities beyond the competence of mere poets.36 These sentiments contrast strongly with the convictions of Hunt and Shelley and are perhaps a response to the “utopian” ideas of the two poets, revealing a degree of contention within the circle over the most effective way to write about history and revolution. Other thinkers tend to view printing, rather than the individual poetactivist, as more important in interpreting European history and configuring ideas of Europe. Reflecting on the apparent progress of civilization and the legacy of Greece, Wollstonecraft says that “we have probably derived our great superiority” through technical innovation: the compass, mathematics, and “the invention of printing,” which has “facilitated communication between nations.” This mention of international communication suggests that “we” refers to a European intellectual community rather than a particular state. The invention of printing enabled a “confederacy of philosophers,” the French encyclopaedists, to disseminate “truth in the economy of finance, which [. . .] they would not have had sufficient courage to have produced in individual publications.”37 In other words, printing innovation enabled a coterie to produce theories that, because they were spread so widely, succeeded in changing ideas about society. Volney’s Ruins presents a similar thesis: In the modern world, and particularly in Europe, great nations having allied themselves by a sort of universal language [. . .] we have seen agreement in thinking, and concord in acting. [. . .] The press [has] furnished a means of communicating, [and . . .] hence has the vast mass of instruction perpetually increased; hence has the atmosphere of truth continually grown brighter.38

Print technology, Volney claims, has furnished a collective notion of Europe, linking “great nations” more closely by enabling the exchange of ideas. Writing two decades later, in 1817, Sir Charles Morgan argues that the “spirit of liberty” is “the eldest born offspring of the art of printing,” and it continues to spread universal changes among “every nation of the civilised world.”39 This is the reverse of Benedict Anderson’s twentieth-century



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theory of “print-capitalism.” Whereas he sees printing as bolstering state nationalism, these authors regard the technology as a driving force behind international change, enabling the spread of ideas across borders, sharing and effecting revolutionary change across the “European republic.” If Shelley, then, hopes for “the beau ideal of the French Revolution,” what kind of perfect future does he have in mind? Does the “beau ideal” refer to a universal form of progress which is applicable everywhere? Does this denote a shared European trajectory for historical development? Or are different forms of progress possible within and outside Europe, opening up the prospect of a fractured or multi-directional European history? At times, the Examiner uses “Europe” to refer to a collective group of states. A review of James Mill’s The History of British India (1818), for example, identifies a European “nation”; it observes “the character of the Hindoos” and makes comparisons with the Europeans, suggesting that members of particular states share certain “characteristics.” Mill’s work, says the review, “affords much food for national pride”—but “national” does not refer to a specific state like Britain, but rather to shared European successes, such as victories “against large eastern armies.” An idea of European unity is constructed through comparison with non-European “others.” Elsewhere, however, the present condition of Europe and the world are collated, as if the “beau ideal” for that subcontinent were also the ideal state for all humanity. After Waterloo, says Hunt in an editorial, “the world would not bear any sort of dictation”; in other words, he assumes that the consequences of European history are universally applicable. Later, an article entitled “Modern Virtue” draws various reformist ideas from the lessons of European history and then universalizes them into moral precepts about “fealty to the laws” (not the will of tyrants) and “benevolence to all mankind.”40 It is precisely this reasoning “from a particular to a universal” that John Taylor Coleridge objects to in his review of Laon and Cythna: for him, Shelley had formulated erroneous universal laws from irrelevant observations about oriental tyranny.41 Certainly, in his letters about the poem, Shelley details its universal relevance: “I have attempted [. . .] to speak to the common & elementary emotions of the human heart.”42 Comments like this lead Nigel Leask to suggest that Shelley creates “a fantasy of the universalism of revolutionary reason,” desiring “a state of universal Sameness” in which other cultures can be “alchemized” into resembling the European revolutionary ideal.43 However, as we have seen, Shelley also evokes membership of a smaller, more exclusive coterie (the “higher circle of the republic of letters”44), as well as an international “community of feeling,” where people “maintain that connexion between one man and another” by mourning “any public calamity which has befallen their country or the world.”45





This same problem recurs throughout Laon and Cythna when Shelley relates the disappointments of European history and his hopes for reconciliation. In Canto V, the narrator mentions how, in the course of revolution, disparate “patriots,” defined by their enthusiasm for parochial identity, gradually form a wider community: “they, and all, in one loud symphony / My [Laon’s] name with Liberty commingling” (lines 1873–4). In terms of Shelley’s European myth-history, here he imagines the reconciliation of post-revolutionary Europe, when different states had the chance to rally around one governmental ideal and the concept of “Liberty.” The delineation of various groups or collective identities thus articulates the competing visions of Europe presented in the poem. Canto V imagines a Europe riven by tribal conflict: “our tribes were gathered far,” in the “patriot hosts” “murderers fled / like insect tribes” (1770–84), before eventually allying as a “mighty brotherhood / Linked by a jealous interchange of good” (1839–41). Elsewhere, however, the poem evokes universal ideas of Liberty and Equality, imagining Europe as a unified assembly of “free spirits” rather than competing rivals. Laone’s ode celebrates this commonality: “a hundred nations swear that there shall be / Pity and Peace and Love, among the good and free” (2210–1). Is the revolution of the Golden City, a nationalist uprising of “patriots” struggling for independence against a ruler who has “dispossessed / All native power” (977–8)? Or is it the unification of many peoples in a common cause? Is it a particularist rebellion for the reclamation of “native power”? Or a universal act, whereby disparate factions act as one? This uncertainty is visible from the poem’s preface, when Shelley explains that he intends to inspire “a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence, nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever totally extinguish among mankind” (10–13). But what kind of project is this? Does Shelley present the “beau ideal” of a rebellious individual nation, of an international community, or a universal vision for the world? The question matters because it reflect wider uncertainty over whether Europe is a space for competing nationalisms, a transnational collective, or a universal ideal (in that Europe represents the premier social state for all humanity). Of course, Shelley’s interest in the potential universality of European society is hardly unique. Volney, to take just one example, suggests that “the communication of knowledge will extend from society to society till it comprehends the whole earth. By the law of imitation the example of one people will be followed by others, who will adopt its spirit and its laws [. . .] and civilisation will be universal.”46 Shelley, though, is not quite this explicit: by investigating various notions of group identity and by apparently questioning the extent to which European government or



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ideas might have universal or particular applicability, Laon and Cythna critiques its own notions of what “European” might mean, or to whom it might apply. Shelley does not explicitly propose a solution to these complexities, yet it may be an exaggeration to see them as irreconcilable tensions. After all, it may be another manifestation of the cosmopolitan and universal patriotism that I identified in Chapter 2: the conviction that differing local interests are ultimately and ideally unified by adherence to universal (radical) political values. In the following chapter, I examine how Shelley develops this “European universalism” further in the two texts where he uses the word “Europe” most often: Hellas and A Defence of Poetry. Before that, however, I wish to discuss why Shelley sets Laon and Cythna in Constantinople, on the borders of European space. According to Shelley’s complex Eurocentrism, non-European places both contrast with, and reflect, his ideal of Europe.

(Non-) European Spaces: Constantinople and America The spatial politics of Laon and Cythna provide an important context for understanding Shelley’s European revolution. The action is “supposed to be laid in Constantinople and modern Greece, but without much attempt at minute delineation of Mahometan manners.”47 Although the poem deals with events “as might be supposed to take place in an European nation,” it is thus set at the very edges of Europe. Throughout 1817 and 1818, the Shelleys read Edward Daniel Clarke’s massive Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa (1810–23),48 which talks of Constantinople as the location where Asia and Europe meet. It is both a dividing border and a place of encounter between different cultures and historical periods: harems coexist with Greek language booksellers, and the city’s inhabitants are “ages behind the rest of the world.” In this way, Constantinople reveals the “otherness” of the non-European, but also represents the historical origins of Europe since “Athens itself was not very unlike Constantinople in its present state.” It is both an “other” and an exemplar of Europe.49 For some contemporary reviews, this setting renders Laon’s politics inadmissible. J. T. Coleridge complains that “the laws and government on which Mr. Shelley’s reasoning proceeds, are the Turkish, administered by a lawless despot [. . .] We are Englishmen, Christians, free and independent; we ask Mr. Shelley how his case applies to us?.” Coleridge suggests that the poem is irrelevant to the concerns of a European audience, except that Greece, “the land full beyond all others of recollections of former glory





and independence [is] now covered with shame and sunk in glory.”50 Responding to this accusation, Hunt upholds Shelley as an exemplary “citizen of the world” whose words break down borders and have universal relevance.51 William St Clair argues that Shelley might have used imagery of “the East” to disguise the European pretensions of his politics. Writers “wrote Constantinople when they meant London and Mahometanism when they meant Christianity” to avoid censorship laws: “as Godwin had been taught in theology class, a war to drive the Turks out of Europe was a universally accepted paradigm of a just revolution.”52 By setting Laon and Cythna in Constantinople, and eventually re-titling the poem The Revolt of Islam, Shelley could attack organized religion and tyrannous government and advocate revolution more easily. At the start of the eighteenth century, Montesquieu employed a similar tactic in the Persian Letters, ensuring greater freedom to critique French society by employing Persian narrators whom he ironically denounces as “full of ignorance and prejudice.”53 This kind of association makes it ideologically possible to allude to Europe while overtly discussing Turkey or “the East.” At some points in Laon, however, this dual interest in Europe and “the East” manifests itself as an apparent hostility between the two. In the preface, Shelley blames the Roman Empire’s fall on the infiltration of “Eastern” attitudes and practices: “contempt for virtue [. . .] arising from the enslaved communities of the East, then first began to overwhelm the western nations” (lines 226–9). The poem itself hints obliquely at threats from the east: in Canto I, an easterly mist shrouds the “orient sun in shadow,” and in Canto III, the “azure East darkness again was piled” (1404). Later, the Tyrant himself is presented as an oriental despot: Cythna is captured by his Tartar troops (2558) and held captive by an “Ethiop” at “Oman’s Sea” (the Persian Gulf). In Canto IX, his followers are explicitly described as Muslims (3532–4). Nigel Leask glosses the ambiguous second title of the poem as meaning “revolt against Islam”; that is, the poem presents revolution by civilized progressives against Islamic despotism and oppression. This, says Leask, involves the imposition of Eurocentric ideas of “universal” liberty: “for Shelley, [the East] beckoned as an uncluttered site for the fulfillment of frustrated dreams of liberty, but in practice revealed itself to be treacherous and obstacle-ridden, the nemesis of revolutionary narcissism.”54 However, Shelley’s presentation of Constantinople is more complex than this might suggest: the Golden City is neither simply a disguised European city in the throes of revolution, nor an example of authoritarian Oriental rule; rather, it is a combination of both. Theorizing about the interaction of cultures, Mary Louise Pratt speaks of “contact zones,” or “social spaces where disparate cultures meet and clash,” places where



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peoples encounter and represent “others,” and then reconfigure themselves in terms of that encounter.55 In Chapter 1, I discussed how the Byron circle configures Albania, Gibraltar, and Greece as border-spaces where different ideas of Europe and non-Europe coexist simultaneously. Shelley, I think, presents Constantinople / the Golden City as a similar contact zone. The city is on the borders of Europe, acting both as an exemplar of European history (presenting an ideal of past, and the possibility of future, revolutions) and as a non-European “other”—an unenlightened oppressive state, opposed to liberty and revolution. Put briefly, the Golden City simultaneously represents Europe and its “other”—Shelley’s ideal of revolution and its reactionary opposite. Shelley is not alone in this complex use of Constantinople as a literal and ideological border between Europe and non-Europe. The broad idea of seeing the East (and especially Constantinople) as a battleground between European freedom and Islamic tyranny seems to have been popular in the period. In Lalla Rookh, Thomas Moore says that “liberty” cannot exist in Islamic government, and the Examiner worries that the oppressive governance of the East could spread to Europe: “such is the state of the Eastern world, where [. . .] the tendency [. . .] to tyrannise and to be tyrannised over, has had full time to develop itself. [. . .] Our turn seems next.”56 Even Foliage considers allusion to Greek mythology as a kind of literary barrier—an “escape from every heart-withering horror, which Eastern storms and tyranny could generate together.”57 In Thomas Jefferson Hogg’s fictional Memoirs of Prince Alexy (1813), the title character visits the city and observes the “tyranny of the Turks” as well as cultivating an “excessive love of perfect liberty.” Constantinople is a scene of strange and backward otherness and a place to think radical thoughts about the future—especially regarding rebellion in Greece.58 Henry Weber’s Tales of the East (1812), read by the Shelleys in 1815,59 praises the city for offering a romantic escape into the fictions of the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” and for expressing “authentic portraits of oriental manners.”60 But this is a different type of complexity to Shelley, who in the same image constructs an idea of Europe and its “other”—a scene of European revolution and of oriental despotism. In formulating what Europe should be like, the city is both an exemplar and a warning. In contrast to such complex understandings of Europe, the Shelley circle presents America as a living paradise. The conclusion of Laon and Cythna alludes to “A land beyond the Oceans of the West / Where [. . .] Freedom and Truth / Are worshipped” (lines 4415–7). England, the former inheritor of Athenian democracy, has become oppressed “by inbred monsters” and now “her chainless child” America embodies the Greek legacy (4420–1). In preserving this tradition, the United States provides “an epitaph of glory





for the tombs / Of murdered Europe” (4427–8); it has taken up the mantle of European history and now defines what it means to be European more fully than post-restoration Europe itself. This is a complex assertion, for it identifies a European tradition (extending, as is familiar, from Greece to Britain), but then strips that tradition of its specifically European qualities by suggesting that America exemplifies its characteristics. Put differently, the idea of Europe becomes the idea of America. It was 30 years earlier that Richard Price had proclaimed America the heir of a “glorious” liberal-revolutionary tradition initiated in Britain.61 By 1817, however, the Examiner sees America as the vanguard of progress and Europe as the slothful follower. In an article praising Congress’s decision to commission historical paintings of Independence, the writer says “America, with a foresight and energy worthy of Greece, has set them [the British government] an example it should have been their glory to set her.” The Examiner pays close attention to South American revolutions too, claiming that “the actual work of freedom” is going on there despite the recent failures in Europe. The revolution in Brazil, the paper claims, is “connected with the subject of reform all over the world,” since it attacks “the incorrigible pretensions of ‘Legitimacy’ ” by engaging in a “struggle for independence.” It draws an explicit comparison with Europe under the Allies, noting their hypocritical warnings to Portugal to refrain from “acting in the New World to the provinces of Spain as they [the Allies] have done in the old to Norway, Saxony and Italy.”62 America has become the new bastion of reform: in the Examiner, as in Laon, the “beau ideal” for Europe has been magnified into a universal (applicable to all countries everywhere) and displaced into the precise locales of North and South America. This adulation of American revolutionary potential once again demonstrates the Shelley circle’s deep engagement with the political work of the 1790s. Wollstonecraft describes the American Revolution as “an experiment in political science”—an opportunity to lay the “first stones” of government without repeating the mistakes of absolute monarchy. “Angloamericans,” she says, “appeared to be another race of beings, men framed to enjoy the advantages of society, and not merely to benefit those who governed.”63 The use of “race” highlights the “otherness” of American society when compared to European practices, but also implies that Americans are “naturally” or intrinsically more advanced, as well as the products of a superior culture. In The Ruins, Volney traces the universal development of human society, looking forward to the time when disconnected states will band together, ending the “period of faction.” America, he proclaims, will help institute this transnational idyll by instigating “a new age [. . .] of surprise and dread to tyrants, of emancipation to a great people, and of hope to the whole world.”64 Volney and Wollstonecraft see the New



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World as a more perfect version of their hopes for Europe, and the Shelley circle replicates their views 20 years later, the disappointments surrounding European revolution only amplifying their expectations. Of the members of the Marlow group, only Thomas Jefferson Hogg expresses reservations about America. “In heart I am more a Grecian than ever,” he writes to Peacock. “The vulgarity of America as depicted in Ashe’s Travels & shewn by all other communications from that country, &, which in a great measure arises from ignorance of Classical Literature, is so disgusting, that we shrink from it in horror & take refuge in the ruins of antient taste & elegance.”65 Unlike Shelley and Hunt, who identify the most recent incarnations of ancient Greek culture in contemporary states, Hogg, and to a lesser extent Peacock, assert the complete separateness of the modern world and its Grecian past. Peacock’s Rhododaphne (1818) invokes Greece as a means of withdrawing from the world through study: “Among those gifted bards and sages old / Shunning the living world, I dwell and hear.”66 Whereas for Shelley, Greece is a living concept visible in the world, for Hogg and Peacock, it is a vanished ideal and modern pretenders are poor imitators of its splendor. As Hogg admits, his comments on America’s neglect of classical tradition derive from Thomas Ashe’s Travels in America (1808). This work revels in a scathing critique of the United States, attacking “sordid speculators,” “shameful degeneracy,” and the “bigotry, pride and malignant hatred” which infects the country. Significantly though, like admirers of America, Ashe associates the country with support for the French Revolution, including a bogus account of a Sussex farmer who, infused with enthusiasm for revolution, “fixed on America as his destination” as it seemed to realize his dreams of reform.67 Ashe uses this thinly disguised fiction to assail both the United States and the concept of revolution, but, like Shelley, he assumes that America embodies a reformed “Europe.” For detractors and supporters alike, America is understood in terms of ideas about Europe—according to their conceptions of what Europe should be like and whether the United States has emulated or destroyed that ideal.

Europe and Sexual Morality Thus far, I have written about Europe as a historical or political concept. But what did it mean to the Shelley circle to be European? How should a European behave? In this section, I explore how being European meant adhering to certain codes of sexual morality. Shelley and his friends were often accused of disrespecting marriage, of conducting unorthodox (that





is, extramarital) sexual relations, and therefore of not being European. These accusations use the concept of “Europe” in a very different way: to bolster conventional forms of social behavior, rather than to explore the complexities of radical politics. In December 1817, William Baxter, a member of Godwin’s circle and father of Mary’s childhood friend Isabel, wrote to Shelley, justifying his decision to break contact between their families: The station your rank and fortune gives you in society, the sphere which it entitles you to move in are such as I cannot in good conscience introduce my family into [. . .]. This independence of fortune, too, has given you a freedom of thought and action entirely inconsistent with the customs, manners and prejudices of European society with which I have been at pains to imbue their minds, and which I wish not to see eradicated.68

What did Baxter mean by defining Shelley’s conduct as “uneuropean”? As the editors of Shelley and his Circle suggest, Baxter probably wrote the letter at the instigation of his son-in-law (and Isabel’s husband) David Booth. Booth explains his reservations about the Shelleys in a letter to his wife early in 1818. He complains that Percy Shelley is “certainly insane,” partly because he associates with the scandalous Byron, but mainly because, according to Booth, he lives alternately with Mary and Claire Clairmont. As a result, he “tramples on the morality of his country,” excluding himself from British and European society.69 Shelley is therefore seen as “uneuropean” due to his alleged sexual immorality: Booth and Baxter imply that Europe and, consequently, Britain are defined by particular social codes, notably marriage. Shelley, of course, was much exercised by his marital situation in this period, following his elopement and cohabitation with Mary Godwin, the suicide of his wife Harriet in 1816, the custody battle regarding their children, his marriage to Mary, and the ongoing difficulties of Claire’s status as the unmarried mother of Byron’s child. He would often discuss these problems using the language of Revolution, complaining of his “persecution” by those who disrespect his radical opinions. Writing to Byron about the custody battle for Charles and Ianthe, Shelley interprets the debate about his unorthodox ideals and (sexual) behavior as an epic conflict between reform and reaction: his enemies intend to “expose me in the pillory, on the ground of my being a REVOLUTIONIST and an Atheist.”70 In this sense, like his “enemies,” Shelley connects his personal conduct to his political ideals. He explores this connection further in his draft declaration to the Chancery court regarding the custody case: “the allegations from which this unfitness [for paternal custody] is said to proceed, are reduced



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to a simple statement of my holding doctrines inimical to the institution of marriage as established in this country.” “Marriage,” he continues, “as it exists precisely in the laws and opinions of this country, [is] a mischievous and tyrannical institution,” adding that he has dared to imagine an alternative “system of social life” and that “all ages and countries have admitted in various degrees the principle of divorce.” 71 Shelley allies himself with a cosmopolitan flexibility regarding marriage and divorce and against parochial British law. This is not specifically an idea of Europe, since Shelley invokes a universal ideal (“all ages and countries”). Nevertheless, he builds upon an important tradition which defines Europe by reference to marriage. Writing in 1797, probably with Wollstonecraft in mind, Godwin remarks, “I find the prejudice of the world in arms against the woman who practically opposed herself to the European institution of marriage.”72 To Godwin’s dismay, being properly European depends upon adhering to a particular sexual code—and the concepts are so closely aligned that marriage itself is a “European institution.” By questioning marital laws in his Chancery papers, Shelley is thus postulating an alternative vision of European social relations—one not so wedded to stringent marital codes. In the Examiner, however, Hunt asserts that marriage is a defining feature of European society: “the degeneracy of some nations of the East, the Egyptians and Chaldeans for instance, has been traced to the marriages that were in use between brothers and sisters.” 73 By contrast, Europe has excelled through its practice of international marriage: the Goths and the Romans together produced “the early modern Italians, who led all the genius of modern Europe” and the French have recently become preeminent “partly due to the great mixture of breed that has resulted from their free intercourse with all the other nations of the Continent.” The most “feeble houses” are consequently Spain and Portugal—the least internationalist and the most inbred states.74 According to Hunt’s thesis, international marriage is what defines Europe, both in terms of common adherence to the custom and also because it facilitates interstate communication and the sharing of ideas. Hunt’s interest in marriage contributes to what Jeffrey Cox calls his “sexualised imagination,” epitomized in the erotic imagery of Foliage and The Story of Rimini (1816), which, like Laon and Cythna, deal with incestuous behavior.75 Reviewing these works, Hunt’s opponents also make the connection between Europe and sexual morality. Lockhart’s assessment of Rimini assaults Hunt’s style: “his poetry resembles that of a man who has kept company with kept-mistresses”—in other words, it indicates his sexual deviancy. This criticism is intimately connected to Hunt’s faulty understanding of international relations and European culture. On the one hand, Lockhart attacks Hunt’s lack of languages, suggesting that





he has not received a proper European and classical education. But, on the other hand, Hunt’s views are a “dilution of the blasphemies of the Encyclopédie—his patriotism a crude, vague, ineffectual, and sour Jacobinism.” 76 Lockhart thus criticizes from two distinct directions, arguing first that Hunt is ignorant and not an internationally minded gentleman, but also that he is excessively international—he copies the radical extremism of the philosophes and is not sufficiently patriotic. Lockhart’s review tellingly links dubious sexual morality with “defective” political views—just as Wollstonecraft’s political radicalism and alleged sexual licentiousness had been connected in the 1790s. Richard Polwhele, for example, had suggested in 1798 that “female advocates of Democracy” are inevitably sexual deviants: Wollstonecraft submits to her “heart’s lusts,” while Helen Maria Williams is “an intemperate advocate for Gallic licentiousness.” For Polwhele, radical politics and sexual unorthodoxy are both direct challenges to societal order.77 Lockhart’s accusations were particularly damaging for Hunt in 1817: although Rimini’s plot was a retelling of Dante, the incestuous content contributed to rumors of an illicit liaison between Hunt and his sister-in-law Elizabeth Kent.78 According to Lockhart, Hunt’s personal life, as well as his writing, exposed the subversive connection between radical philosophy and unorthodox sexuality. J. T. Coleridge’s review of Laon and Cythna objects using very similar terminology. “Mr. Shelley is his own Laon,” Coleridge says, as if Laon’s behavior accurately mirrors Shelley’s. Alluding to the controversial incest theme, Coleridge writes: “ ’Love,’ [Shelley] says, ‘is to be but the sole law which shall govern the moral world’ [. . .] We are loath to understand it in its lowest sense, though we believe that as to this issue this would be the correctest mode of interpreting it.”79 For this reason—because Shelley writes about sexual taboos—his ideas about the reformation of Europe are inadmissible: he wishes “to abolish all social strictures,” by questioning both the ideal political state of Europe and its accepted sexual customs. In defending Shelley from this onslaught, Hunt reassures his readers of Shelley’s conventional lifestyle, while simultaneously supporting his right to propound new theories and potentially “alter the condition of sexual intercourse.” Significantly, however, he also declares that Shelley is a proper European—engaged with the international problems of Europe despite the original poem’s apparent questioning of sexual orthodoxy. He quotes Bacon in reference to Shelley: “If a man be generous towards strangers, it shews he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.”80 The imagery here of a parochial island disconnected from the European mainland is powerful: Shelley is a world-citizen, not a narrow-minded islander like his opponents, who attempt to exclude him from European society.



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This debate, then, is partly about the conventions of European behavior and partly about the idea of Europe itself—what kind of common characteristics or customs European societies should possess. Ronald Paulson notes how Revolutionary debate in the 1790s was filtered through the language of sexuality: Burke emphasized the dangers of insurrection by narrating the storming of the French palace as a sexual assault on Marie Antoinette, forced to “fly almost naked” from revolutionary deviants. “The act of love,” Paulson says, “was an act of rebellion, or at least a scandalous act, in the context of a society of arranged marriages and closed families.”81 By this logic, people with unorthodox sexual lives challenged the very basis of society. In Peacock’s satirical novel Melincourt (1817), the reactionary Mr. Vamp exclaims that “every man who talks of moral philosophy [that is, radical ideas] will never make any scruple of seducing his neighbour’s wife,” as if reform and sexual misbehavior necessarily go together.82 The liberal Lady Morgan remembers that the Quarterly Review accused her, like Wollstonecraft, of “licentiousness, profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty, and atheism,” conflating religious and political radicalism with sexual dissolution.83 In this context, William Baxter’s remark to his daughter that Shelley possesses “truly republican frugality” is unusual, for it associates antiestablishment politics with abstinence and prudence, not sexual irresponsibility, as Booth and Lockhart declare.84 These accusations about Percy Shelley’s and Hunt’s personal behavior are, therefore, contributions to a wider argument about how European society should be constructed, and what kind of behavior is properly European. I have suggested that Shelley’s ideas of Europe reveal (as well as challenge) his interests in revolution, radical reform, and the possibility of utopian social progress. For his critics though, European denotes a yardstick of acceptable (sexual) conduct, and Shelley’s unorthodox personal life means that he can be attacked as “uneuropean.” This conservative use of Europe indicates the extent to which Shelley’s own radical Europe is an attempt to reject allegedly pernicious social forms and structures. But the debates about his “Europeanness” reveal how, in the post-Napoleonic political climate, the construction of Europe had become a battleground for expressing various social ideologies, and not just radical ones. Thinking about Europe does not just involve imagining the political “beau ideal,” it also involves theorizing and practicing competing behavioral codes and notions of social responsibility. In this way, the members of Shelley’s circle are themselves employed as subjects when recognizing and defining Europe.







“From a Particular to a Universal”: The Shelley Circle, 1820–22

Introduction In Chapter 4, I noted how John Taylor Coleridge criticizes Laon and Cythna for reasoning “from a particular to a universal.” The poem, he says, purports to narrate a specific revolutionary moment, but also presents a universally applicable ideal for a new society.1 With Coleridge’s phrase in mind, this chapter focuses on the two texts in which Percy Shelley uses the word “Europe” most often: the Defence of Poetry and Hellas, both written in 1821.2 In these works, Shelley identifies certain historical events and literary texts which together construct a uniquely European culture. But he also generalizes European culture into a universal ideal for all humanity, suggesting that European history offers a model for universal “progress.” As a consequence, both Hellas and the Defence interconnect ideas about Europe, Greece, and civilization. For Shelley, these concepts come to define one another: European culture epitomizes the notion of civilization, while the achievements of ancient Greece define the development of Europe. In other words, Europe and Greece are discussed in ways which are both totalizing and specific: Greek history and culture is thus made universally applicable to all places and periods and, simultaneously, the European present is defined by the specificity of the Greek past. Having discussed Hellas and the Defence, this chapter then analyses the Shelley circle’s experience of travel between late 1820 and early 1822. Their travelwriting is deeply connected to ideas about Europe since it constructs and traverses boundaries between spaces and peoples, emphasizing separation



Chapter 5


as well as new possibilities for cultural contact and communication. Last, I examine whether Shelley’s translations create a transnational literary culture by fusing together different linguistic traditions in a single text, or whether he appropriates other languages and literatures. These questions of travel and translation, I want to suggest, are informed by the terminology of “the particular and the universal,” and are crucial in constructing Shelley’s ideas of Europe.

Hellas In his preface to Hellas, Percy Shelley acknowledges the influence of Æschylus’s The Persæ, a play which describes the victory of the ancient Greeks over their Persian invaders. He connects the drama to “the events of the moment,” namely the Greek War of Independence from the Ottomans. The connection between ancient and contemporary history is crucial, since Shelley goes on to make a case for “the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilisation and social improvement.” He identifies a progress theory which articulates itself through Greece: both the ancient victory and the modern conflict are part of the same trajectory leading to a more ideal society. Greece is the basis for an idea of “civilisation”: Shelley expresses his disgust for “the apathy of the rulers of the civilised world to the astonished circumstances of the descendents of that nation to which they owe their civilisation.” For Shelley, civilization and Greece have become mutually defining concepts: the “civilised world” is shaped by its Greek legacy, and ancient Greece is seen in terms of subsequent “social improvement.”3 But, what is this “civilised world” arising from ancient Greece? When Shelley declares “We are all Greeks—our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece,” to whom is he referring? As the analysis develops, a definition of this collective “we” becomes clearer: But for Greece, Rome, the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors would have spared no illumination with her arms, and we might still have been savages, and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan possess.4

“Civilised world” refers only to Greco-Roman society and not to the Chinese, Japanese, or Islamic empires. Indeed, as the preface continues, “we” gradually comes to mean “Europeans”: the youth of “Italy, Germany



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and France have communicated to their fellow citizens the latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors were the original source.” In this sentence, “citizenship” is associated with Greek ancestors and modern European states, standing in contrast to Asian despotism. Furthermore, Shelley presents a socio-racial notion of “the modern Greek” as the “descendent of those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to figure itself as belonging to our Kind ” (my emphasis). Three paragraphs later, Shelley amplifies this point: “Our Kind” alludes to the “race [. . .] arisen throughout Europe” and in this respect the statement “we are all Greeks” refers specifically to an idea of Europe defined by its Greek inheritance. Europe grows from a specific (Greek) context, and this specificity is expanded to act as a unifying principle, connecting “Italy, Germany, France” and so on through a common identity and defining Europeans in contrast to other cultural groups, specifically “the Chinese” and “the Islamic.”5 In promoting support for the contemporary Greek cause, Shelley conceptually reverses this argument, suggesting that modern Greece is a condensed representative or exemplar of the European “civilised world” and must therefore be defended from uncivil non-Europeans. The poet’s cousin, Thomas Medwin, says that “Shelley entertained a sincere regard” for the Greek Revolutionary leader Prince Mavrocordato, who “had very enlightened views of the state of Europe.”6 Medwin is a notoriously unreliable source, but this anecdote indicates that Shelley’s circle saw Greek affairs as a means by which they can discuss European politics.7 Although not with Shelley in this period, Leigh Hunt also used the Greek war to meditate upon the idea of Europe. In an Examiner editorial for October 1821 (the same month that Shelley was writing Hellas), Hunt hopes that a pan-European army will liberate Greece and settle there, and that a success in Greece might promote liberal politics across Europe and precipitate the collapse of European tyrannies.8 Discussing this passage, Michael Erkelenz says that for both Hunt and Shelley “the Greeks are the people who inhabit the place Greece, but they are also the people in the West who have inherited and preserved the legacy of Greece.”9 Percy Shelley and his circle use Greece to trace a trajectory for European history. To put this more precisely, they are interested in Europe as a distinctive historical and cultural “unit” in its own right—and not as a collection of smaller (local) histories and cultures. Indeed, Greece is the reason why it is possible to speak of Europe in this way, since it is a common root and thus connects different cultures to one other, rendering them not just similar, but related. However, in the preface to Hellas, Shelley’s idea of a particularly European social progress is haunted by the possibility of failure. Denouncing British neutrality in the Greek-Ottoman conflict, Shelley argues that “The English permit their own oppressors to act according to



From a Particular to a Universal


their natural sympathy for the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, of Christianity and civilisation.”10 In its alliance with Turkey, Britain has renounced its Greek inheritance and become uncivilized: an opinion which shows that, for Shelley, Greece, Europe, and civilization are interconnected and mutually defining concepts. In response to this apparent misdirection of contemporary history, the preface quickly calls for a “revival of liberty,” defined in racial terms: “a new race has arisen throughout Europe” to “accomplish that destiny which tyrants fear and dread.”11 In a contemporaneous article, Hunt speculates that the Greeks have been corrupted by Turkish rule: their society is barbaric, and they are “a mixed and degraded race.”12 The decline of Greek civilization is thus accompanied by some sort of racial degeneration. William St. Clair notes that western Europeans were often shocked by the Turkish manners of the Greeks in the 1820s, and Hunt suggests that their socio-racial purity has been corrupted.13 Conversely, for Shelley, a renewal of civil society can create a “new” “more vigorous race arising to go forth.”14 Nowhere else does Shelley talk about the “race of Europe,” so it would be unwise to overstate the implications of these remarks. Perhaps, he uses the term in a dynastic sense (as in the phrase “race of kings”) to express the cultural line of succession he has identified between ancient Greece and modern Europe.15 But given Shelley’s sharp distinction between GrecoEuropean and non-European cultures in this preface, as well as the increasing prevalence of racial theories in the period,16 the further implications of intrinsic biological distinction must not be wholly discounted. The last paragraph of the preface attempts to evoke pan-European regeneration. Spain is “already free,” says Shelley, and the prospects in France, Italy and Germany are promising: “Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe.”17 As in Laon and Cythna, Shelley is advocating a revolutionary redefinition of Europe. He arrives at this notion by assembling a number of countries (especially Greece and Spain) and then identifying shared characteristics or revolutionary prospects which point to their common Europeanness. This is a complex process, not least because those regions from which Europe is constructed are themselves determined by Shelley’s vision of what all Europe should be like. It is unclear whether Europe is an expanded ideal of Greece, or whether Shelley’s Greece is a projection of his classical and revolutionary Europe. The idea of Europe both defines and is defined by its constituent localities. In the main action of Hellas, Shelley sets out the prospects for European history in terms of conflict with the Islamic world. He formulates a collective Europe defined by Christianity and contrasts its permanency with 10.1057/9780230106307 - The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe, Paul Stock


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the transient moon of Islam: “The moon of Mahomet / Arose, and it shall set, / While blazoned as on Heaven’s immortal noon / The cross leads generations on” (lines, 221–4).18 The drama constructs a very complicated notion of European history, which rests both on a trajectory of social “progress” and the stability of particular cultural forms. The abandoned “Prologue” to Hellas makes Christianity even more central by including a scene where Christ implores the Father to intervene for the Greeks in the War of Independence. Christ becomes a Greek revolutionary, and the play synthesizes the central personage of Christianity with the philhellenist view that Greek culture is the basis for modern European society.19 Mary Shelley also invokes Christian unity to understand Greece. Frustrated by Britain’s reluctance to intervene in the war, she tells Hunt that “we help Turks & Tyrants against Xtians & the Would-be-free.” She attacks Austria and Russia for openly denouncing the Greeks: “their own policy suits them declaring for the crescent against the Cross—Why I am a better Xtian than they.”20 Hunt probably sympathized with these views: a different letter by Mary Shelley appeared in the Examiner, hoping that “the war of the Cross against the Crescent” will end in the Greeks’ favor.21 These remarks connect Christianity with the revolutionary desire to remake Europe and are especially significant because the Shelley–Byron circle more commonly associates organized religion with the “tyranny” of their political enemies (see, for example, Byron’s assessment of the Holy Alliance in the following chapter). Here, however, Christianity is used alongside Greek inheritance to identify a unifying European culture—in opposition to the dual threat of “Turks & Tyrants,” who are neither Christian nor Greek and therefore not European. If the preface to Hellas interprets Europe and Greece in terms of one another, then the poem articulates this connection more extensively. By outlining ancient and modern struggles for freedom, it delineates a tradition of “free societies,” all explicitly located in Europe or “the West.”22 The chorus details the familiar progress of freedom from Greece to the Italian city states and from there to England, Switzerland, and France: “Freedom’s splendour burst and shone” at “Thermopylæ and Marathon” (lines 53–4); “From age to age, from man to man, / It lived; and lit from land to land”; “From the West swift Freedom came” (61–2; 66). Mahmud later refers to “Greek and Frank philosophy” (741), uniting European and Hellenic identities. Furthermore, this notion of the free West is formulated in opposition to the illiberal East: the “great prophet” (Mohammed) darkens “the thrones and idols of the West” (262–3); and “Darkness has dawned in the East / [. . .] Let Freedom and Peace flee far” (1023–7). One must be slightly careful regarding the capitalization of “West” in these examples. The press copy manuscript, which was written out by Edward Williams and corrected by Shelley, consistently de-capitalizes “West,” to read, for example, 10.1057/9780230106307 - The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe, Paul Stock




“From the west swift Freedom came.”23 This variation reveals uncertainty over the extent to which the word refers to a sociopolitical as well as a cartographic notion. Crucially, however, the first edition, which Shelley declared has “fewer mistakes than any poem I ever published,” retains the capitalized “West”—even inserting an additional one not in the press copy (“Far in the West sits mourning that her sons” [305]).24 The capitalization implies that Shelley is purposely conceptualizing “western” identity to refer, not just to a geographical place, but to a social tradition of freedom emanating from Greece. Claire Clairmont similarly defines “freedom” using the language of occident and orient. In her journal for December 1820, she distinguishes between civilized “liberty” and “licence,” which is a kind of depraved and excessive self-indulgence: “the children of licence and like with her, as far removed from unlike the free & natural movements of Liberty as the east is removed from the West.”25 The “West” is thus “naturally” the province of “Liberty,” whereas the East is a scene of decadent luxury. To some extent, these ideas are a reconstitution of eighteenth-century theories of oriental despotism.26 But, the Shelley circle makes such ideas immediate by re-framing them in the context of the Greek War and then using them to construct a call for European action as well as to explain European history. However, like the preface, the poem is shot through with anxieties about potential corruption at the heart of Europe. The close association between tyranny and “the East” in the poem means that lines such as “the smooth-faced Tyrants of Europe” have an almost oxymoronic force: the European powers have betrayed their own Europeanness by neglecting the Greek cause and bolstering the Ottomans.27 The poem ends by imagining a Greek defeat assisted by European duplicity: “The bought Briton sends / The keys of the Ocean to the Islamite—/ Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled / And British skill directing Othman might” (lines 1016–19). Shelley is here imagining the collapse of the European civilized world, as Greece is conquered and its ungrateful inheritors abandon its legacy: “ye desert the free / [. . .] Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made” (1000–8). By presenting this apocalyptic scenario, Shelley challenges the potentially philhellenic reader to imagine an alternative Europe where freedom is not destroyed by Eastern tyranny and by the powers that forget their Greek heritage. In a letter to Claire Clairmont, he hopes for “a system of a future social life before which the existing anarchies of Europe will be dissolved & absorbed.” This is not a new system; it is the revitalization of a former freedom (“the spirit of Regeneration”), as if Europe could return to a more glorious past premised upon freedom and the rights of “citizens.” As Mahmud puts it in Hellas: “The Future must become the Past” (924). It is also notable how the subject under discussion in the letter, Austria’s



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opposition to the Neapolitan Revolution, is expanded into a universal narrative: “Lombardy will renew the league against [the] Imperial power. [. . .] If the Austrians met with any serious check—they [ma]y as well at once return, for the good spirit of the World is out against them.”28 This “expansion” strategy is used extensively in Hellas. When Hassan reports on the war, he says “Good and Evil stake / Their empire o’er the unborn world of men / On this one cast” (443–5). He talks specifically about the progress of the Greek war, but he expands the implications of the contest into a Manichean struggle between moral absolutes, thus giving the conflict universal significance. The semichorus declares: Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the chrystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens, imperial spirits, Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set—. (696–703)

It is significant that Shelley employs a semichorus to articulate these universalizing ideas. According to Luigi Battezzato, early nineteenth-century theories of Greek theatre argue that “the chorus creates a distance from the tragic action,” allowing events in the play to be “removed from the material by ‘means of ideas.’ ” In other words, they abstract the action into an ideal realm detached from particular circumstances.29 In Hellas, Greece is thus made universally applicable to all places and periods and, simultaneously, present-day Europe is defined by the specificity of the Greek past. To put it slightly differently, Shelley expands the import of his Greece to reflect the concerns of the whole world and, in doing so, condenses Greece into a metaphor for “this world of men.” This technique is of central importance in Hellas, where many of the observations on revolution and tyranny have both specific and universal meanings. To this extent, the poem develops problems relating to the universality and particularity of European society which Shelley first explored in Laon and Cythna.

A Defence of Poetry Like the Hellas volume, A Defence of Poetry also deals with the problem of universals and particulars. The first paragraph distinguishes between





those mental processes which have for their objects “those forms which are common to universal nature and existence itself ” and those which “regard the relations of things simply as relations,” that is, possibly connected but with no “integral unity.” Shelley then explores how the poet negotiates an appreciation of the circumstantial with the universal. “All men observe a similar [. . . but] not the same order,” he says, but poets behold “the relations of things” and use the words representing them to fashion abstract (nonmaterial) thoughts, thus creating a common means of human communication. Poets thus exist “in a universal sense,” helping to stock a “storehouse of axioms common to all knowledge.” In this way, the poet creates universal ideas from particular circumstances and observations.30 For Shelley, poets can do this because “a Poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth”: it is created “according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the creator, which is itself the image of all other minds.” Poetry moves beyond the particular and circumstantial, to engage with “the common universe of which we are all portions and percipients” (my emphasis).31 In writing the Defence, Shelley was, of course, responding to Peacock’s “Four Ages of Poetry,” published in Ollier’s Literary Miscellany in 1820. Shelley attacks Peacock for suggesting that poetry is “no more than the rude efforts of savages [. . . in the] dark ages of the world.” Instead, Shelley wishes to reconnect poetry with universal social progress theory. That both writers are interested in the relationship between literature and “civilised progress” is revealed in a significant deletion when Shelley tries to recall Peacock’s title: “the Four ages of the World Poetry.”32 In the “Four Ages,” Peacock suggests that poets are entirely products of social structures. The origins of poetry stem from the desire of powerful chiefs to disseminate their victories; and likewise, the “golden age” of poetry arrives when a state is founded, but before the “progress of reason” creates rival fields of intellectual endeavor. When poetry inadequately reflects its precise social circumstances, Peacock denounces it for “remaining studiously ignorant of history”: hence, the Lake Poets are “semi-barbarians in a civilised community,” since their alleged primitivism is inappropriate in a time of scientific progress.33 Shelley’s Defence takes issue with this thesis in two ways: first, by asserting that poets are agents of historical change and not just products of it; and second by arguing that poetry has “universal” import that can be appreciated outside particular historical circumstances. What Shelley shares with Peacock, however, is a comprehension of poetry and European history in terms of one another: a cultural idea of Europe can be deduced from the development of literary history. For Shelley, literature can express universal truths and a particularly European political and literary tradition.



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It is from this dialogue with Peacock that Shelley develops his idea that poetry represents a “universal wisdom,” while still being connected to particular historical events. In a journal for April 1821, Claire Clairmont distinguishes between the “language of everyday life” (of the historical moment) and poetry as “the hardment of the [. . .] immortal sojourner on Earth.”34 Shelley, however, is interested in how poems both exemplify the age and go “beyond” it. Writing to Byron, he wishes “that you would subdue yourself to the great task of building up a poem containing within itself the germs of a permanent relation to the present, and to all succeeding ages.”35 He wants Byron to produce an epic grounded firmly in contemporary times, but which also ascends above its own specificity to enjoy timeless relevance. These thoughts thus provide a theoretical background for the procedures of Hellas, with its dual emphasis on a particular context and the universal struggles of freedom and tyranny. However, it is important to notice various complications to this process. Foremost among these is the fact that Shelley so closely associates “civilised society” with “European society.” In a draft of the essay, he writes that Christianity has become “the object of Europe the civilised world.”36 The deletion reveals the extent to which Shelley’s conceptions of civilization and the ideal society are intimately related to ideas about Europe. Does Shelley see these terms as near equivalents, or does one replace the other because their meanings are not the same? When, in the main text, he outlines “the fabric of human society” as a grand historical chain linking “the minds of many men” to the figures of the past, he explicitly discusses a notion of European history, in which the influences of Athenian society, chivalry, and Christianity have combined and competed with one another to shape “the habits and institutions of modern Europe.” He totalizes this into a universal “history of our species” but the focus is on a particularly European trajectory. The same is true when Shelley talks about literary figures (Homer, Dante, and Milton) who “deeply penetrated into the religion of the civilised world” but also attain relevance beyond the specific moment. Dante, for example, is “the first awakener of entranced Europe [. . .] the congregator of those great spirits who presided over the resurrection of learning”; he is an engineer of social progress, at the centre of our conception of civilization.37 In creating this literary tradition, Shelley articulates a purportedly universal literature, a body of texts which speak to their times, but also express truths across circumstances. And yet, this supposed universality is constructed on an exclusive interpretation of European canonical literature and history. Shelley, I suspect, would not see this as a problem, since the very transcendence of these texts makes it possible for them to be at once local and universal. His purpose in the Defence is to explore how poetry negotiates





the particular and the universal. The language of Europe helps articulate that negotiation: it is a concept defined by particular times and places, but which also moves beyond them to connect particulars in a singular history. For Shelley, a specific event or text which possesses a universal import can divest itself of its particular, limited applications. “All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient,” he says, “but poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions.”38 Shelley mentions Europe in ways that are both totalizing and specific: it forms a bridge between his conceptions of the universal and the particular. The debate surrounding Peacock’s “Four Ages” essay shows that Shelley closely associates history and poetry. Like his thoughts on poetry, his ideas about the European “civilised world” encompass both particular historical moments and universal theories. For this reason, the idea of Europe is crucial to his reflections on the poet’s historical participation. To be a European poet is to contribute to changes in history, but also to stand outside the particular—to possess a transhistorical “universal sense.”

Travel and Politics in Europe, 1820–22 Why did Shelley and his circle explore ideas about Europe through the language of universals and particulars during this period? In this section, I propose that a key factor is the circle’s experience of, and theorizing about, travel and exile in Europe. The Shelleys, of course, had been extensive travelers throughout their lives and had lived at various locations in the Italian states since 1818. Here, I wish to discuss how they viewed movement across borders—especially from familiar to unfamiliar places—as both an exciting way to conceptualize Europe anew and as a means to escape Europe altogether. Reflecting in 1826 on their travels, Mary Shelley suggests that the end of war in 1815 opened new possibilities for migration: “when peace came, after the many long years of war, when our island prison was opened to us, and our watery exit from it was declared practicable, it was the paramount wish of every English heart, ever addicted to vagabondizing, to hasten to the continent.” She suggests that travel allows a new appraisal of Europe based on the crossing of borders rather than the parochialism of an island existence. In these “early days of migration,” travel was a means of confronting the new and unfamiliar, but also an unreal escape—like “acting a novel, being an incarnate romance”—an important double function which, as I shall argue, is central to Shelley’s thinking about Europe in this period.39



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Between 1820 and 1822, Percy Shelley was formulating a plan for a more extensive trip—although the scheme was, in fact, never realized. It is rather unclear, however, what the destination was supposed to be: sometimes he speaks of going to Greece and, like Byron, the Near East; sometimes to India; and sometimes, more vaguely, to “the East.” Shelley first tells Byron about his plan to go to the “Levant & Greece” in September 1820; he refers again to “our Grecian project” in April 1821, noting that the war has disrupted his plans.40 As late as November, Mary Shelley still suggests that “if Greece be free, Shelley and I have vowed to go, perhaps to settle there, in one of those beautiful islands where earth, ocean, and sky form the Paradise.”41 Given the important role Percy Shelley gives to Greece in defining Europe, perhaps he wishes to visit the heart of the European civilized world for himself. At other points, however, the trip is presented as an escape from Europe. Many of Shelley’s immediate companions in 1821–22, including Byron, Trelawny, Edward Williams, Medwin, and Mrs. Mason, had traveled to the Islamic world and beyond. On a number of occasions, Shelley requests Arabic dictionaries and tuition, as if to prepare for the excursion.42 Both Medwin and Williams remained actively interested in India, where each had served in the army: Williams continued to correspond with contacts in Calcutta, and Medwin used his experience to write Sketches in Hindoostan with Other Poems (1821).43 This mediated exposure to “the East” had an effect on Shelley, and in 1821, he made enquiries to Peacock about “going to India,” possibly under the auspices of the East India Company. Peacock rebuffed this suggestion (“I should not like your Indian project”), and Shelley eventually complained to Hogg that “I shall probably have no opportunity of making it a reality.”44 His uncertainty about the destination of the expedition is exemplified in a letter to Claire Clairmont where he talks rather mysteriously about a “man of large fortune” who has promised to convey him to “Greece, Syria and Egypt.”45 Shelley here unites his desire to visit Greece and “the East” in a single plan, whereas elsewhere he talks about going either to Greece or to the Islamic world and India. This uncertainty matters since it represents a conflict about the purpose and utility of travel with regard to Shelley’s developing thoughts on Europe. Does he envisage a trip to escape from Europe by moving outside it? Or is it a means of exploring European heritage by visiting Greece, the centre of Europe as he defines it in Hellas and the Defence? Of course, these notions are not mutually exclusive, but they do reveal ambiguity about the purposes and potential effects of Shelley’s proposed traveling. Would it bolster a Hellenist idea of Europe by exposing him to its ancient inheritance? Would the experience of nonEuropean cultures facilitate an escape from Europe, or harden definitions of the strengths and flaws of European culture through comparison with





its “others”? In this respect, his understandings of Europe and his ideas about travel are deeply connected, since they both concern the establishment of particular group identities and the possibility of traversing cultural boundaries. I now wish to investigate some of these ideas about travel and their various implications for thinking about both Europe and the interaction of universals and particulars. In Epipsychidion, composed between December 1820 and February 1821, the speaker invites Emily to travel with him to an island paradise. Like Constantinople in Laon and Cythna or Albania in Childe Harold, the island is a border-zone between “the East” and Europe. “Wilt thou sail with me?” the speaker implores, “Our bark is an albatross, whose nest / Is a far Eden of the purple East” (lines 415–7).46 Later, he evokes “some chambers there / Looking towards the golden Eastern air” (515–6). However, this “Eastern” island is clearly located in Greece: “It is an isle under the Ionian skies” (422) and is twice described as “Elysian,” alluding to the Greek mythological afterlife (427, 539). The island’s indistinct location perhaps reflects Shelley’s own excursion uncertainties, representing both a return to the heart of a Greek Europe and a movement beyond the boundaries of European space. Discussing the theoretical implications of borders, Marta Zając refers to the “border as fence,” which implies division between two spaces, but also to the “border as middle-ground” with its own unique perspective located between apparently opposing differentials. Most interestingly in this context, she speaks of the “border as horizon,” which edges on the unfamiliar and “marks a longing for the unknown, but still belongs to the inside.”47 This helpfully illuminates the Epipsychidion speaker’s apparent desire to escape Europe while nevertheless remaining defined by its (Greek) history and culture. The same double-effect occurs in Medwin’s Hindoostan. The main character in the poem “Oswald and Edwin” travels to India in order to escape from a failed love affair, but once in “the East,” it becomes a scene for the assertion (rather than the evasion) of his “western” identity: “Herculean limbs, of temper like the steel, / Well do that sinewy chest and manly air, / The lineage of his western sires declare; / And in his colour, those who closer viewed / Would trace the effects of clime, and not of blood.”48 Shelley’s discussions with Peacock and Hogg regarding the “Indian project” are similarly phrased in terms of activism and escape. Writing to Hogg, Shelley hopes that the journey might compel him to “active exertion” and “a new sphere of action”—but he also calls the project “a dream” or an abandoning of reality.49 Shelley thus sees traveling as facilitating both a return to practical action and as an escape from practicalities. Peacock objects using similar language: he declares the plan “impossible” but supports the general principle of connecting with “the business of life,



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in the tangible shape of a practical man.”50 This talk of facing and eluding one’s responsibilities simultaneously involves Shelley fleeing Europe and asserting his Europeanness though participation in the business of empire. Travel, in this respect, both questions and asserts one’s European identity, just as the island in Epipsychidion is both within and outside a European space. There is also an overtly political dimension to the Shelleys’ traveling (and travel-writing) in this period. Hellas and the Defence were both composed while they were settled in Pisa. According to Maria Schoina, Pisa was “in a state of agitation and subversive action” in the early 1820s, fermented partly by students and professors exiled from other Italian universities and partly by “the growth of secret societies” who desired “revolutionary action.”51 Moreover, Percy Shelley describes the city as “a paradise of exiles,” a place where “sexually non-conforming and free-thinking” people could retreat to avoid scandal at home.52 While in Pisa, for example, the Shelleys associated with “Mrs. Mason” (Lady Mountcashel), Mary Wollstonecraft’s pupil and Godwin’s correspondent and also an “ardent republican,” who, having separated from her husband, lived with George Tighe and their children.53 This atmosphere of nonconformity and revolutionary sympathy is therefore an important part of Shelley’s theorizing about travel and the experiences of exile. Indeed, the presence of the Shelleys and, later, Byron and Leigh Hunt in Pisa amplified its reputation as a place of sexual decadence and dangerous political thought. The British Critic sneers about the “Cocknio-Carbonari, or whatever name may rejoice the ears of the literary club [. . .] at Pisa,” alluding both to Hunt’s London circle of radical writers (the “Cockney School”) and to the Carbonari revolutionary movement to which Byron had lent his support.54 In this respect therefore, while Shelley sometimes discusses travel as an escape from practical pressures, he also talks about it in terms of (radical) political expression. In the unfinished drama Charles I, which is usually dated to January 1822, but may have been started in August 1821, two parliamentarian characters discuss migration as a means of fleeing tyranny:55 Hail fleet herald Of tempest! That wide pilot who shall guide Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee, Beyond the shot of tyranny. (scene 4, lines 12–15)56

Deleted lines in the draft also speak of eluding the “linked thunderbolts which chain,” as if to suggest that tyranny is restrictively parochial and that travel can break through such boundaries.57 There is an element of




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Where they think to found A commonwealth like Gonzalo’s in the play, Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic (2.360–2)

The allusion to The Tempest is especially revealing. In landing on the island, the characters in the play apparently encounter a magical place beyond the conventions and hierarchies of ordinary life and political structures. (I am thinking, for example, of the episode where the servants Trinculo and Stephano pretend to be kings and pagan gods.) However, as many critics have argued, the play is also deeply implicated in the politics of colonialism, particularly in the New World: it enacts various “political fantasies” of “wealth or domination effortlessly acquired,” the “brutal seizure of power,” and “Gonzalo’s scheme of a plantation.”58 In both The Tempest and Charles I, overseas travel is both an escape from and an expression of contemporary political concerns. In addition, Shelley’s lines are significant not only for the mention of pantisocracy, but also for drawing an explicit link between travel, republican politics, and sexual unorthodoxy: the word “gynaecocoenic” refers to the practice of “having women in common” or sharing sexual partners.59 This notion of travel not only evokes the particularism of a community wanting to separate itself from society, but also frames a wider challenge to the political and social status quo. Coleridge’s pantisocracy was both “a small, self governing community of friends (with Quaker overtones)” and a philosophical experiment on universal questions, such as “the absence of inherent evil in man’s nature and the possibility of retrieving some paradisial ‘unfallen’ state.”60 By alluding to Coleridge’s scheme, Shelley conceptually connects traveling both to political radicalism and to his ongoing interest in reasoning “from a particular to a universal.” The association of radical politics and travel adds further complexities to the circle’s presentation of itself as a migrant community—alienated both literally and politically from home, but not fully comfortable in a new place. Addressing herself in her journal, Clairmont says “think of thyself as a stranger and traveller [. . .] who has no permanent township on the globe.”61 Similarly, Edward Williams compares the group to “wandering Arabs” with no sense of belonging.62 As C. L. Cline observes, the circle sometimes configure their travel as a kind of exile, as if it were imposed on them: “O that I could return to England!,” Shelley laments, “How heavy



escape in these lines—of fleeing a certain locality—but this journey is a political act: an act of defiance by republicans against a monarchical power. This is made clearer when Shelley alludes to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s and Robert Southey’s own radical migration plans of the 1790s:

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a weight when misfortune is added to exile, and solitude, as if the measure were not full, heaped high on both.”63 Travel is also configured in terms of cultural and literal confrontation. This is most obvious in the so-called Pisan affray, in which an argument between a local soldier and various members of the circle resulted in several minor injuries, a serious assault on the soldier, and the arrest of Byron’s servants.64 Mary Shelley notes that this episode caused considerable resentment against the English: “the Pisans were all enraged because the maledetti inglesi were not punished.”65 Indeed, much of Mary’s correspondence is concerned with identifying cultural differences between the locals, the English tourists, and her own coterie. Pisa is a “city of fools,” known for the “want of love and [. . .] entire ignorance of the fine arts [. . .] their opera is miserable, their theatre the worst in Italy.”66 The circle also had an ambiguous relationship with other British expatriates in Pisa. Shelley complains to Teresa Guiccioli about the malicious rumor-mongering of the British abroad and claims that Florence is spoiled by “the prodigious influx of English,” while Williams implies that the circle “sees none of the numerous English who were here.”67 What I am interested in here is how the experience and presentation of exile facilitates a particularizing approach to identity—the creation of bounded and separated communities. The Italians become an alien people, and English expatriates represent the worst aspects of Britain: they “retain their shabby prejudices and their disquieting hatred for all who surpass or shun them.”68 Shelley attacks their narrow parochialism, but he is also complicit in creating an idea of “national character” which asserts itself more aggressively for being abroad. The Shelley circle itself trespasses on these groupings without fully participating in any: neither Pisans, nor English tourists, nor part of the British political and social mainstream, they stand outside as a community apart, defined by their lack of belonging. In this respect, Shelley begins to associate travel—both as experienced and imagined—with the establishment and definition of his own community. Writing to his wife, he says that “with Lord Byron and all the people we know at Pisa, we should have a security & protection,” going on to mention the Williamses, Hunt, Byron, “and his Italian friends,” and the Masons. This talk about protection (though from what he does not say) evokes a kind of bordered community of friends facilitated by migration. He continues with another escape fantasy: “My greatest content would be utterly to desert all human society. I would retire with you & our child to a solitary island in the sea, would build a boat & shut upon my retreat the floodgates of the world.” Before long, however, he is wishing for “a society of our own class [. . .] in intellect and feeling”—a guarded community circumscribed by particular ideological convictions.69 By January 1822, he defines “our expatriation” as a successful literary community, boasting





to Peacock about the “constant companionship” and imaginative insights which have enlivened his Pisan circle.70 Mary Shelley also talks of “our Colony”: terminology which suggests a settler community creating a new home, but remaining alienated from their surroundings. In this respect, the migratory experience and the “bounded community” are seen in terms of one another. However, I also wish to emphasize the political connotations of this since Shelley, like Coleridge, envisages the colony both as a private retreat and as a kind of political exemplar. His ideas about migration provoke a conceptual tension between the personal particularity of his retreat and the wider political implications of presenting one’s withdrawal from society as an idealized alternative to the social status quo. Recent theorists have explored the relationship between migratory experiences and identity politics. The process of moving across literal and cultural borders, says Hasia Diner, is intimately related to the formation of identity and community, as it foregrounds the relations between oneself, the group to which one “belongs,” and “other” social groups. In this sense, travel intensifies group politics, encouraging one to define and label “groups” or “locales,” but also emphasizes the fluidity of those identities by suggesting how such bordered separations can be traversed.71 Homi Bhabha notes that identities are shaped neither by a unified idea of “self,” nor by a straightforward opposition to an “other,” but by “a process of hybridity” whereby different identities conjoin and interact, generating “other sites of meaning” and becoming “the crossroads to a new transnational culture.”72 This helps describe the Shelley circle’s identity politics. In some respects, they define themselves “against” both the British and the Pisans, implying that their identities are defined by separations. But their transnational movements also challenge those same separations: they feel neither fully British nor fully Pisan and instead craft a hybrid identity for themselves which traverses borders and dichotomous identity politics. Maria Schoina suggests that, for the Shelley circle, “the expatriate situation was an opportunity for new definitions,” allowing them to figure “identity as the product of a sophisticated cultural interrelation and connection.” The Shelleys’ “geographical displacement” enables an “amalgamation” or “ambiguous mediation between [. . .] cultures,” articulated through what Schoina calls “the rhetoric of biculturality.” 73 The Shelleys’ travel-writing therefore both constructs and traverses boundaries between spaces and people, emphasizing both separation and new possibilities for cultural contact and communication.74 In her 1826 review-essay, Mary Shelley talks about how “the emigrant English has given rise to a new race or sect among our countrymen, who have lately been dubbed Anglo-Italians.”75 Migration, she suggests, has facilitated some form of cultural fusion. The product of that meeting, “Anglo-Italian



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literature,” is a kind of contact-zone, in which national differences are both emphasized and supplanted. It is useful here to recall James Buzard’s analysis of nineteenth-century tourism. Discussing the double-definition of “culture” as “a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group,” and as a “general [universal?] process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development,” he notes that tourists (and migrants) search for both these meanings, looking for an “authentic” local culture and a “high culture” which connects different peoples to one another.76 This dual objective clearly characterizes Shelley’s concerns in the period, since he emphasizes both the particularity of local culture(s) and the prospects of an all-encompassing universal culture in the Defence. Buzard’s theories about the experiences of travel and understandings of culture might explain the deep connections between the Shelleys’ traveling and the development of their thinking. The implications are equally far-reaching for Europe. Do Percy Shelley’s ideas about international travel help facilitate the possibility of European cultural transaction, as he implies in the Defence? Or does his emphasis on bordering and separate communities suggest a Europe of divided social components? When Mary Shelley complains about the uncultured Pisans, for example, is she focusing on the particularity of a degenerate community, or is she frustrated that Pisa does not fully realize a shared European cultural ideal? Mary Shelley’s novel Valperga, begun in 1821, also sheds light on the interactions between exile, travel, and European history. The novel concerns the warring Guelph and Ghibelline factions in the late mediaeval Italian states, and the plot hinges on various acts of exile. After the hero / anti-hero Castruccio is banished, one character reflects on how his exile symbolizes the fragmentation of Italy, “distracted by civil bands” and political intrigue. However, if exile can signify division, it can also enable new perspectives outside “narrow views.” Foreign travel will allow Castruccio “to judge impartially of the state of your country” and to escape the parochialism of the “native town.”77 According to Percy Shelley, the novel also alludes to contemporary European history: like recent historical events, its plot concerns the struggle between liberty and tyranny, and Castruccio behaves like “a little Napoleon.” 78 Indeed, the novel’s treatment of civil strife in the Italian states would have been an urgent issue in the early 1820s, following the Neapolitan revolution, the constitutionalist coup in Piedmont, and consequent military intervention by Austria.79 Valperga begins with a definition of “Europe,” relating its historically specific subject matter to a wider temporal context: while “the other nations of Europe were yet immersed in barbarism,” Italy “began to emerge from the darkness of the ruin of the Western Empire, and to catch from the East the returning rays of literature and science.” This marks a specific





national locality, but also creates a complex notion of Europe as a coherent entity, comprising of many “nations.” Moreover, this Europe defines itself against “the East,” while also drawing from its knowledge of literature and science—a suggestion which contrasts with Percy Shelley’s focus on Greece as the ultimate source of European learning. In his edition of the novel, Stuart Curran argues that Mary Shelley analyses European history through the language of “local” and “universal.” She celebrates the “local values” of the Tuscan Guelph states, allied with the pope against “the imperial, pan-European ambitions of the autocratic Holy Roman Empire supported by the Ghibelline faction.” At first, this seems an attractive formula: in several places, the Ghibellines assert “the supremacy and universality of the emperor,” whereas Guelph characters talk of “independence for Italy,” that is, local rule outside imperial authority.80 This language recalls the Shelleys’ writings about the politics of their own times, and Curran explains that the novel alludes to competing “ideological programs” which they identified in contemporary European politics, one libertarian and the other authoritarian.81 In my view, however, Mary Shelley is more interested in “reasoning from a particular to a universal,” and in exploring how universal ideas are constructed from locality, rather than being diametrically opposed. At one point, for example, the Guelph heroine Euthanasia hopes for “freedom for Italy, of revised learning and the reign of peace for all the world ” (my emphasis).82 She begins with an idea of local independence and then expands it into a universal vision of freedom. Similarly, for another character, Guinigi, “the country bore for him the immediate stamp of divine and eternal beauty,” which suggests that the very particularity of the scene evokes a timeless aesthetic, enduring beyond the specific moment. Later in the novel, Euthanasia establishes her own tradition of European freedom—just as Percy Shelley does in the Defence—explaining how liberty has passed from the Romans to the Florentines and thus constructing a generalized historical process from the specificity of certain societies. As in the Defence, Dante is a key figure in this development: “clinging to freedom,” he is both a local hero and provides political hope and inspiration to “the world.”83 Valperga shows how a narrative concerned with exile expresses ideas of Europe in terms of universality and particularity, and it thus epitomizes several key concerns of the Shelley circle during this period. In a similar manner, Byron’s The Prophecy of Dante, published in April 1821, uses the motif of Dante’s exile to reflect on the prospects for Italian and European history. “We can have but one country,” says Dante in the poem, “But I will make another tongue arise [. . .] / And make thee Europe’s nightingale of song.”84 Byron, like Shelley in the Defence, uses Dante to construct a European literary culture, while also championing him as a national



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figure. Edward Said argues that modern conceptions of exile are necessarily related to nationalism and the nation-state. For the Shelleys and their circle, however, experiencing and theorizing about exile leads to complex reflections on identity formation and the (non)existence of boundaries between countries and communities—ideas which are related to, but not wholly defined by, recent notions of nationalism or the nation-state. Said does, though, reflect on what he calls the “narcissism” of isolation and displacement, whereby the experience of exile drives one to generalize about one’s surroundings based on personal experiences: in other words, to reason “from a particular to a universal.”85 If I have shown how migration inspired Shelley to particularize small communities, perhaps the interest he displays in universalizing—especially in the Defence and Hellas—is also partly a consequence of his migratory experiences.

Shelley’s European Translation There is another important aspect of Shelley’s work in this period which I now wish to consider: his interest in translation. Shelley translated throughout his career, but in 1822, he was heavily engaged in translating Goethe’s Faust and Calderón’s El Mágico Prodigioso and also in thinking about the possibilities and limits of translation.86 This engagement is conceptually related to his simultaneous thinking about travel: both concern, first, the (lack of) possibilities for intercultural communication and, second, his interest in European culture and theorizing from the particular to the universal. Wojciech Kalaga has helpfully articulated exile and travel in terms of translation, suggesting that they involve “displacement from one’s own interpretative universe to another, alien system.” Migration to a new space, says Kalaga, requires engagement with a new interpretative environment and necessitates a process of translation.87 It is with this in mind that I wish to approach Shelley’s translations, discussing how they inform his approach to “difference” and communication across boundaries. Timothy Webb suggests that Shelley translated both to alleviate private moments of despair (“a substitute for original creation”) and out of “public duty” and a desire to disseminate little known texts or ideas.88 In this sense, translation might represent Shelley’s engagement with specifically private and public forms of expression, which may inform how specific and universal meanings interact in the same text. Despite the potential centrality of translation in Shelley’s thought—as well as the quantity of time he spent translating—he still complains about its limits and futilities. In a letter to an unknown correspondent, Shelley





talks about the “worthless and miserable inadequacy” of translated texts, and how they are “undelightful and uninstructive.”89 A note to his version of Faust’s “Prologue in Heaven” summarizes the difficulties: “it is impossible to represent in another language the melody of the versification; even the volatile strength and delicacy of the ideas escape in the crucible of translation.”90 This phrase bears great similarity to passages in the Defence where Shelley talks of “the vanity of translation,” and how “it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour & odour, as to transfuse from one language to another the creations of a poet.”91 Shelley speaks explicitly here about words having reference to a “particular order,” and this forms a revealing contrast to his comments on the universality of poetic language. Bacon’s writing, for example, “pours itself forth [. . .] into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy” and poetry participates in “eternal truth,” shedding itself of particulars and expressing transcendent beauties.92 How, then, can poetry be both universal and specific to the particularities of a single language? I aim to address this problem by exploring the Shelley circle’s more positive views of translation, where they imply that it can facilitate understanding across borders and thus create an intercultural form of expression. In his biography, Medwin reports that Shelley “used to say ‘in interpreting a foreign tongue, it was a great mutual advantage to know several; for that hence synonyms, which failed in one, could be found in another.’ ”93 Webb links this comment with Godwin’s view that collating languages allows one to “detect all the shades of meaning [. . .] and minuter degradations of sense.”94 Comparison between languages thus enables a cosmopolitan range of expression. If particular languages have certain limitations, moving between them breaks through those boundaries and allows a less restrictive form of communication to take place. Shelley uses similar imagery when he encourages Claire Clairmont to learn German: German “Philosophy as far as I understand it, contemplates only the silver side of the shield of truth; better in this respect than the French, which only saw the narrow edges of it.”95 Different languages and different national traditions facilitate multiple approaches to the “shield of truth” and the multilingual scholar can reassemble those different perspectives into a more complete comprehension. Mastering languages is not the only way to achieve this end. Recommending a commentary on Dante by John Taaffe, his fellow Pisan expatriate, Shelley suggests that without the work, “the history and spirit of the age of Dante [. . .] will never be understood by English students” and that “all foreigners” will benefit from Taaffe’s insights.96 Shelley wrote this as a favor to Taaffe, but it still endorses the possibility of communication across linguistic barriers. In the



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book, Taaffe defines his project as an engagement with European literary heritage, suggesting that Dante drew inspiration from Greco-Roman civilization, Christianity, and “Mahometism,” as well as “the remarkable men of his day, whether Italians, French, Germans, Spaniards or Saracens.” For Taaffe, Dante assembles various perspectives into an idea of European culture; for this reason, one can speak of Dante as a national figure and as a European author, relevant to people “in French, German, Latin, English, or any language.”97 This fusing of perspectives is a useful motif, since it also describes the collaborative translation practices of the Shelley circle. Much of Shelley’s own translation work began as a shared project: his interest in Goethe was rekindled by John Gisborne, while Maria Gisborne introduced him to Calderón.98 In 1821, Shelley also resumed a (now lost) translation of Spinoza with Edward Williams,99 corrected Medwin’s Hindoostan translations,100 and proofread Taaffe’s commentary.101 Claire Clairmont and Mary Shelley also corresponded about Calderón, and Clairmont was working on her own translation from Goethe.102 This collaborative practice is conceptually related to the notion of the literary “Colony” and is subject to the same ambiguities. It defines the process of translation as a dialogue, founded on the possibilities of communication and not just its limitations, but it is also circumscribed by a particular period, locale, and social circle.103 However, this notion of translation as intercultural expression is not limited to the production of texts—it is also central to the products themselves. Shelley is interested in using translation to compare and synthesize authors—both with each other and with his own work—to create new interpretations and new texts which speak for cultural exchange and communication across language-borders. Writing to John Gisborne, Shelley compares Goethe and Calderón, finding a “striking similarity” in Faust and El Mágico Prodigioso, which cuts across the separations of language and period.104 In this letter, Timothy Webb notes additional references to Plato, Wordsworth, and Rousseau and suggests that Shelley gathers his favorite authors together into “the same world of literary ideas.”105 In this way, he creates a simultaneously subjective and universal literary landscape, where connections can be identified across languages and borders. A specific instance occurs in the Hellas notebook, where Shelley writes a heavily revised note on the deleted “Prologue”: “The [?readers] of [?Faust] [will] [?doubtless] recognise . . . an attempt to naturalise the [inestimable] harmony of the [?lyrical] poetry of Faust.”106 Shelley suggests that the Hellas prologue is based upon the “Prologue in Heaven” from Goethe’s Faust, just as the dramatic structure is influenced by Æschylus’s The Persæ. I have already shown how Hellas articulates an idea of Europe with its exploration of shared cultural history and progress theory. In producing the poem,





Shelley fuses Æschylus and Goethe with his own writing, his knowledge of other languages creating a new text from that European literary culture and realizing the literary inheritance he identifies in the Defence. Webb similarly suggests that Shelley translates Calderón using Miltonic syntax. “Fue bárbaro atrevimiento” (It was a barbaric act of daring!), thus becomes in Shelley’s translation “Chastised, I know / The depth to which ambition falls” (scene 2, lines 122–3)—phrasing which reveals, according to Webb, Milton’s influence.107 This might ostensibly seem an appropriative or even nationalistic strategy, reconfiguring Calderón in terms of the English canon to familiarize him for an English readership. However, one could also see Shelley’s line as a fusion of the Spanish source material with English literary history to construct a new hybrid text which taps into two cultural traditions. By translating in this manner, Shelley may be creating a European literature by blending different traditions and authors. If the Defence outlines the theoretical possibility of this collective European literature, then his translations perhaps demonstrate what that European literature practically involves: how languages and literary histories can relate to one another and mutually inform each other. Shelley’s translation of Calderón is thus what makes it meaningful to talk generally in the Defence about a European literary tradition. It is important to note, however, that this idea of Europe is premised upon the retrospective interrelationship of texts: depending on individual acts of reading and translation at particular historical moments, Goethe and Calderón can be connected in exciting and informative ways. By contrast, the universalist language of the Defence implies that European literature is divorced from historical or individual circumstances, and it is European precisely because it is universally applicable. Shelley also uses translation to investigate political concerns. In his poem “Letter to Maria Gisborne,” Shelley connects Calderón with the 1820 Spanish Revolution: Or how I, wisest lady! then endued The language of a land which is now free, And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty, Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud, And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud, “My name is Legion!”—that majestic tongue Which Calderón over the desert flung Of ages and of nations.108

This comment may owe something to Shelley’s reading of A. W. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art, which stresses the political context for Calderón’s



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work. Schlegel argues that Spain was formerly “the forlorn out-post of Europe,” fighting for “liberty” and “religion” against the Moors; in other words, it was a scene of conflict between Europeans and non-Europeans. Calderón’s language is a product of this confrontation, displaying “the rough strength and cordiality of the Goths, when oriental intermixtures gave it a wonderful degree of sublimity [. . .] far above all the scruples of the sober west.” Schlegel then discusses Philip II of Spain’s pan-European ambitions, as a desire “to attain universal monarchy” by subjecting “other nations” and affecting “the hatred of foreigners,” though he does not explain precisely how this affects Calderón’s work.109 In other words, Schlegel interprets Calderón through the framework of European politics and history. Shelley translates El Mágico in ways that purposely emphasize revolution and rebellion against despotic monarchy. In the section where the Devil relates his fall, Shelley stresses God’s monarchical authority. When Calderón says “un rey, el mayor de todos / puesto que todos le temen, / si le ven airado el rostro” (the king, the greatest king of all, for all do fear him if they see anger on his face), Shelley stresses the terror and ambition of his rule: “the King of Kings / Because all others tremble in their pride / Before the terrors of his countenance” (2.113–15). When the Devil says that he would rather rebel than “rendirme de medroso” (surrender in fear), Shelley styles this in terms of submission to a bullying authority: “before the shame / Of reconciling me with him who reigns / By coward cession” (2.127–9). The technical meaning of “cession,” vacating an appointed office or surrendering one’s rights,110 frames the Devil’s rebellion in terms of a broken governmental contract. Later on, Calderón’s Devil describes his fall: “Si fueron temeridades / no me vi en ellas tan solo / que de sus mismos vasallos / no tuviese muchos votos” (If they were rash acts I committed, I was not alone in them that I failed to win the allegiance of many of his own subjects). Shelley translates this as a monarchical coup: “many suffrages among his vassals / Hailed me their lord and king” (2.132–3). The phrasing emphasizes first, the wrongs suffered under God’s feudal rule (unlike Calderón’s Devil, who blames his own rashness) and second, the Devil’s attempt to crown himself king and to usurp God’s throne. Concluding his speech, Calderón’s Devil pledges himself to Cyprian: ni en su continua tarea, corriendo y volando a tornos, el tiempo, imán de los siglos; ne el cielo, ni el cielo proprio, a cuyos astros el mundo debe el bellísimo adorno,




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(nor time, the magnet of the centuries, running and flying in circles in its never-ending work; nor heaven nor the very sky, to whose stars the world owes its most beautiful adornment, will have the power to keep me from your side).

Shelley renders this section: Nor Time, That lodestar of the ages, to whose beam The wingéd years speed o’er the intervals Of their unequal revolutions; nor Heaven itself, whose beautiful bright stars Rule and adorn the world, can ever make The least division between thee and me. (2.183–9)

Timothy Webb observes that Shelley alters the detail of the lodestar image, replacing Calderón’s ever revolving magnet with a star, and suggesting with the phrase “to whose beam” that Time is gradually moving towards an end point.111 This makes “revolution” the means of that progress, an agent of change, rather than repetitious continuity. By translating this section in terms of monarchs, rebellion, and usurpation, Shelley’s language resonates with the immediate controversies of his own period and especially, as he suggests to Maria Gisborne, the Spanish revolution. Translation becomes a means for Shelley to articulate his views on Europe. A similar process occurs in his other contemporary translations. Translating Faust was itself a radical act: Shelley intended his translation for Hunt’s radical journal The Liberal and was aware of the alleged blasphemy of the “Prologue in Heaven” sequence. Moreover, his version expresses hopes for a transformed social order: “hör’ ich Lieder? / Hör’ ich holde Liebesklage, / Stimmen jener Himmelstage” (Do I hear songs? Do I hear the sweet sounds of love, voices of happy days long past?) becomes in Shelley’s version “the speaking tone / Of this bright day sent down to say / That Paradise on earth is known” (2.55–7). As Webb comments, Shelley alters the nostalgia of the original and the lines address a future ideal society on earth, influenced by his political aspirations.112 Furthermore, Faust and El Mágico Prodigioso both explore the terrible consequences of consuming ambition, which lead the protagonists to forge a pact with the Devil. Ambition was clearly a political matter for Shelley—in Charles I, a character announces “That which would be ambition in a subject / Is duty



tendrán poder de apartarme de tu lado un punto solo.

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in a sovereign” (2.150–1). These lines politicize ambition as part of the operation of the state as well as its political overthrow. Moreover, Shelley translated the plays relatively soon after Napoleon’s death in 1821 and throughout their careers, Shelley and Byron had understood Bonaparte’s career in terms of a Faustian pact leading to Satanic hubris.113 “Ambition” carries connotations of monarchical authority and rebellion against that power, associated with Napoleon, who “sought to win / The world, and lost all that it did contain of greatness.”114 By translating two texts dealing with excessive ambition, Shelley is alluding, I think, to Napoleon’s career and the resulting events and disappointments he saw in European history. I am suggesting, therefore, that Shelley’s translations influence his ideas of Europe in two ways. First, because he uses them to interpret and articulate European history, but also because they put into practice the theories contained in the Defence—constructing a European literary culture by fusing the influences of authors in new versions and original work. This practice recognizes the difficulties of translation and the impossibility of a “pure” transfer of ideas between languages, yet facilitates some kind of intercultural communication and makes a case for a shared European literature. Of course, this idea of translation aiding intercultural exchange is controversial. Many theorists have pointed out how translation has contributed to imperial projects by “disseminating an ideologically motivated image of colonized people,” distorting texts, and “taking possession” of their source material: “speaking of translation as exchange, or as bridge-building, suggesting fairness, friendship and two-way processes may obscure translation’s one-directionality and its complicity in relations of power.”115 However, Homi Bhabha challenges the implications of this view: it is only when we understand that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in [the] contradictory and ambivalent space of enunciation, that we begin to understand why hierarchical claims to the inherent originality or ‘purity’ of cultures are untenable.

Bhabha calls this “space of enunciation” the “Third Space,” which describes the places or occasions where cultures meet and affect one another. These “Third Spaces” allow one to conceptualize an “international culture,” based not on “the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity.” Translation is precisely one such place where different cultures interact and produce hybridity: “we should remember that it is the ‘inter’—the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space—that carries the meaning of culture” (Bhabha’s emphases). In this way, translation does





not necessarily signify the imposition of one culture on another, instead it “desacralizes the transparent assumptions of cultural supremacy,” by showing how those cultures blend into and influence one another.116 Lawrence Venuti argues that a translated text “constitutes a unique communicative act,” since “it creates a domestic community of interest [. . .] attracting readers from different cultural constituencies.” The translated text becomes the site of “unexpected groupings” and communications, building a “community with foreign authors” and also with “readers who would otherwise be separated by cultural differences and social divisions.” Borrowing Mary Louise Pratt’s terminology, a translation is a “ ‘zone of contact’ between the foreign and translating culture.” Venuti emphasizes that this communication is not unproblematic: a translation is “ideologically weighted towards the translating culture” because it expresses the foreign text in domestic terms. And yet, this “domestic inscription is made with the very intention to communicate the foreign text, and so it is filled with anticipation that a community will be created around that text.” In this sense therefore, translations help foster intercultural encounters, as well as being examples of such interactions themselves.117 This is useful for describing how Shelley constructs the European from his own literary syntheses and how the fusion of particular texts and cultures makes space for a transnational European identity. In discussing Shelley’s thinking in terms of Bhabha’s “in-between” spaces, we should not forget that Shelley’s Europe is complicated by his universalism—how he sometimes sees Europe as (the negotiation of) particular places and sometimes as a universal idea which explodes all distinct separations. Usefully though, recent scholars have interpreted Romantic translation practices in terms of this tension between particulars and universals. According to Susanne Stark, Goethe sometimes perceives translation “as a means of providing a text with an ‘afterlife’ in different temporal and spatial circumstances.” In other words, it facilitates the “exchange of ideas” between discrete periods and particular (national) traditions. However, Goethe also says that “for a long time the efforts of the best poets and aesthetic writers throughout the world have been directed towards what is universal, and common to all mankind. [. . .] we shall see the universal more and more showing and shining through what is merely national and individual.” In this respect, rather than transferring a text from local context to another, the translator breaks down the separations between them, creating a universally applicable “system of intellectual ‘free trade without boundaries.’ ”118 Susan Bassnet finds similar ideas when comparing Shelley’s Defence with A.W. Schlegel’s work. Romantic translation theory focuses, she says, on “the rediscovery of great individuals of the past who shared a common sense of creativity.” This approach emphasizes the particular talents of the translator “in touch with



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the genius of his original and enriching the literature and language into which he is translating.” But it also evokes a kind of universalized communication: translation reveals a “common sense,” or mediation between languages that taps into a “shared purpose and mutual illumination.”119 I should like to end with a brief reflection on translation and metaphor. Ruth Evans talks about the practice of translation in terms of metaphor, as “an idea transported from a familiar to a foreign place”: they both negotiate the space between the familiar and the unfamiliar.120 When Shelley uses “Europe” or “European,” the words often describe a process of transfer: a particular idea which is then universalized into an ideal system (for example, the government of ancient Greece); a universal “beau ideal” which is then condensed into a specific image (for instance, revolution in Spain); a text which is relayed into a different language; a person whose ideas migrate from one place to another. Shelley uses the idea of Europe to denote the ambiguous consequences of these movements: the idea which is simultaneously particular and universally applicable; the translation which is partly familiar and partly foreign; the text which fuses different influences, but is part of a singular tradition. In this respect, Shelley’s interest in Europe is not merely coexistent with his pursuit of travel and translation, those interests are methodologically interrelated.







The System of Europe: Byron and European Politics, 1822–24



Part 3




“A Congress for Outworn Europe”: Byron’s International Relations, October 1822–July 1823

Introduction Upon the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars, the Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance (November 20, 1815) proposed a “congress system” to govern Europe by consensus. The signatories—Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia (and subsequently France)—“agreed to renew their meetings at fixed periods [. . .] for the purpose of consulting upon their common interests and [. . .] for the maintenance of the peace of Europe.”1 Such meetings, or congresses, occurred at Vienna (1814–15), Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), Troppau (1820), Laibach (1821), Vienna (1822), Verona (1822), and St Petersburg (1825). In the Dedication to Don Juan, however, Byron identifies a less pacific purpose to these conferences: “States to be curb’d, and thoughts to be confined, / Conspiracy or Congress to be made—/ Cobbling at manacles for all mankind.” For him, the congress system is merely a polite façade for reactionary cabalists determined to preserve Europe’s “slaves, allies, kings, armies still.”2 This chapter investigates the idea of “congress Europe.” I focus on the writings of the Byron circle between October 1822 and July 1823, a period bracketing the Congress of Verona, where the five powers had a serious disagreement over how to interpret and respond to the developing Spanish Revolution. At one extreme was the French government, which wanted to forcibly restore



Chapter 6


the Spanish king and remove the elected Cortes, and at the other was the British government, which rejected interference in internal Spanish affairs. This dispute reflects deep uncertainties about the idea of Europe which, I will argue, were latent in the founding ideologies of the “congress system.” The chapter begins by exploring how Byron and his circle present the “congress system” as an oligarchical conspiracy; in particular, they understand European politics in terms of a dichotomous rivalry between “liberty” and “tyranny.” They see the participating countries—particularly Austria, Prussia, and Russia—as an aberrant and illegitimate distortion of their imagined European ideal founded upon “liberty” and classical tradition. However, using diplomatic papers, treaties, and parliamentary speeches, I also show how the political architects of the congress system use the language of peace and mutual interest to construct very different ideas about its purpose. Moreover, despite their apparent concern for cooperation, politicians’ official correspondence reveals competing interpretations of European history and varied hopes for Europe’s future—even between individuals, such as Castlereagh and Metternich, who might appear to have an identical desire to preserve the status quo. My aim here is not to trace precise policy alterations across the period. Instead, I am interested in Europe as what Hayden White would call “a verbal structure that purports to be a model, or icon, of past structures and processes.”3 This phrase helpfully describes how politicians and poets use the word “Europe” to denote and structure debates about politics and the prospects of change. They construct ideas of Europe in order to comprehend the past and project visions of the future, and they develop those ideas by reflecting on the purpose and utility of the congress political system. This is also a practical process, since the politicians (and to some extent the Byron circle) explicitly want to apply their idea of Europe in day-to-day policy: recording the history of Europe, creating an idea of Europe, and seeking to realize that idea are part of the same procedure. My analysis reveals several key trends, most obviously the recurrent use of the word “liberty” to justify contrasting political visions for Europe. Furthermore, both the Byron circle and congress politicians identify an internal threat to Europe—usually the prospect or absence of revolutionary reforms—which must be defeated in the search for a more perfect future. The chapter concludes by discussing how Byron’s contemporaneous work, especially The Island, attempts to escape from the concerns of international politics. However, because the non-European paradise of the poem is presented using the language and history of European politics, a full escape from Europe proves impossible to achieve.



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In the first number of The Liberal, planned jointly with Byron and Percy Shelley, Leigh Hunt speaks of the newly discovered “connexion between politics and all the subjects of interest to mankind.” Although “the object of our work is not political,” the poems, translations, and essays still “contribute to our liberalities” and fight the repressions of kings and statesmen.4 In this vein, the circle seeks to identify an oligarchy, which can be held responsible for all problems in Europe and its constituent states. The Examiner, for example, prints one leader entitled “Spain—Greece—and the Oligarchy.”5 This word here refers collectively to those powers in favor of French intervention in the Spanish Revolution, but also to a political ideology “exceedingly indisposed to witness the growth of a state of freedom: we mean the oligarchy of capital.” “Congressional agreement” is the tool of oligarchy, and hence, the article denounces all the powers (including Britain) as complicit in the same abuses of national independence.6 In this way, the leader attacks not just particular states or policies, but the principles and procedures of the “congress system” itself. More commonly, however, the evil oligarchy is identified with the “Holy Alliance”: namely, Austria, Prussia, and Russia: the signatories of an 1815 convention declaring mutual allegiance in terms of shared religion.7 In his Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823), Thomas Moore makes a series of unsubtle attacks on absolute monarchy. These are often not connected to any specific contemporary issue, but are generalized observations on monarchical incompetence. In one poem, Moore does allude to the Spanish-intervention dispute, but denounces all participants as the enemies of liberty: from Tsar Alexander and the French delegate Chateaubriand, who both supported the French invasion, to Castlereagh, who did not.8 Indeed, particular individuals are often singled out as representatives of the corrupt political system. Byron holds Castlereagh personally responsible for the oligarchy’s authority, as “his whole existence was consumed in endeavouring to enslave.”9 For Hunt, Castlereagh is “the most illiberal and vindictive of statesman,”10 and the Examiner says that he “prostituted the name and character of England to the violent purposes of despotism. [. . .] He joined, heart and hand, with the Holy Alliance.” He can never be forgiven, since he “reversed the old, national, free and prosperous policy of England, which had always succoured and cherished the efforts of freedom in every part of Europe.”11 The author implies that Europe should ideally emulate “English liberty,” recommending (English) patriotism as the foundation for European collective identity. In this way, he seeks to make



“Conspiracy or Congress”


collective identity and patriotic localism entirely compatible, identifying a competition for the idea of Europe between “English liberty” and the “Holy Alliance.” Castlereagh failed by allowing Britain to be changed by the Alliance, rather than exporting a specifically English notion of Europe. This thesis both recalls and contrasts with the Burkean notion of how “liberty” expresses English independence. In his Reflections, Burke contrasts the “liberties” of the Glorious Revolution with the alien machinations of continental theorists who “call into question” “our statute law.”12 In the Examiner, however, the language of “liberty” is used to discern a radical, rather than a conservative tradition—to attack monarchical government, rather than to authenticate the status quo. In The Age of Bronze, Byron similarly implies that “the holy three” represent a new era of dangerous mediocrity. The narrator wistfully recalls how the Alexander who “ ‘wept for worlds to conquer’ ” compares with the tyranny of the modern Tsar (line 39).13 Both here and in Don Juan, Byron suggests that international financiers are the “lords of Europe,” profiting from the wars through loans and by keeping goods prices high (585–626; Don Juan, 12.33–42). This perspective, however, is premised upon conspiracy theories: the Jews uphold this system (“A Congress forms their ‘New Jerusalem’ ”), combining with kings and generals to “pull the strings” of Europe (Bronze, 695, 710–13). Implicit in all these assessments is an antagonism between an “authentic” liberal Europe and an aberrant despotic system. In his poem “The Torch of Liberty,” Moore uses the familiar strategy of explaining how “free government” extended from ancient Greece throughout European society, until corrupted by the Holy Alliance. In this way, the Allies are not proper Europeans; they are indebted to “otherly” notions of despotism, a point which Moore confirms by comparing the autocratic Lord of Persia to the courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg.14 Byron and his circle commonly employ this type of analysis, envisaging a dialogic idea of Europe as a struggle between tyranny and freedom. This seems to have been a popular way to understand contemporary politics. A contributor to the 1823 Annual Register observes that “there is a striking analogy between the politics of modern Europe and those which prevailed during the most flourishing period of ancient Greece [. . .] a war between aristocrats and democratic factions. It is in the same point of view that we must consider the prevailing political difference of Europe.”15 Certainly, Moore is keen to draw up battle lines as if imagining an actual conflict “between freemen and tyrants,” while the Examiner foresees an ideological war of “Kings against People, of Divine Right against Constitutional Government, of Despotism against Liberty.”16 Indeed, the paper anticipates a European war in which people will rise up to defend their freedoms from the “doctrines disseminated



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from Verona.”17 Byron appears to follow this model, although he articulates some more complex (and less apocalyptic) variations of the theory. In the preface to Canto 6 of Juan (written early in 1822), he contrasts the Holy Alliance, striving to impose its singular (monarchical) vision of Europe, with a pluralistic notion of “the Nations” existing “freely,” that is, independent from external interference. Having declaimed at length about Castlereagh-led tyranny, Byron here hints at its alternative: an idea of Europe contingent upon national independences. However, by writing this at a time when intervention in Spain was the major issue in European politics, Byron ironically moved close to Castlereagh’s own position in opposing Allied invasion of a country which posed no external threat. Byron’s use of Islam to illustrate European conflict is also far more complex than Moore’s straightforward equation of Oriental and “Holy” despots. After explaining his interest in “the present clash between philosophy and tyranny,” Byron justifies his decision to incorporate RussoTurkish conflict into the plot of Don Juan, especially in Cantos 7 and 8, which describe the Siege of Ismail in 1790. This was a topical issue in the 1820s: Russia and Turkey had spent 1822 arguing about their respective influences in Greece, and that year’s Congress of Vienna had been called to address the issue. The dispute, says Byron, “forms at present the farce after the Congress melodrama upon Spain [. . .] it is an appropriate moment to introduce them to the discerning public.”18 Writing about Russo-Turkish rivalry is therefore “appropriate” in two respects: partly because of its topicality, but also because Byron understands congress politics in terms of faintly ludicrous literary genres—farce and melodrama— and this makes his satirical epic an entirely “appropriate” form in which to analyze relevant historical events. Indeed, Byron’s interest in Russian and Turkish disagreement focuses on the farcical failings of diplomatic and military procedures, rather than the overwhelming threat from a despotic Orient. In Canto 7, the narrator notes how the Russians, like the victorious powers in the Napoleonic wars, employ a transnational force: “foreigners of much renown, / of various nations” (7.137–8). He also reflects on the war’s motives: not “defence of freedom, country, or of laws; / But as it was mere lust of power to o’er-arch all”—a conflict configured in religious and imperial terms as the endeavor of “the Christian Empress Catherine” (7.317–8, 512). The Turks figure as a common enemy, but not to show how European countries find unity in vanquishing an “other.” Rather, the siege-Cantos reveal shortcomings in Europe’s conduct, exposing the imperialist brutality and religious hypocrisy of Russian-led military aggression. Moore claims that the Holy Allies have become uneuropean in their depravity, since they have adopted “Eastern” modes of thinking and governing. But Byron carefully separates the Turkish “other” from Europe’s





monarchs, emphasizing European flaws and not blaming their despotism on “Oriental” influence. Another important variant of the “liberty / tyranny” theory features in William Hazlitt’s contribution to the fourth Liberal. He alleges that “the Despots of the Continent” have leagued together “to destroy the example of liberty which we (the people of England) have set to the rest of the world.” Like the Examiner editorial I previously discussed, Hazlitt apparently celebrates “Englishness” as a universal model, developing the principles of his essay “On Patriotism,” where—as I argued in Chapter 2—he presents particular national pride as a universal model for all societies. Unlike the Examiner, though, he insists that Europe is already deluded by monarchy, irrationally devoted to preserving thrones, but careless of “a nation’s liberty.”19 In other words, the liberty–tyranny struggle for Europe has concluded with a victory for the tyrants: this craze for “legitimate authority” besets the “Continent,” but not yet England, alone in withstanding the corruptions of fallen Europe. A further assessment of the struggle with despotism occurs in Lord John Russell’s Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe (1824–29). Russell, the future Liberal Prime Minister, became closely associated with Moore in the 1820s: they regularly discussed the “Spanish Question” and even wrote poetry for each other on the subject.20 While Moore composed his Holy Alliance, Russell drafted the first volume of an ambitious overview history of Europe. The work begins by tracing European freedom back to “the wild inhabitants of the woods” who were “unfettered in their actions,” unlike oriental peoples whose lives were regulated by their governments. This resembles Montesquieu’s climactic theories, since Russell suggests that governmental forms are predicated on environmental factors. But, Russell also notes the European development of feudalism, property, and slavery and argues that these ideas have been in tension with “freedom” throughout recent history. He historicizes the contemporary liberty—tyranny dynamic as a driving force in the development of Europe; although, cleverly, he also implies that controlling ideologies gradually imposed themselves upon an originally free European culture. With typically Whiggish balance, he suggests that Europe should steer a middle course between absolutism and democracy—although he explicitly denounces “the Congress system” as “hostile to the rights of nations” and designed to restrict “the improvement of mankind.”21 Russell defines European history as a negotiation between liberty and tyranny and critiques the “congress system” for unsettling that balance and preventing further progress. In Canto 9 of Don Juan, a section written between August and September 1822, Byron turns the Spanish “common cause” into a universal concern, central to the defense of “freedom” against “power’s base



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purveyors” (9.222, 212). However, writers in the Byron circle also tend to particularize or personalize their politics, either figuring themselves as crucial components in a global conflict, or understanding those events in terms of their own experiences. This foregrounds the extent to which their conceptions of European history are crafted by particular circumstances, and yet purport to possess more widespread repercussions. “I will teach, if possible, the stones / To rise against Earth’s tyrants” (8.1076–7), Juan’s narrator proclaims, asserting his own role in a potential restructuring of Europe. Writing to Lady Hardy, Byron defends his contribution to this process—“wherever I find a tyrant or villain, I will mark him,”22 — confident that his observation is an active means of facilitating change: “I will war [. . .] with all those who war / With Thought”; “My plain, sworn, downright detestation / Of despotism in every nation” (9.185–7, 191–2). He thus declares a universalist concern in ideological conflict (rather than devotion to a specific local cause) and, like Percy Shelley in 1817–18, sees words as an effective weapon. However, there is also a hint of egocentrism in Byron’s historical interests. Explaining his career in terms of European politics, he rather forcibly promotes himself to the world political stage, declaring himself “the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme” (11.440). He also personalizes his geopolitical conspiracy theory, suggesting that the Austrian government persecutes him by arresting his servants.23 Even Verona is used as a metaphor for his failed attempts to save James Wedderburne Webster’s marriage: “my negotiation to reconcile him with his wife—had the luck of a Congress.”24 “I care but little for the opinions of the English—as I have long had Europe and America for a Public,” he says, seeking to present himself as a cosmopolitan author, a literary statesman on an international stage.25 Byron cultivates this idea by associating himself with other transnational literary figures: he dedicated Werner to Goethe, the “illustrious patriarch of European letters” and the “undisputed Sovereign of European literature.”26 By declaring his participation in a European literature, Byron defines himself by his transnationalism—a man of “no Country,” but with a literary and political influence which extends across borders.27 The same tendency is displayed, to a lesser extent, by other members of Byron’s circle. Thomas Moore melodramatically compares Holy Alliance oppression to the cruel treatment of poets by reviewers. Publishing, Moore seems to suggest, is a minor battlefield in the same war against tyranny that dominates European politics.28 Defending The Liberal, Hunt also compares himself and his colleagues to Greek and Spanish Revolutionaries: “we fight, like the Greeks and Spaniards, to obtain the right and the tranquillity of speech.” In his poem “The Monarchs,” the corrupt European system can be overturned by “Writers and Liberty-Boys,” who inspire each





other in seeking “the freeman’s truth.”29 However, like Byron, The Liberal also strives to confirm its participation in a European literary tradition. The preface identifies “the demi-gods of liberal worship,” writers such as Voltaire, Goethe, Dante, and Milton, who apparently represent a liberal European tradition opposed to monarchical tyranny. The Liberal amplifies this cosmopolitanism, publishing translations which attempt to establish a common literature by disseminating European works to a wider audience.30 Hunt annexes this “great tradition” to the contemporary political struggle, recruiting eminent authors as contributors to his cause for a liberal Europe: Giambatista Casti wrote about the “Three Fates and the Three Harpies. [. . .] Had he lived now, he would have added the three members of the Holy Alliance.”31 By engaging in this anachronism, Hunt hopes to authenticate his liberal understanding of European history and culture, simultaneously condemning absolutist government as a corruption of that free tradition. The Examiner objects strongly to the religious overtones of reactionary thought—particularly the ancient notion of divine right and the Holy Alliance’s preoccupation with its own sanctity. Yet, it evokes Christian unity for its own reasons, denouncing the “despicable indifference of Christendom” in rallying to the Greek cause.32 Rather than trying to justify the differences between the cases, the article exposes the uncertain place of Christianity in its idea for a new Europe. Moreover, liberals express concern for particular states and argue for their independence from foreign (that is, Holy Alliance) interference, but they also enthuse about a Europe-wide governmental reform—the replacement of despotism with a new “constitutional” European system. This problematic fusion of particularist and universalist ideas is not discussed, despite the troubling questions it raises: how, for instance, will nations express their independence if there is only one form of ideal European government? Commenting on the editorial policy of the Examiner, Hunt calls for more “patriotic denouncements.”33 Does this mean “denouncements of patriotism” in favor of more cosmopolitan ideas? Or does it refer to criticisms motivated by patriotism? I have noted how these uncertainties also emerge in Byron’s post-Waterloo discussions about “liberty & independence,” but as I suggested in Chapter 2, they are based upon deeper contemporary debates about the perceived unity and separation of states in Europe following Napoleon’s defeat. Speaking about the post–French Revolutionary period, Angela Esterhammer notes that writers “inhabited an environment marked by a new awareness of the bond between language and action”: “revolutionaries undertook to create a new social order and they did so by giving new names to its citizens, places, dates, institutions” by redefining words in order to create a new society. This process “gives language itself an opportunity



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to manifest its agency”; in other words, language is performative, actively reconstructing political reality.34 In this respect, Hunt and Byron interpret and use the word “congress” to redefine Europe as a real and ideological construct. By associating “congress” with a particular range of concepts (“Holy Alliance,” “tyranny,” “conspiracy,” and so on), they can produce narratives about Europe’s history and future political direction. Yet, as Esterhammer notes, despite their power, these associations can also be tenuous, since they can always be interpreted along different lines, as Hunt’s phrase “patriotic denouncements” reveals. For this reason, I now wish to examine the background to the Byron circle’s ideas—to understand the different ways in which “congress politics” and, therefore, Europe were understood in the period.

Defining Congress Politics: 1815–22 What was the “congress system”? How did it operate and what were its precise objectives? Carsten Holbraad defines the system as a cooperative “concert of Europe,” where the powers sought to reach political agreement and monitor each others’ interests. Crucially however, this “concert” has various interpretive possibilities: some nineteenth-century politicians saw it as a means to preserve monarchical dynasties, others as a vehicle for international humanitarian reform, or a way to balance political and military power in Europe.35 For Paul Schroeder, though, the congress system escaped from the fatuous quest for a “self-adjusting, peace-enforcing ‘balance of power,’ ” replacing it with a system of purposely unequal “shared hegemony.” This arrangement was predicated not “on patrimonial divine right” but on an elaborate treaty system and its guarantees, making talk of monarchical “restoration” misleading.36 Yet, René Albrecht-Carrié, in a view also popular with Byron and his circle, asserts that the conferences used the language of legitimacy to justify themselves and engaged in the same bartering of territory and peoples that underpinned eighteenthcentury diplomacy.37 An examination of post-1815 treaties drawn up at the various congresses reveals why there is such a range of historiographical interpretations. Early treaties, such as the “Treaty of Peace and Amity, 1814” intend congresses to create “permanent Peace [. . .] to terminate the long agitations of Europe.”38 This rhetoric continues throughout the subsequent decade. In 1822, George IV declares his government ready to prevent the “peace of Europe” from being disturbed.39 The following year, the Duke of Wellington (the British delegate at the Verona congress) refers to the





“Union at present existing between the Five Powers” “for the preservation of the Peace of the World.”40 The rather relentless regularity of these declarations reveals anxiety about the state of Europe, as if continual assertions of pacific intent will ward off the specters of state rivalry, war or, worst of all, “les malheurs des Révolutions” (the misfortunes of Revolutions).41 The secret renewal of the Quadruple Alliance in 1815 claims to have “the safety and interest of Europe” at its core, but is also devoted to crushing “the revolutionary principles which [. . .] might again convulse France”—ensuring an anti-revolutionary vision for Europe’s future.42 The problem is whether this obliges the signatories to oppose any potentially progressive political change, or merely guards against the recurrence of a specific Napoleonstyle usurpation and aggressive war. It is crucial to note this ambiguity immediately after Napoleon’s defeat as the implications of such uncertainties reverberate across the next decade before exploding in the disagreements at Verona. A similar problem occurs in formal diplomatic correspondence. A letter from the four foreign secretaries of the Quadruple Alliance assures France of support “against every revolutionary convulsion” which might menace “the order of things” and “the general tranquillity of Europe.” Another note speaks of “Royal Authority” as the “foundation of public order” and hence of that tranquility in “the European system.”43 How is the future of Europe being shaped here: by the continuance of monarchical authority; by watchful interference in French politics; by intervention in other states when necessary; by opposition to all reform; or by anti-French military alliances like the Quadruple Alliance? These alternatives may not at first seem contradictory, or at least not in the immediate political situation of 1815. But the complex implications (and alternative interpretations of Europe) would return more vigorously in the early 1820s. As late as 1825, George IV describes two quite different policy objectives for the “settlement of Europe”: balancing “the great Allied powers, in relations to each other” and exterminating “the Jacobins of the world (now calling themselves the Liberals).”44 As we will see, when the powers began to differ over how to maintain “the tranquillity of Europe,” they draw upon the same evidence to support their arguments, exploiting these early ambiguities in diplomatic phrasing and policy direction. Another important trend, also evident in the Byron circle, is the tendency to see Europe as both a problem and a solution: a concept in dispute or under threat and the means of solving that dispute. The Whig politician Lord Ellenborough treats Europe as a victim and as a kind of higher judiciary when he complains that “Europe was threatened by the hostile operations of France against Spain” but also promises to “protest in the face of all Europe.”45 Similarly, Byron, Moore, and Hunt see Europe enfeebled and menaced by hostile forces, yet at the



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same time they identify a secure European ideal to measure against (or even solve) the current state of crisis. The later treaty documents continue these debates. Lord Liverpool (the British Prime Minister, 1812–27) tells Castlereagh in 1815 that “a Treaty is an act of State,” which infers that any such document asserts the independence of statehood and a Europe of separate agents.46 But many treaties invoke collective, transnational groups such as a European community. The “Treaty of Union, Concert and Subsidy” between the four anti-French powers is significant for its language of unity—prescribing not just shared objectives, but a fusion of military and financial resources. Despite elaborating this “perfect concert” by “re-establishing a just balance of Power,” the treaty also protects “the rights and liberties of all Nations.”47 In other words, the treaty commits itself to preserving the unity and the independence of European states. The same (conflicting) principles underpin a Vienna agreement to insure the collective “tranquillity of Europe” by maintaining the separate “independence of nations.”48 During the Congress of Verona, all sides in the dispute would employ this argument when debating how best to respond to the Spanish Revolution and its potential effect on Europe. At Aix-la-Chapelle, in the Congress of 1818, government representatives attempted to address some of these difficulties. The British delegation, headed by Castlereagh, describes those treaties which “bind [Europe’s] States collectively” as “the Great Charter, by which the territorial system of Europe [. . .] has been restored to order.” The memorandum continues with a cunning escape clause, asserting that the treaties do not constitute “an alliance in the strict sense of the word,” but rather signify “a general pact by which all is regulated.” Alongside this selective attitude to international agreements, the delegation problematically combines an idea of collective European action with the sanctity of national independence, recommending that no power can interfere in another’s affairs unless its own security is directly compromised.49 The five governments were seemingly untroubled by this conceptual tension, declaring at the end of the congress their joint commitment to “this august Union” and “the Independence of each Government.”50 The difficulties at Verona have their sources in these unresolved ideological disputes. It is also important to note how the similar tensions I have identified in the Byron circle’s assessment of Europe are intrinsic to the treaties themselves, meaning that the circle participates in very urgent contemporary enquiries, rather than configuring new ways to understand European political problems. Last, there is the matter of religious identity and European self-definition. This is particularly important to the Byron circle and other liberals who held the “Holy Alliance” in abhorrence. The text of the convention detailing the





“alliance” does indeed utilize religious language, hoping to create a “true and indissoluble fraternity” according to “the words of the Holy Scripture.” This heightened spirituality will found a transnational community where all will “consider each other as fellow countrymen”—though the beneficiaries of these universal pretensions are presumably limited to the three signatories.51 In fact, it was very common to evoke religious principles in post-Napoleonic treaties: documents routinely began with a dedication to the “Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity.”52 The 1816 Annual Register thus artificially exaggerates the centrality of religion in the “Holy Alliance” convention by printing the dedication only at the head of this one document. Virtually every state paper referring to the slave trade uses Christianity to define Europe’s collective responsibilities. The practice has “desolated Africa, and degraded Europe,” says an 1816 statement, appealing to “the powers of Christendom” to suggest that slavery is both uneuropean and unchristian.53 Seven years later however, the same arguments are still being employed in official declarations, a testimony to the failure to abolish the practice despite decades of apparent international agreement.54 This epitomizes a final difficulty with “official” definitions and descriptions of Europe: declarations about what Europe is or should be are not necessarily carried into effect and remain theoretical constructions at odds with the conduct of policy. Given these longstanding problems within the “congress system,” what were the immediate issues of concern during the period 1822–23? Despite the uncertainties of defining Europe, contemporary commentators are still keen to identify threats to their ideal vision of the European. One such immediate concern in 1822 was Russo-Turkish rivalry regarding atrocities in the Greek insurgency. It is not my purpose to investigate the complexities of this dispute, encompassing the degree of Russian involvement in the Greek War of Independence, Russia’s interests in Ottoman-controlled Moldavia, and Tsar Alexander’s self-appointed protectorship over Turkish Christians. Indeed, the matter was not discussed at Verona, a separate conference on this issue having just finished at Vienna in 1822.55 Nonetheless, debate surrounding the conflict sharpened contemporary ideas of Europe. The Russian Envoy to Turkey threatens the Ottoman government with “the hostility of the whole Christian world,” stating that Russian protection of Greek Christians is intended to “console Europe” for offences against the shared faith.56 The note attempts to evoke European unity using Christianity, although clearly in the interests of national policy. Similarly, Louis XVIII, when addressing the French parliament, uses the crisis to emphasize a common (but secular) European purpose, suggesting that his government and its allies have to act in “perfect unanimity” to solve the dispute.57 However, when Louis speaks of “calamities which oppress the East,” his meaning is unclear. Has Europe been threatened by instabilities



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in the Eastern balance of power (explaining why he emphasizes the common solution); or, more disturbingly, is Eastern Europe threatened by the Ottomans, requiring a unified response against the “other”? By mid 1822, these concerns had been overtaken by a new crisis, namely insurrection in the Italian states and the Austrian military response in Piedmont and Naples. The Congress of Verona was originally called to discuss this Italian rebellion, although it eventually became dominated by arguments over the Spanish revolution. When the Annual Register voices concern, it worries both about the revolutions themselves and the fragmented and conflicting responses of the “ancient monarchies.” Across successive years, however, it seems uncertain how to analyze the worsening crisis. The 1821 Register implies that “the disorder in question” is part of some inevitable historical progression: a “necessary progress through that course of being which nature has assigned to us.” The following year’s preface denounces the “military demagogues” and “caballing intrigues” of the Spanish usurpers, while 1823’s Register holds French and Russian warmongers responsible for threatening democratic interests in Europe.58 The “Spanish Question” thus seems to epitomize various threats to Europe depending upon one’s political perspective. For some, the revolution challenges monarchical authority or the balance of power, whereas for others the prospect of intervention threatens the principle of national independence. Reactionary politicians and commentators, who uphold monarchical government as crucial to their ideal of Europe, tend to adopt the first position. A joint dispatch from Austria, Prussia, and Russia locates “peace and union between the States” in a robust maintenance of the post-Napoleonic status quo, since “the negotiations of 1814 and 1815 [. . .] delivered the European Continent from the tyranny of Revolution.”59 This logic motivates the three diplomatic notes written by the “Holy Allies” at Verona and sent to the new Spanish government in December 1822. Nesselrode, the Russian foreign minister, asserts that Europe should preserve a “conservative principle of social order,” and that events in Spain have recalled the “anarchy” of the 1790s, when “royal dignity was outraged, [. . .] sacred rights were soon disputed, [and] property was not respected.” In other words, revolutionary principles are totally at odds with the proper ideal of “Europe.” The Prussian note takes a similar line: since 1820, Spain has insulted “the principal sovereigns of Europe,” gradually alienating itself from authentic “European” governance, and submitted instead to a “disorganising philosophy.” As Nesselrode argues, royal personages are part of a “European family” and monarchy signifies membership of the European system.60 By contrast, liberal and radical politicians see the same series of events as evidence that Europe is menaced by tyrants seeking to replace legitimate governments with a “confederacy of kings.” The Whig MP Lord Hamilton





denounces the “Holy Alliance” as a monarchical “conspiracy” and if Britain consents to their plan, “we must always render ourselves liable to the hatred and indignation of Europe”—suggesting that most states oppose the uneuropean conduct of the “despots.”61 Lord King worries that an unopposed hegemony would “surrender the real interests of Europe” (implying that Europe is inclined to liberal governments and that the despots wish to corrupt it).62 The Whig-leaning Morning Chronicle printed an allegedly secret “Holy Alliance” treaty in which the signatories promised to overthrow representative governments and abolish press freedom.63 This secret treaty was in fact a forgery, but nevertheless usefully indicates how liberal writers represented the Alliance and its apparent threat to all Europe.64 The forgery would probably have seemed plausible, since genuine “Holy Alliance” papers were often circulated to widespread liberal concern. One such circular, written jointly by Metternich, Nesselrode, and Bernstorff, declaims wildly against revolutionary conspiracies and castigates Spain as a menace to civilization and “to the principles in which the European Confederation reposes.” This bellicose document was reproduced widely, and was used to “prove” the absolutist powers’ implacable hostility to the rest of Europe.65 All this demonstrates the extent to which ideas of Europe emerged in the context of “congress politics” between 1815 and the early 1820s. Moreover, my discussion locates the Byron circle’s approach to this problem within a Whig-liberal context, suggesting that their ideas about Europe partly derive from existing lines of argument. This political affiliation can be explained partly by Byron’s personal associations with eminent Whigs from both the centrist and radical wings of the party. When still in Britain, he dined with Earl Grey, the Whig leader and future Prime Minister; and once abroad, the radical MP Sir Francis Burdett was his chosen representative in his marriage separation proceedings.66 Thomas Moore was even more deeply integrated in Whig society, regularly socializing with Burdett, Grey, Lord Lansdowne, the Duke of Sussex, and Lord John Russell.67 Byron’s close friend John Hobhouse was also a radical MP from 1820. Given that Byron and his most regular correspondents were so closely associated with opposition politics, it is perhaps unsurprising that their views on Europe and the congress system are deeply indebted to post-1815 Whig and radical thinking.68

Verona and the Reshaping of Europe I have shown how debates about the “congress system” defined analyses of Europe after 1815. In 1822, the Congress of Verona gave these existing



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controversies a grave immediacy because it shaped ideas of Europe in practice as well as in theory. Various Europes, from Tsar Alexander’s union of Christian states to radicals’ hopes for revolution, seemed possible, and the Congress, assembled to consolidate “the tranquillity of Europe,” would determine which was in the ascendance. Yet, the meeting was a frustrating stalemate: Britain refused to sanction invasion of revolutionary Spain; France still wanted to quell “insurrection” on its borders; and the “Holy Alliance” seemed to favor the French position. In the face of this disagreement, France invaded anyway and reinstated the Spanish king, leaving the principle of “congress” in tatters, and, in the opinion of some historians, precipitating the downfall of the “congress system.”69 Having outlined general contemporary views of the European system in the 1820s, I now wish to turn to Verona itself. What transpired there? How was it reported or depicted? How did politicians and poets react to the proceedings and conclusion? What narratives about Europe’s past and future were constructed from this one event? Contemporary and modern commentators tend to simplify Verona’s procedures and implications. Glossing an allusion in The Age of Bronze, for instance, Jerome McGann suggests that “all the parties except England wanted to invade Spain to restore the Bourbon king.”70 In fact, there was a much greater range of opinion. Nichols argues that Villèle, the French premier, was more interested in securing commercial concessions than in war with Spain, but he was undermined by his delegates at Verona, Montmorency, and Chateaubriand, who pursued a more aggressive agenda. Nichols also attacks the common assumption that the “Holy Alliance” gave absolute support for French invasion. Instead, Austria and Prussia were suspicious of French warmongering and worried that France would seek to reunite its Bourbon monarchy with Spain’s. Their appeals to Spain were designed to encourage concessions before a war (and potential conquest) could occur.71 Some of these differences are borne out by examination of diplomatic notes. Russian demands on Spain, sent from Verona, concentrate on the reestablishment of “ancient monarchy,” implying that “all Europe” is united in “disapprobation” of the abuse of “sacred rights.” 72 By contrast, Metternich’s Austrian note is concerned for the integrity of separate states, explaining that “military revolt can never form the basis of a happy and durable government” and demonstrating how Spanish affairs are contrary to the proper methods of modern state construction. Unlike the Russian note, Metternich seizes on “liberty” as a central part of his argument, reinterpreting the concept to mean suppression of revolution.73 The Holy Alliance does not present a unilateral front at Verona. Instead, they engage with longstanding debates about the relative unity or independence of European states and the nature and utility of European liberty.





To this extent the Congress discusses the same concerns that exercise the Shelley–Byron circle throughout the period. Another important debate centers on British policy at Verona and the question of whether the new Foreign Secretary, George Canning, continued with the policies of his predecessor Castlereagh. In the last years of his tenure, Castlereagh set out a very clear position. His 1820 “Memorandum” on Spanish affairs denies that the revolution poses a significant danger to Europe: Britain will only act when “actual danger menaces the system of Europe,” not upon “speculative principles.” Castlereagh specifies the exact purpose of this European system: “it was an union for the re-conquest of and liberation of a great portion of the continent of Europe, from the military domination of France [. . .] It never was, however, intended as an union for the government of the world, or for the superintendence of the internal affairs of other states.”74 It is not possible to interfere legally in this fashion “without introducing a federative system to Europe, not only unwieldy and ineffectual to its object but leading to many most serious inconveniences.” 75 Castlereagh continued this argument with relentless consistency until his suicide in 1822, upsetting the war factions abroad, as well as British radical opinion (which called for a defensive alliance with Spain).76 This position seriously undermines the accusation that Castlereagh was merely the instrument of Holy Alliance “Oligarchy.” He fundamentally disagreed with the interventionists in France and Russia over how best to preserve the current “system of Europe.” Canning justifies himself by demonstrating how his policies derived from Castlereagh’s. Intervention in Spain, he says, could re-ignite “that contest of extreme principles which has already desolated Europe” and prove a more severe threat to the “system of Europe.” 77 In 1823, he published a series of papers for other MPs which explained the decisionmaking process at Verona: among them was Castlereagh’s 1820 memorandum, included to show the consistency of British policy.78 Alongside it are Canning-Wellington letters, showing how Canning’s instructions and Wellington’s diplomacy at Verona pursued long-standing British principles of nonintervention. Sometimes, their arguments purport to preserve “the Union at present existing between the Five Powers” and thus defending European unity. But elsewhere, they are premised upon particularity: protecting “Independent Nations” from the transnational clutches of meddling Empires.79 If each of these notions represents a different diplomatic strategy, then they also reveal the intensity of debate about the “system of Europe.” At Verona, diplomats and politicians sought to justify their policies by theorizing about recent European history and the ideal “state of Europe.” Even positions which apparently look identical—-such as Castlereagh’s and Metternich’s desire to preserve the post-Napoleonic



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status quo—are in fact motivated by somewhat different priorities, exposing a greater range of thinking about Europe than might be evident from the Byron circle’s liberty–tyranny dualism. British Whigs and radicals generally took a dim view of Verona, considering the discussions to have been ineffectual in restraining reactionary governments and urging the government to intervene for the Spanish revolutionaries. For Lord Lansdowne, the congress system is a fundamental failure because it disregards “the feelings and opinions of the people of the different nations,” sacrificing communities to monarchical privilege.80 However, many of their arguments use similar language to the Castlereagh–Canning position. Earl Grey, the Whig leader, agrees with Canning that intervention would damage Europe, but since France is to blame for striking “at the foundation of the system on which the independence of Europe rests,” Britain must limit the damage, having failed to protest strongly enough at Verona.81 Ostensibly then, Grey and Canning desire the same idea for “Europe”: maintaining the present peace while preserving national independences. But, they differ over how to achieve those interests. By advocating such different methods, they open up new and contradictory policies for directing the European system. Indeed, the word “Europe” is used variously to refer to an ideal state (“the tranquillity of Europe”) and to the problems presently afflicting it (“the hostile operations” of Europe). At Verona, the congress system exposes its own lack of direction: unable to resolve a specific issue, it also reveals the sheer range of Europes all envisaged by those ostensibly committed to a single aim—to “preserve the peace of Europe” after Napoleon. Because the conference deals with policy (rather than just ideas), the pluralist stalemate becomes all the more apparent when the meeting concludes—and everyone declares themselves dissatisfied. One participant in the parliamentary debates on Verona was John Hobhouse, radical MP for Westminster and resident in the city during the conference (though not in any official capacity). His condemnations of Verona adopt a patriotic tone: like Hazlitt and the Examiner, he uses the Burkean language of English liberty to frame a radical vision of Europe. “Foreign despots,” he says, have sanctioned “aggressions and encroachments” on the “liberties of Europe” and the British government has betrayed “the honour of England” by forgetting “the rights and independence of nations.” Hobhouse advocates a war against “the tyrant kings of Europe,” because Britain remains the sole beacon of liberty in the storm of despotism, despite the capitulations of Wellington and Canning at Verona.82 Verona thus initiates a new phase in his definition of Europe: an increased devotion to patriotic nationalism and the rejection of a transnational cooperation which serves an oligarchical agenda.





What I am particularly interested in here is how the specific events of Verona affect Hobhouse’s notion of Europe’s ideal state. The conference becomes a key episode in his projected European narrative, indicating the flaws of current policy and hinting at the possibilities for reconstruction. The Byron circle often uses Verona as a setting for this broad critique rather than considering specific policy implications. Byron himself satirizes individuals as a means of criticizing the direction of European politics. While writing Canto IX of Don Juan in August and September 1822, Byron included stanzas attacking Wellington he had drafted four years earlier, possibly because the Duke’s role at Verona gave them a new relevance: “Never had mortal Man such opportunity, / Except Napoleon, or abused it more: / You might have free fall’n Europe from the Unity / Of Tyrants, and been blessed from shore to shore” (9.65–8). Instead, both after Waterloo and at Verona, Wellington has “repaired Legitimacy’s crutch”—“The Spanish, and the French, as well as Dutch, / Have seen, and felt, how strongly you restore” (9.19–22). Both The Age of Bronze and Moore’s Fables for the Holy Alliance, written during and immediately after the Congress, contain satirical ballroom scenes as allusions to the decadent socializing at Verona and the self-indulgent corruption of the delegates.83 Hunt’s “Ode for Congress” sees this gluttony as evidence of political bloodthirstiness (“to flesh the sword, / Thronged around the festive board”), while his satire “The Dogs” revisits the timely matter of Wellington’s alleged abuses in Spain during the Peninsular War.84 The most extensive treatment of Verona occurs, however, in The Age of Bronze. Here, the Congress represents both the dying corruptions of “outworn Europe” and the monstrous potency of the oligarchy’s oppression. Certain that “the Spanish Question” represents an ideological clash between tyranny and liberty, the poem alternates between encouraging the inevitable triumph of freedom (“Advance, / And win—[. . .] thine own freedom” [lines 376–7]), and dwelling on the extinction of that hope as the Alliance crushes “nations with a stupid blow” (409). Byron interprets the conference itself as an instrument of the Holy Alliance (and specifically Russian) anti-revolution agenda: “Thrice blessed Verona! since the holy three / With their imperial presences shine on thee” (412–3). Unlike the parliamentary debates, which see the Congress as a debate about the direction of Europe, Bronze sees it as the enforcement of reaction by a coterie of international despots: I speak not of the Sovereigns—they’re alike, A common coin as ever mint could strike, But those who sway the puppets, pull the strings [. . .]



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Jews, authors, generals, charlatans combine While Europe wonders at the vast design. There Metternich, power’s foremost parasite Cajoles; there Wellington forgets to fight; There Chateaubriand forms new books of martyrs; [. . .] There Montmorency, the sworn foe to charters. (708–19)

By identifying this sinister common purpose, Byron uses Verona to construct an elaborate narrative regarding the misdirection of European political development. In this sense, Byron’s strategy is very much like those of the politicians, who similarly employ the conference to diagnose the present “state of Europe.” A comparable enquiry occurs in the circle’s treatment of George Canning. Hobhouse tells Byron that “Canning has certainly at present taken quite a different line from Castlereagh & is more supported by some of us [the parliamentary radicals] than by some of his own party.”85 As I suggested earlier, this was not in fact the case, and Hobhouse’s analysis is especially strange given his access to the documents that Canning published to prove his policy debt to Castlereagh. Indeed, even Percy Shelley, who never usually misses an opportunity to attack Castlereagh, writes about his disagreement with the Holy Alliance and thus grants to him the achievement that Hobhouse credits to Canning: “even the unprincipled Castlereagh dared not join them [the Holy Alliance] and ventured to condemn the principles of the alliance, saying as much as to forbid them to touch Spain or Portugal.”86 But, virtually all of Byron’s 1822–23 circle concur with Hobhouse and see Canning as the representative of an exciting new direction for British policy and the prospects of Europe. Moore gushes about his “perfection,” praising his “beautiful language” and “grace”— though this may be explained by Moore’s personal acquaintance with the politician (he would occasionally dine at Canning’s house).87 Even Hunt suggests that Canning—the “accomplished person who has succeeded that visor of a statesman, Lord Castlereagh”—has helped engineer a “universal harmony prevailing in England on the subject of [. . .] Spain.”88 Byron also tells R. B. Hoppner that Canning is “worth all the rest in point of talent” and tells John Hunt that he offers new hope for “the World and his Country.”89 The Age of Bronze praises him as “Our last, our best, our only orator” and as a maverick-figure, often at odds with mainstream Tory politics. These analyses focus less on Canning’s actual policies and instead reflect Byron’s interest in the “man of talent,” whose genius is more important than the precise details of his career. His treatment of Canning thus resembles, on a smaller scale, his assessments of Napoleon: admiration for





their personal qualities sometimes outweighing their controversial political achievements. Moreover, the analysis of Canning provides a rare glimpse of a heroic figure in the circle’s Manichean contrast between liberty and tyranny. Although their foreign policies were not dissimilar, Canning and Castlereagh become a hero and villain respectively in the ongoing shaping of Europe. The Examiner offers another important interpretation of Verona. The “Continental Powers” have agreed to leave to France “the end and termination of the affairs of Spain, with the intention of concerning with all their force in such plans of execution as France shall be in a situation to adopt” (emphasis in original).90 In other words, the Congress approved the French invasion. Nor was this conclusion confined to the liberal press. The Times informs readers that “France claims a right, from her proximity, to intervene in the affairs of her neighbour by arms; and the High or Holy Allies, renouncing generally all intention of interposing themselves, are said to have conceded that right to France.”91 As I have suggested, Verona was paralyzed by disagreement; it did not unilaterally approve of French war-policy, as both papers claim. But The Examiner’s analysis uses Verona to construct a narrative of stifled reform and, as a result, the Congress becomes the centerpiece of its critique of the state of Europe. This is not to imply that the editorial line is wholly consistent. In January 1823, the paper opposes the principle of intervention in other countries, although two months later, it lambastes the government for not threatening to intervene on the Spanish side.92 The paper also changes its mind over the implications of the revolution, first hoping for the spread of insurrection across Europe and then praising the calm restraint of the Spanish regime in refusing to encourage revolt elsewhere.93 Generally though, the paper uses Verona to “prove” the dominance of a longstanding reactionary cabal in Europe and thus to build its own vision for Europe upon opposition to this monarchical extremism. Interestingly, the paper only deviates from this line in April 1823, after Canning’s publication of the conference documents, when it suddenly stresses the confusion at Verona as a “crisis of doubt and indecision.”94 The Byron circle, then, uses Verona as a “verbal structure” to explore ideas about Europe’s current condition and future prospects. The circle habitually condenses general questions about the direction of European politics into a series of specific remarks on “oligarchy,” “liberty,” and so on. This process takes place through their treatment of the Verona conference, to the point where the term “Verona” comes to denote or summarize their concerns about Europe. The same technique is used with the words “Castlereagh” and “Canning,” which come to represent not just individual politicians, but particular means of approaching the complexities of



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Europe. In this way, as Hayden White suggests, the specific event becomes a model of wider historical processes and temporal narratives emanate from that particular moment. Verona generates interpretative narratives about Europe—its current condition, past construction, and future development. The Byron circle’s assessments of Verona, and thus of Europe, might imply a secure vision of what Europe should be: free of religiously based imperial hegemonies, for example. But the range of other possible responses to Verona, witnessed through the manifold interpretations of the congress system, also symbolizes the complexities surrounding the definition of Europe, as well as the problems inherent in realizing, or even isolating, any specific European vision.

Escaping Congress Politics However, as in the post-Waterloo writings I discussed in Chapter 2, Byron’s work of this period also displays an ambiguous drive to escape Europe and the considerations of international politics. Bruce Robbins argues that the experience or representation of transnational spaces has a number of interpretative possibilities and practical consequences, which he calls “plural cosmopolitanisms.”95 In writing about escape from Europe, Byron seeks to move outside the cosmopolitics of the congress system, which attempts to define Europe by tracing particular supranational concerns and structures—for example, the possibility of a revolution, or a pan-European oligarchy. Instead, the symbolic crossing of cultural boundaries represents disengagement from the complexities of “congress politics,” bordered identities, and the definition of Europe. This gradual retreat from European politics is seemingly noticeable in the structure of Don Juan. The “English Cantos” (10–17) partly continue the poem’s satire of corrupt social and political regimes, developing themes presented in the “siege Cantos” (7–8) and the attacks on autocratic Russia under Catherine the Great (Canto 6). In this sense, Byron explores a European malady, in which unscrupulous monarchs, politicians, and bankers hold “the balance of the world” (12.33). But, by focusing on a particular national group, he shows diminishing interest in European affairs. The poem’s action gradually narrows to parochial specificity: it depicts European / non-European encounter (Canto 7), then travel across European countries (Canto 10), before focusing on a particular national (aristocratic) group and, eventually, an isolated country estate within that subculture. This progressive distancing from European affairs is symbolized by a desire to banish the Holy Alliance overseas and remove them from attention like Napoleon: “Shut up the bald-coot bully





Alexander / Ship off the Holy Three to Senegal [. . .] / And ask them how they like to be in thrall?” (14.657–60). The drive to escape from European politics is most evident in The Island, drafted immediately after The Age of Bronze. The poem tells the story of eighteenth-century mutineers, who rebel to live an idyllic life in the South Seas.96 In doing so, they abandon bordered allegiances—become “men without country” (1.29)97—and search for a means of existence outside Europe: Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams:— The Goldless Age, where Gold disturbs no dreams, Inhabits or inhabited the shore, Till Europe taught them better than before, Bestowed her customs and amended theirs. (1.215–20)

The sailors find this pre-European society in Toobonai, a fictional South Seas island which “civilise[s] civilisation’s sons” more effectively than “Europe’s discipline” (2.270–1). This phrasing associates “civilisation” with non-European culture, suggesting that Europe is not the pinnacle of social progress and that Toobonai is an inspirational ideal. The island becomes, simultaneously, an unselfconscious innocent paradise, utterly disconnected from the corrupt European world, and a kind of morally charged exemplar which exists to teach both characters and readers of the poem. This theme, the attractiveness of the non-European, also features in Byron’s letters of the period. Like the Shelley circle in 1817, he looks to America as a refuge from the European “old world,” where the “rights of mankind” are not properly appreciated. But also like Percy Shelley, the direction of this evasive travel remains vague: “I have long had a notion of emigration from your worn out Europe—but am undecided as to where—South America—The United States—or even van Dieman’s land.”98 However, escape in The Island is not so easy, both in terms of the plot (the mutineers are pursued by the British navy) and because the non-European paradise is presented using the language and history of Europe, thus designating it partly as a projected European fantasy. This is most clear when, for instance, the islanders’ “free government” is compared to the struggle “on Hellas’ mountains” of “a rebellious Greek” (2.184). The mutineers and the islanders are thus absorbed into contemporary nationalist struggles—they have not escaped Europe at all since they merely continue the ideological battles paralyzing the “old world.” There is a further problem too, since, by transferring the fight for freedom to Toobonai, they



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help despoil its paradise and spread the European corruption they ostensibly wish to flee. At moments such as this, Byron acknowledges the difficulty of escaping European politics, almost using Toobonai’s perfection as a callto-arms to topple illegitimate tyrants: “Glory, Nature, Reason, Freedom, bid / Roused millions do what single Britons did.—/ Sweep those mockbirds of the despots song / From the tall bough where they have perched so long” (2.324–7). By using the South Sea Islands in this fashion, Byron participates in a significant tradition. Writing about Tahiti in his Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville (1771), Diderot wryly acknowledges how the Tahitians expound European ideas—“Quoiqu’un peu modelé à l’Européenne” (though they show a rather European influence)—and are thus partly inventions to serve an author’s polemical purposes.99 Byron is not quite this self-conscious, but his Toobonai, like Diderot’s Tahiti, is both an attempted escape from European society and the invention of European ideological concerns. It is worth remembering here that documents on the South Seas—especially Edward Christian’s 1794 pamphlet about the mutiny on the Bounty, one of Byron’s primary sources for The Island—were also an important inspiration for Coleridge’s pantisocracy. As James McKusick notes, pantisocracy “arises from an imaginary representation of America that assimilates the South Sea Islands”: it seeks “to escape the terrors and dilemmas of European history” but instead redefines that space in terms of European radical politics.100 McKusick characterizes this as an imperial strategy, which imposes European frames of reference onto the non-European. I am more interested, however, in the ways in which pantisocracy and The Island identify flaws in European society while simultaneously projecting European ideas onto a new locale. This reveals, in Tim Fulford and Peter Kitson’s words, “the ambivalence and indeterminacy which appeared within colonialist discourse [. . .] both resistance to and complicity with imperialism.”101 The Island articulates this ambiguity by presenting European political ideas and also recoiling from those ideas to imagine a world outside Eurocentric history. Ultimately however, for both Byron and the mutineers he writes about, European politics cannot be evaded: as with his long-considered emigration to America, a full escape from Europe proves impossible to execute.







“The Cause of Greece, the Cause of Europe”: The Byron Circle, July 1823–April 1824

Introduction This final chapter returns to a central topic: the use of Greece and its purported legacy to construct ideas about Europe. From 1821, the Greek Revolution gave that theme a growing urgency. Most obviously, the Revolution was an opportunity to reconsider Greece’s historical and ideological connections with the Ottoman Empire and other European states. However, for members of Byron’s circle, as well as many other philhellenes, it was also a chance to apply wider political ideals to an immediate practical context. The circle attempted, not wholly successfully, to assimilate an idea of classical tradition to the Greek political moment and produce a revolutionary version of “liberty” which could potentially reform, or at least change, the European state system. The chapter focuses on Byron’s interest in the Greek Revolution between July 1823, when he set sail to join the War of Independence, and his death in April 1824. It also discusses the British philhellenes who participated in the war alongside him, many of whom were associated with the London Greek Committee, an organization founded in 1823 to support the Greeks in their rebellion. The chapter title derives from a pro-Revolution pamphlet, published at the outbreak of the conflict, called The Cause of Greece, the Cause of Europe.1 “Cause” has an important double implication here, since it can mean both “mission” and “origin”: Greece’s struggle against



Chapter 7


the Turks is a “mission” for all Europe, partly because the “origins” of European history and culture can be found in Greece. Ideas about Europe thus articulate and explain involvement in the Greek war, but ideas of Greece also galvanize different representations of “the European community.” As I will show, Byron and his philhellenic circle justify the war as a defense of (European) civilization, as a (usually radical) political calling and, less frequently, as a religious imperative. For this reason, Greece and Europe come to be seen as inseparable concepts: support for the Greeks is intimately linked to enduring preoccupations with shared classical heritage and the possibility of radical change in Europe. This is not, however, an entirely straightforward process. First, British writers on the Greek war combine particularist arguments with the language of universalism: they assert the “rights” and primacy of a particular nation-state, while also stressing the importance of universal “liberty” and shared international concerns. Second, Greece and the Greeks come to represent both the glorious height of European civilization and also a degenerated and barbarous “other,” the opposite of sophisticated European culture. In this respect, writing about the Greeks reveals insecurities at the heart of European self-perception. Finally, disagreement between philhellenes about the best course of action in Greece leads to conflict about the purposes of the radical cause, the nature of political “liberty,” and how to comprehend and shape the idea of Europe.

Byron and the London Greek Committee In May 1823, Byron was elected a member of the London Greek Committee. Two months later, he left Genoa for Greece to assist the war effort in person. As well as contributing significant funds of his own, he agreed to oversee the distribution of a loan raised by the Committee for the Greek benefit.2 Writing in this capacity to the provisional Greek government, he warns that disorder among the Greeks will provoke “the great Powers of Europe” to withhold their potential support.3 Byron uses the war to construct Europe as a single entity, with a common purpose defined by its attitude to Greece. The Reverend T. S. Hughes, who toured Greece in 1812–13 using Childe Harold as a guide,4 similarly notes that the War is of interest to “the whole European community.”5 However, Edward Blaquiere, who met Byron in April 1823 and nominated him for London Greek Committee membership, suggests that Greek leaders should adopt “the most liberal institutions of Europe for their models.” In other words, the Greek cause is defined in terms of his hopes for a liberal Europe.6



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Unlike Byron and Hughes, who here construct Europe in the image of Greece, Blaquiere perceives Greece in the image of Europe. For both writers, and indeed for most philhellenes, Greece and Europe are inseparable concepts. Who were these philhellenes? When he arrived, Byron met and corresponded with a large number of British enthusiasts for the Greek cause, many of whom were members or employees of the Committee. Byron wrote to John Bowring, the official secretary, as well as Hobhouse, a founding member. Byron also met the following people: Leicester Stanhope, sent to jointly administer the Committee loan; William Parry, an artillery expert sent out in 1824; and James Hamilton Browne, who joined Byron on Cephalonia in late 1823. Other “Committee men” in Greece included: Lytton Bulwer, who along with Browne administered the loan following Byron’s death and Stanhope’s recall to Britain; William Humphreys, who accompanied Stanhope to Athens and conveyed messages from him to Byron; and Thomas Gordon, a Committee founder who fought for the Greeks in 1821 and 1826 before writing a history of the Revolution. Back in London, other members included Jeremy Bentham, Lord Erskine, T. S. Hughes, and C. B. Sheridan,7 all of whom wrote works in support of what Byron calls “the Cause.”8 The Committee tended to attract people with liberal or radical views, notably Sir Francis Burdett, Thomas Moore, and Lord John Russell. This was not exclusively the case—Erskine was a Whig peer and Hughes a Tory clergyman—but many members had supported prior revolutions in Spain and Italy, or agitated for reform at home. As I will show, they generally understood the Greek “Cause,” like Blaquiere, in terms of their hopes for radical change in Europe. While in Greece, Byron also met Greek enthusiasts not directly connected to the London Committee. These individuals included: George Finlay, who met Byron in Cephalonia and Missolonghi; James Kennedy, a clergyman on Cephalonia; Julius Millingen, a doctor who eventually defected to the Ottomans; and Sir Charles Napier, the Cephalonian English Resident during Byron’s time there. What, though, is meant by the Greek “Cause,” and how does it influences ideas of Europe? David Roessel remarks that early support for the Greeks “inherently contained [. . .] serious tensions in language and ideas.” For example, “the crusading language of religious difference” was often used to validate a war against the Ottomans, even though many philhellenic writers were also political radicals who “desired to change or undermine the religious foundations” of society.9 The Byron circle and the Greek Committee use several arguments to justify their involvement: the war as a defense of civilization against the encroachments of barbarism; as a religious duty; and as a (radical) political calling. In many respects, these



The Cause of Greece, the Cause of Europe


ideas are not strictly separable. The opening “Address of the [London] Greek Committee” collates a number of ideas about “the cause” and makes them interdependent: it evokes a “fellow Christian” community while also asserting national “awakening” or independence; it aims to promote new advances in “knowledge and virtue,” but talks nostalgically about the ancient Greek “land of their fathers.”10 The “Address” interweaves different understandings of Greece—as a part of Christendom, an independent nation, a utopian radical state, and an ancient civilization—purporting to build an overwhelming case for support. In fact, however, its different interpretations highlight conceptual fractures, not only in ideas of Greece and its causes, but also in conceptions of European culture and politics. It is also important to recognize that certain Greeks sought to present themselves and their country in terms of ideas of Europe. William St Clair reports that Greeks living abroad presented the rebellion as the emergence of “the institutions of a modern European state”: “many had served in European armies or government services, and their ideas of the type of Greece they wanted were basically the same.”11 Alexandros Ypsilantis’s “Proclamation of Revolt” (1821) defines the early development of the revolution in terms of “Europe”: “Long ago the people of Europe, fighting for their own rights and liberties, invited us to imitation”; “Europe will admire our valour”; “The enlightened peoples of Europe are occupied in restoring the same well-being, and, full of gratitude for the benefactions of our forefathers towards them, desire the liberation of Greece.”12 Ypsilantis defines Greece according to his notion of Europe, suggesting that European Revolutions (especially the French) have inspired Greece, and that, simultaneously, Europe is itself indebted to classical heritage. The Provisional Constitution, which appeared in English in 1823, uses the same technique. Signed by Alexandros Mavrocordato, later president and prime minister of Greece, it gives an extremely idealized account of the revolution, admitting that this is for the benefit of a European audience: That which, in this our earliest act of legislation, seems to me calculated to attract strongly the attention of Europe [. . .] are the two great points upon which it is founded: on the one side civil liberty, and perfect social equality before the law; on the other the vow of independence and of national inviolability.13

Mavrocordato constructs his new Greece upon an extremely flattering picture of Europe, designed to appeal directly to the London Greek Committee (who authorized the translation into English). In this respect, he encourages the Committee to view the Revolution through the filter



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of its ideal Europe. He uses the same strategy when dealing with Jeremy Bentham, asking him in 1823 “to enlighten us by your councils, and to guide us by that superior intelligence which immortalises your works.”14 Letters like this contributed to the conviction of Bentham and others that Greece wanted to base itself on European forms and that it could realize the ideal Europe. Although Bentham’s voluminous suggestions were never actually implemented in Greece,15 it is clear that a particular idea of Greece was constructed by some Greeks for a European audience. This continued deep into the conflict: Humphreys mentions “government dispatches and Gazettes” which give “accounts of battles and successes that had no other existence but in their pages, and which were promulgated in Europe.”16 Humphreys recognizes a Greece being produced for the sake of Europe, a process which involves the Greeks themselves and not just Europeans imposing their preconceptions onto the Revolution.

The Cause of Civilization For Blaquiere, Greece defines the origins and development of European civilization: “the torch, extinguished for a time by the effects of tyranny and barbarism, but which now illuminates the greatest portion of our hemisphere, was first lighted up in Greece.”17 Furthermore, he proposes that “the friends of the Greek cause” are identical with the friends “of civilisation generally,” implying that Greece and civilization mutually define one another.18 Blaquiere continues: It will be a sublime spectacle, almost worthy of the Divinity, to witness the modern possessors of civilisation and science associated for the purpose of imparting them to the descendents of those from whom these inestimable blessings originally sprung.19

Blaquiere constructs an idea of Europe by arguing for an inheritance of “civilisation and science” from Greece. But, he also defines Greece by reference to those “modern possessors” who have been able to preserve that inheritance and can now use it to reshape a new Greece. In this sense, for Blaquiere, Greece and Europe are the cause (or origin) of one another, and this is explained through the language of “civilisation.” William Parry also emphasizes this multi-directional transmission of civilized values: “from [Greece] we have derived our knowledge, and under the guiding hand of its wisdom, did modern Europe make its first tottering and feeble





steps towards civilisation.”20 In this respect, Greece, Europe, and civilization become near synonymous terms: the notion of civilization was first expressed in ancient Greek culture; Europe is civilized because it supposedly derives from Greece; therefore, the idea of civilization is necessarily European. Blaquiere and Parry understand civilization, Greece, and Europe in terms of one another, but this merely leads to a circular definition, in which no concept is characterized precisely. Many of Blaquiere’s contemporaries rely on a conception of “civilised values” to justify their involvement in or support for the Greek cause. For this reason, they insist that it has not been corrupted by Ottoman rule, and therefore it continues to represent “civility.” The Cause of Greece pamphlet declares that the Greeks have “not only remained a nation, but are still a European nation”: they practice “the faith which obtains in Europe”; they “build [. . .] with the same activity and industry as other European nations”; and they have maintained “intellectual intercourse” with Europe.21 Leicester Stanhope says that the Greeks are rumored “to possess many of the vices of Asiatic nations; but they are sensible, shrewd, discriminating, anxious to acquire knowledge, and attached to the legislative body.”22 These writers emphasize Greece’s continued association with modern Europe and thereby define both Greek and European culture as, for example, active and industrious. By insisting on this connection, they can more easily build an argument for the Greek cause as a defense of shared civilized values. One evocative way to demonstrate modern Greece’s civility is to stress its inheritance from ancient civilization, a legacy which can also explain the origins (or cause) of Europe. Indeed, the London Greek Committee is concerned to utilize classical learning in its campaign for Greek independence.23 For Hughes, the modern Greeks are “lineal descendents” of the ancients,24 and Blaquiere enthuses about the “sons and daughters of that classic soil” who “never lost sight of their imprescriptible rights, or their former glory.” He even suggests that the Revolution will “re-establish institutions, which may be said to have ceased with the Roman conquest, twenty-one centuries before,” as if, aside from a gap of two millennia, the preferred system of government has remained exactly the same. Crucially, these ideas also contribute to Blaquiere’s understanding of civilized Europe, which owes everything to “the genius of ancient Greece.”25 This interest in drawing parallels between ancient and modern Greece leads some travelers to experience and express their actual journeys according to what Thomas Gordon calls their “historical recollections.”26 Byron notes the importance of ancient Greek in the British schooling system, and how this leads one to see Greece in terms of that education: “Greece has ever been for me, as it must be for all men of any feeling



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We are brought back to our boyhood by the very name of Greece; and every spot in this beautiful land reminds us of the days devoted to its classic fables, and the scenes where we were taught them. Methinks I see old Harrow Churchyard, and its venerable yews—under whose shadows I have lain many a summer evening.28

Bulwer’s real and imagined Greece is the construction of his European educational experiences. He imagines a European space according to particular conceptual priorities and then experiences it as a reality through those representations. Stanhope echoes Bulwer’s point, observing that “we are taught to admire the energy and pathos of [Greek] poets,” and that this inclines one to view the modern country in terms of ancient literature.29 In describing his own travels, James Hamilton Browne relates the trip as a kind of mythological tour. He speaks of “the ancient stronghold of Ulysses,” facial “features cast in the Grecian mould,” and a visit to Scylla and Charybdis.30 Of course, many of these accounts are not uncritical: they often note places or experiences which fail to meet their classical expectations. Nevertheless, it is on this presumed connection between ancient and modern Greece that mutually defining ideas of Greece and Europe are founded. For many Greek Committee writers, the War of Independence is therefore a struggle in defense of civilization itself: a battle to save Europe from non-European barbarians. In a pamphlet read by Byron in Greece,31 Lord Erskine supports “a resistance to the impious dominion of the Mahometan conquerors, maintained [. . .] by inhuman oppressions at variance with all the establishments of civilised man” (emphasis in original).32 In other words, the Ottoman Empire is not governed “according to the manners of the civilised world,” and therefore, a war in defense of Greece (and civilized values) is entirely legitimate. This viewpoint is extremely common throughout the writings I have examined. The Cause of Greece pamphlet exhibits an almost paranoid fear of Asian “barbarians”: “our manners and civilisation, our arts and sciences, have remained foreign to them”; they are “foreign and tyrannical usurpers,” who have invaded European space (“our soil”) and must now be vanquished. Assisting Greece would protect this “wisdom and science,” which has endured from pre-Christian times to present-day Europe, from dissipating amid “hopeless, endless slavery.”33 Sir Charles Napier describes the war as “the battle of civilisation, for the shaping of society”: a “contest between the light of the nineteenth century and the remnant of the dark ages.”34 For Napier, the war is a conflict for



or education, the promised land of arts, and of liberty throughout the ages.”27 For Bulwer too:


the direction of history itself—between the “progress” which characterizes European development and the regressive practices of the “barbarian” Turks. Even Byron tells Mavrocordato about “those Barbarians your oppressors” and “all those interested in your cause, that is, all friends of Enlightenment and Humanity,” diagnosing the war as an ideological conflict between enlightened European ideas and oriental despotism.35 Some writers argue that the war itself refines the idea of European civilization. Pietro Gamba, Teresa Guiccioli’s brother and Byron’s longtime companion, says, “there are few either in the Old or the New Worlds, whithersoever the light of civilisation extends, who have not proclaimed themselves friendly to the regeneration of Greece [. . .] People of all nations, parties and sects [. . .] have apparently always been unanimous in the wish of seeing that country liberated.”36 Greece is thus a unifying cause: support for the revolution is what determines whether a country has experienced “the light of civilisation” or not. In this respect therefore, not only do ideas about civilization direct responses to Greece (as with Bulwer and Browne), but the events of the modern Greek revolution affect definitions of “civilisation” too. All of these arguments seek to associate the concepts of Greece, Europe, and civilization very closely, in that a war for one is a war to defend all. One consequence is that this apparently stabilizes the concept of Europe: it becomes a homogeneous cultural entity derived from Greece and locked into historical conflict with its Asian enemies. There is also a racial aspect to this talk of cultural and military conflict between Europeans and non-Europeans. Blaquiere says that the Turks are “a race to whom the virtues of pity and benevolence are totally unknown” and they are “strangers to justice and humanity,” implying that, as barbaric non-Europeans, they are not fully human. By contrast, the Greeks are “naturally industrious”: that is, intrinsically industrious, rather than hardworking by long habit.37 Browne also distinguishes between “the finely chiselled visage and handsome profile of the true Greek” and migrants “from Asia.”38 The objective in these cases is to identify “natural” differences between Greeks and Turks, Europeans, and non-Europeans: to assert that they are essentially distinct and do not just have different social practices. The most extensive theory of this type occurs in George Finlay’s History of the Greek Revolution, which places great emphasis on distinguishing between “races.” The ancients, says Finlay, were very attentive to what he calls “purity of race,” which lies “in the ancient seats of Greek liberty.” Here, he racializes sociohistorical ideas about Greek society (that is, turns social or cultural distinctions into biological ones) and also collapses potential divisions between ancient and modern Greeks by arguing for a racial inheritance that endures to the present day. The revolution, he argues, was an opportunity for the Greeks to become the “dominant race” in the region, edging out



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the Albanians, Serbians and, above all, the Turks.39 It is very significant, of course, that Finlay’s work was published in the 1860s, in the centre of a great boom in racial theories.40 David Roessel identifies emerging racial language earlier still in the 1830s, when philhellenic “rhetoric narrowed to cover only those pure Greeks of unmixed blood who lived on in remote islands and mountains.”41 In fact though, racial interpretations of the Greek Revolution appeared almost as soon as the rebellion broke out. In the Examiner, Leigh Hunt rejoices that “now we can see an effort made against their oppressors even by that mixed and degraded race, the descendents of the Lower Roman Empire, who were beaten and trod upon by successive tribes of Goths and Huns—and finally reduced into abject slavery by the victorious enthusiasts of the Mahometan faith.”42 Hunt describes Greece’s relation with its own past in terms of “race theory,” although his talk of “degeneration” and “slavery” disrupts the very close connection between Greece and civilization that others work so hard to maintain. Hunt’s denigration of modern Greeks exposes an important complexity in much philhellenic writing. Although Greek Committee members often suggest that Greece embodies the civilization of ancient times, they simultaneously assert that it has degenerated and requires “saving” from the barbarians by a united Europe. For this reason, they are sometimes forced to question the connections between modern Greece, ancient Greece, and the idea of civilization. This, in turn, has significant implications for understanding Europe. Parry, for example, admits that: “though we speak of Greece and the Greeks, [. . .] there is no distinct country and no distinct people”; “the boundaries of ancient Greece are not the boundaries of modern Greece”; the modern region consists of “various tribes of men [. . .] many of them differ from and hate one another, more than they differ from and hate the Turks.”43 Humphreys warns against retrospective over-idealization of the Greeks: “it does not damage the cause,” he says, “to represent the Greeks as they are—not as they once were, or what they might become.” He worries that interpreting the war in terms of a utopian past or future distracts from the immediacy of present problems.44 Although Byron asserts a connection between ancient and modern Greece—both in this period and earlier in his career (especially in Childe Harold)—his letters also reveal skepticism about uncritical applications of the theory. Writing to John Bowring, Byron mocks those travelers who are disappointed that “the Greeks are not quite the same with those of the time of Themistocles”; “the people at home have very absurd notions of the Greeks, as if they were the Greeks of Homer’s time [. . .] I have tried to remove these notions.”45 This last aim is rather disingenuous, considering the urgent classical allusions of Childe Harold I and II. However, when addressing Bowring in 1823, Byron perhaps has in mind the more extreme





views of certain Greek Committee members—especially Blaquiere, whom Byron had first met the previous month and who was, as I have shown, especially concerned to link modern Greece with ancient civilization. Indeed, writing about the Committee a month before his death, Byron comments that they “have chosen Greek correspondents more Grecian than ever the Greeks are wont to be.”46 He is thus aware that Greece itself is an ideological construct, made to carry ideas about civilization and European inheritance by men educated on classical texts. In his History of the Revolution, Thomas Gordon similarly critiques Greek civility by arguing that the Greeks are not the originators of civilization. Instead, “the seeds of knowledge, imported from Asia and Africa, found an intellectual soil” in Greece; and from Greece “advanced posts of civilisation” spread to “remote and barbarous coasts.” Gordon disrupts the separation between European Greeks and Asian barbarians that so many of his contemporaries insist upon: “the European Greeks, whose courage and prowess were in the highest repute, left their homes to serve in the armies of Syria and Egypt.” This might appear to reinforce notions of Greek and therefore European superiority. But, by suggesting that civilization originated in Asia and Africa and that Greeks subsequently migrate to those places, he questions the validity of such discreet divisions.47 In a public exchange with T. S. Hughes, C. B. Sheridan declares that “a Greek is an amphibious monster, half European and half Asiatic” because he or she lives between the social customs of Europe and of the Ottoman Empire. He rejects Hughes’s binary idea that the essentially European Greeks are oppressed by non-Europeans, by disputing whether it is possible to separate European and Asian identities when discussing the Greeks.48 Julius Millingen argues that the Greeks hate both “Musselmen” and “Franks”: that is, they inhabit a cultural border-zone, neither European nor Turkish.49 I am not suggesting that these writers refuse to distinguish between categories of people whom they label European and non-European: only that they doubt whether Greece can articulate that separation. From this perspective, it is therefore meaningless to base the concept of European civilization upon an interpretation of Greece. If Sheridan’s and Millingen’s approaches explore Greece as border-zone between Europe and Asia, combining civilized and barbarous identities, other Committee members use Greece to reconfirm the distinction between civil and barbaric societies. Humphreys distinguishes between Greeks educated in Europe (“Frank Greeks”) and the indigenous people, who “have not been advancing in equal steps with us.” He thus refuses to equate Greek with European, preferring instead to define Greek failings in comparison with European triumphs.50 Blaquiere makes the same distinction, contrasting the Greeks who aim “to imitate the barbarous pomp



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displayed by the Mahometans” with those “educated in Europe and more accustomed [. . .] to the usages of civilised life.”51 Writing to John Murray the following month, Byron satirizes the Greeks as subcivilized beings: during an earthquake “the whole army discharged their arms—upon the same principle that savages beat drums or howl during an eclipse of the Moon.”52 Kennedy also recalls Byron denying any distinction between Greeks and Turks: “I do not know if there is much difference between the parties.”53 To borrow a phrase from Jennifer Wallace, the objective here is to “orientalize the Greeks,” that is, to suggest that they have more in common with their Ottoman rulers than with the Europeans attempting to help them.54 In this respect, Greece becomes a challenge to the idea of Europe, rather than an expression of its civilized perfection. It becomes an “other” against which Europe can define itself, as well as a “self” from which Europe can distil its inheritance. A few London Committee members employ religious identity, as well as classical civilization, to interpret the War of Independence. The Reverend Hughes hopes to vindicate “the cause of Christianity through the triumph of the Greeks.” By indulging in long and violent descriptions of Turkish atrocities, Hughes tries to turn the conflict into a holy war, sanctioned by the martyrdom of heroic Greek Christians.55 The pamphlet on the Cause of Greece talks about Greece’s independence being “the fervent wish of one who regards the event not only as a European, but as a man and a Christian.” The implication here is that Greece embodies all these identities and that the Turks are neither European, Christian, nor fully human. When the author hopes for “progress in humanity,” he therefore does not refer to general “humanitarian” concerns, but rather to the primacy of Christian Greeks over the inhuman Ottomans.56 The Christian argument is developed more extensively by Blaquiere. He calls the Revolution a “sainted work” and says that “however important the influence which Greece might be destined to exercise on the state of Europe on a future day, the question is now one of humanity in favour of a Christian community threatened with extermination.”57 Like the Cause pamphlet, he uses “humanity” in an exclusively pro-Christian sense. He also calls the war “the battle of the Cross” and alludes repeatedly to the Crusades as a precedent for holding back “the Mahometan hordes.”58 It is significant that Blaquiere uses the phrase “nation of Christians” to identify a local community based on faith and also undercut the authority of the Ottomans by implying that a legitimate “nation” exists in their midst. But his whole argument also depends upon the supranational cooperation of Christian powers, and not just upon the particular interests of a specific “nation.” In this sense, Blaquiere uses “the Christian cause” to articulate both a particularist agenda and an idea of a collective Christian community.





In this way, ideas of Europe are built upon “the Christian cause.” Hughes says that the war of the “infidel against the Christian” is also a conflict of “the Asiatic against the European,” and he calls for a “Christian Confederacy” and a “European Confederacy” to drive out the Turks: Europe and Christianity are so closely associated that they are almost synonyms. For Blaquiere, Greece helps to define a sense of Christian purpose and that shared faith is what connects discordant European countries. Throughout his many works on the Revolution, Blaquiere reiterates this notion of “the European family”—also known as “the great family of Christianity” or “the European family and the Christian world.”59 Despite the diplomatic rivalries I outlined in the previous chapter, these writers use the Greek War to argue for a united European purpose, a shared historical identity shaped by the genealogy of religion. This encompasses hopes for national independence, but also alludes to the much older notion of a unified transnational Christendom.60 The majority of London Committee members are not, however, enthused by this religious perspective, since they more frequently discuss the Greek cause in terms of classical history or radical politics. Sheridan attacks Hughes for his preoccupation with religious difference: “I must protest against the doctrine of expatriating nations for their religious errors [. . .] From that moment three quarters of the human race are outlawed, and many be hunted down, and plundered with impunity.”61 Parry also worries that Christianity will be a source of conflict rather than unity, since different missionaries will bring their particular beliefs to Greece, adding doctrinal disputes to other discord.62 As recent commentators have noted, Greece appealed to radical thinkers precisely because its pagan past allowed one to escape the social structures of a Christian society and imagine a world of pleasure and license outside the orthodox regulation of the Church (see, for example, the transgressive sexualities in Hunt’s Foliage).63 David Constantine remarks on how some eighteenth-century thinkers saw ancient Greece as “the natural [. . .] condition of man before the shadow of Christianity came over it.” In this respect, the conflict can be adapted to an anti-Christian agenda, as well as an idea of pan-European Christian unity.64 This, however, is not all, since Byron’s circle also uses Greece to express radical political ideas for Europe’s future.

Greece, Europe and Radical Politics Byron rarely mentions Greece as a Christian cause and his attitudes to the classical “inheritance” are, at least in this period, ambivalent, but he regularly



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talks about Greece and radical politics, seeing the conflict as an opportunity to engage with new ideas about society and overthrow outdated governmental systems. Before arriving on the Greek mainland, he declares the spread of liberal political ideas to be his primary motive: he wants “the fruitful [. . . boughs?] of the tree of Liberty” to flourish. Gamba too, says Byron, “is even more anxious for him and me to go up to Greece [. . .]—being a thorough Liberty boy.”65 Byron had used very similar language two years earlier, telling Thomas Moore that “I wanted to go to Greece lately [. . .] with [Teresa Guccioli’s] brother, who is [. . .] wild about liberty.”66 According to Kennedy, Byron proclaimed: “I love the cause of liberty, which is that of the Greek nation, although I despise the Greek race, even while I pity them: I do not believe they are better than the Turks.”67 Kennedy’s account suggests that Byron is inspired by a particular interpretation of “liberty”—the independence of a local group—rather than by feelings of Christian or classical affiliation, or by a conviction that Greeks and Turks are fundamentally distinct. Similarly, reflecting on her conversations with Byron in 1823, Lady Blessington roots his interest in “principle” rather than “feeling.” She is disturbed by his apparent disdain for the Greeks and explains his actions as a political, not a charitable act—an “offering up on the altar of Liberty.”68 But what exactly is this liberty? As I suggested in Chapter 2, liberty has a range of complex meanings, and Byron does not here set out a specific political agenda. Instead, he incorporates Greece into a tradition of rebellion against more powerful rulers, and he often sees Greece through the filter of another such (potential) revolution. Reporting on his first meeting with Blaquiere, he tells Hobhouse that “ever since the ruin of Italian hopes in 1820, [Gamba] has been eager to go to Spain or to Greece.”69 This implies that the Greek War and the short-lived Spanish and Italian revolutions are part of the same radical project to challenge established rule; interest in one can be easily displaced to the other. Furthermore, writing to Edward Church, the United States consul in Geneva, Byron says: “an American has a better right than any other to suggest to other nations— the mode of obtaining that Liberty which is the glory of his own.” 70 Shared devotion to the cause of rebellion thus helps create an international community of like- minded people, as well as new and independent states. Before joining the Greek cause, Byron speculated that: In a century or two the new English and Spanish Atlantides will be masters of the old Countries in all probability—as Greece and Europe overcame their Mother Asia in the older or earlier ages as they are called.71

This is significant for three reasons: first, for equating “Greece and Europe”; second, for the idea that Europe developed from Asia by overcoming or





rebelling against it; and third, for predicting that America will similarly succeed its creator. When, late in his career, Byron mentions “liberty,” he talks about rebellion from a prior (state) authority, rather than specific radical or progressive policies. What I wish to emphasize here is the increasing centrality of Greece in Byron’s conception of revolutionary political liberty. This talk of liberty and rebellion overlaps with the complex language of nation-building and internationalism. In his journal Byron writes, “I did not come here to join a faction but a nation,” and he later defines his Greek activities rather flippantly as “playing at Nations.” 72 He describes the failures in the war by alluding to the different “parties” which fracture the cause into factions: “between Suliote Chiefs—German Barons—English Volunteers—and adventurers of all Nations—we are likely to form as good an allied army—as ever quarrelled beneath the same banner.”73 On the other hand, successes are described in terms of united purpose: “the Greek affairs go on better [. . .] here are armied—English—Germans—Greeks— all kinds of people in short—proceeding to or coming from Greece.” 74 This unity evokes both the independence of a new state and a growing international community. The processes of nation-building create the possibility of a collective Europe united behind a shared project, as well as a Europe of separate rival states. Hughes also speaks of Greece as the “classic nation” and the “Christian nation.” He thereby reconfigures the classical and religious “causes” in terms of a campaign to facilitate Greece’s state independence.75 Blaquiere, never one to miss out on any potential line of argument, refers to a “struggle for freedom and national independence,” like no other in “the history of nations”—a comment which interprets Greece’s war in terms of other European state formations.76 Blaquiere had previously supported the nationalist aspirations of Spain, Italy, and Greece, but also “looked to an international community of liberals to lead the struggle for national selfdetermination.” 77 In other words, he describes Greece both as an aspiring independent entity and as a construct in the image of European intellectuals. Writing about Greece’s “independence” therefore conceives the Revolution as “a nationalist movement on the European model,” or, to put it differently, privileges a particular notion of Europe as a range of competing nation-states.78 Concern for the “independence” of Greece, in fact, reveals how it is fashioned in the image of Europe: Greek national “independence” is premised upon an assumption of shared European political values which can and should be exported by international (radical) activists. Byron is therefore not alone in connecting Greece with the prospect of wider political change. St Clair argues that the Greek cause was



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particularly attractive to people on the fringes of political power in their own countries—radicals from Britain, Bonapartists from France—people for whom new revolutions in Naples, Spain, or Greece were ways of displacing the frustrations of domestic politics.79 Wallace also suggests that British radicals (especially Godwin and Hazlitt) saw classical study as a means to attack traditional thinking: “it gives men liberal views,” says Hazlitt, “it accustoms the mind to take an interest in things foreign to itself.” For this reason, the Greek Revolution, loaded with classical connotations and purporting to affect social change, could potentially articulate new ways to organize society.80 For Jeremy Bentham, Greece is an opportunity to reinvent a system of government outside the conventions of contemporary Europe. He tells the Greek government that: You enter upon your career under the most auspicious circumstances. Nothing to match them is to be found in history [. . .] Obstacles which in other nations set up a bar to good government, and that an insuperable one, have no place in your case. You are not cursed with Kings [. . . and] Nobles. Your minds are not under the tyranny of Priests [. . . and] Lawyers.81

The Greek Revolution is a chance to revolutionize European social thought and construct new ideas of Europe. Unlike Byron, Bentham is concerned with specific constitutional and policy issues; indeed, according to Frederick Rosen, revolutionary governments sought to solicit the advice of constitutional theorists “as a signal to the world of the willingness of their leaders to establish a government able to function within the European political tradition.”82 In this way, Bentham’s writings attempt to reshape the Greek (and European) political system, but also to show Greece’s participation in the conventions of European state formation and constitutional theory. To put it slightly differently, Bentham’s approach shows how Greece can potentially redefine Europe, but also how post-revolution Greece is constructed according to European political philosophy.83 Both Stanhope and Blaquiere claim to have been inspired by Bentham and use Greece as a platform to discuss radical political ideas. Stanhope eulogizes ancient Greece as the epitome of “republican institutions” and modern Greece as the perfect forum for new republican politics. His principle concern is “the establishment of a free press and free discussion,” which will lead, he claims, to “the liberty of the human race.” Much of Stanhope’s writing about the Greeks consists of overt attacks on monarchies, reflecting his desire to reform governments across Europe as well as in Greece itself. Stanhope recommends Switzerland and the United States as models for Greece, both republican powers which avoid “the disorder





and convulsions to which large monarchies are subject.”84 He proposes new schools, museums, dispensaries, and utilitarian societies which he would “put in communication with all those societies which profess the same principles in other quarters of the world.”85 Greece is a way to institute international communities around common interests: in this case, republican government and social reform. Blaquiere too sees Greece as a way to resist “despotic systems of government” and “illiberal” ideas. He instead wants to mould Greece using radical principles: “the Greeks must be taught the first rudiments of knowledge, before they can ascend to the higher walks of politics and legislation.” This paternalist language, as I will suggest shortly, is wedded to imperial ideologies. But, it also connects the Greek cause to more widespread calls for radical reform elsewhere in Europe. Blaquiere’s reference to the “friends of the cause throughout Europe” refers to a singular reformist movement across all Europe and not just to the wide geographical spread of supporters of Greece.86 Other writers suggest a link between Greece and revolutionary ideas or organizations. Gordon partly ascribes the revolution’s outbreak to shadowy conspirators, especially expatriate Greeks in Russia,87 whereas Bulwer uses Greece to justify revolution on legal grounds, citing Samuel Pufendorf to propose “that a people, whose predecessors and country have been oppressed by force, have always a right to recover their liberty by the same means that deprived them of it.”88 Despite (or perhaps due to) this radicalism, many philhellenic arguments betray imperial ambitions and mentalities. Byron commonly expresses his objectives through the language of “improvement”: “the Slave is not yet improved,” and the Greeks must be “remoralised” in order to turn them into “sober Citizens.”89 Greece must be reconstructed in the image of Europe, which, for people like Blaquiere, means adopting tenets of radical thought and adhering to a non-monarchical constitution. Napier too suggests that the war and the governmental system of Greece must be conducted according to the approval of Europe. He is especially concerned that a poor image of the conflict will damage potential support in Europe and that, it should therefore proceed along recognizable and attractive terms: it must display a “free and systematic government,” which leads to “a state of progressive improvement.”90 In this respect, Greece should be a kind of European product, shaped according to exported European ideas of progress. Often this “shaping” of Greece has an explicitly colonialist aspect. Blaquiere hopes that European involvement will “extend the blessings of instruction throughout Greece, thence perhaps to spread into Asia and Africa,” which makes the war sound like the first stage of an extensive conquest in the name of “rational freedom and social order.”91 Parry



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There are numerous tribes in Asia connected with them [the Greeks] by language and manners; which could be incorporated with them in their progress, and they might extend European civilisation [to . . .] the borders of Hindostan.92

How might this be achieved? Stanhope declares that “we are in favour of foreign settlers [. . .] they will bring with them capital, knowledge, industry and civilisation,” suggesting that Greece represents a colonial opportunity.93 Stanhope’s views probably stem from his military experience in India and, in this sense, Greece is part of a wider project to “civilise natives” according to European culture.94 Alexis Dimaras has analyzed the paternalist mindset underlying Stanhope’s interest in founding printing presses and schools: if, for Stanhope, “education was a pillar of independence and freedom,” his enthusiasm is deeply connected to the missionary idea that Greece can (and should) be instructed out of its degeneracy. Indeed, educationalist interest in Greece became extensive throughout the 1820s, and organizations such as the British and Foreign School Society and also the Philomuse Society supplied textbooks, finance, and teachers for Greek schools and even arranged overseas education for some Greek children.95 In this respect, there is an ideological connection between Stanhope’s educationalist activities and his colonialist rhetoric. In a letter to Bowring, even Byron presents Greece as a colonial location: “the resources even for an emigrant population—in the Greek islands alone—are rarely to be paralleled [. . . and] are far beyond those of the Cape—and Van Dieman’s land—and the other places of refuge— which the English population are searching for over the waters.”96 Byron hints that Greece can be colonized by European settlers, but unlike Stanhope and Blaquiere, he does have some awareness that this colonialism is problematic. He warns Mavrocordato of the dangers of allowing Greece to become “a Colony of the sovereign of Europe,” seeing (monarchical) Europe’s capacity for colonizing as potentially nefarious and disruptive.97 Likewise, Parry attacks Stanhope for his interfering attempts to “anglify” and “indoctrinate” Greece with his proposed reforms: “it is tyranny to impose any code of laws, however admirable in themselves, on any country.”98 However, much of this criticism is merely an attack on the “wrong” kind of imperialism. Parry disagrees with Stanhope, but, as I have shown, still advocates Greece as an imperial mission. Similarly, Byron opposes colonization of Greece by a monarchical power, but advertises it as a location for those fleeing the European monarchies.



puts forward the extraordinary view that the Greeks might succeed in “Europeanizing” Asia:


In all these examples, Europe is a kind of exportable concept, securely and uncritically defined by its potentially universal application. Many of the Committee members project their ideal visions of Europe onto the Greek canvas: when Blaquiere, for example, talks of spreading European government, he hopes for a liberal, non-monarchical state. However, since this projective mode looks to future changes and expresses dissatisfaction with the present state of affairs, he must necessarily be aware of alternative visions of Europe. Despite overtly attempting to spread a particular radical ideal of Europe to Greece and beyond, the Byron circle must therefore acknowledge potentially different ways of understanding Europe—as Parry does when he attacks Stanhope, or Byron does when he warns of monarchical influences. In the final section, I will explore how the Greek war highlights ideological debates about Europe and is not simply a means of articulating uncritical notions of European civilization and radical progress.

Radical Debate: the Problem of Realizing Europe I have argued that, for the Byron circle, Greece, Europe, and radical thought are interdependent. However, that relationship is not always mutually supportive: Greek events occasionally highlight fractures in the purpose and practicality of radical change. This, in turn, destabilizes conceptions of Europe by opening space for debate about its direction and definition. Blaquiere, for example, asserts that “there was not the smallest connexion, either directly or indirectly, between the rising in Greece and passing events in the rest of Europe” (emphasis in original).99 This statement is presumably intended to broaden the political appeal of the Greek cause beyond a niche audience of aspiring revolutionaries or disaffected liberals. Clearly, Blaquiere is aware that “the cause” can be interpreted very differently, and he therefore develops arguments along several lines, allowing Greece to serve simultaneously, for example, as a Christian mission and a celebration of ancient pagan culture. By suggesting that Greece could articulate radical politics on one page, but denying links with disreputable organizations on another, he thus seeks to appeal to the widest possible constituency. However, one consequence of this is to highlight the contradictory conceptions of Europe upon which his arguments depend. In trying to build the strongest possible case, Blaquiere instead exposes ideological fissures in his idea of Europe. To take another example, some Committee members associate Greece with commercial opportunities. Byron tells Bowring that new “commercial



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relations” would result from Greek independence.100 Blaquiere too talks airily about the possibility of “high profits” for investors and improvements in Greek “commerce and civilisation,” suggesting that they are mutually dependent.101 C. W. Woodhouse suggests that after 1800, rivalry between the powers over the “anticipated remains” of the Ottoman Empire became particularly intense and “the Greek lands began to swarm with military, diplomatic and commercial agents.”102 In this respect, as well as being a testing ground for European radical thoughts, Greece is a space for economic and political rivalry—a place where the frictions and competitions of Europe are played out in a struggle for supremacy. Certainly, this is Napier’s view when he notes that an independent Greece would curb Russian ambition toward Turkey and thus serve British interests in the Mediterranean.103 Lord Erskine also worries about the potential increase in Russian power should it, and not Britain, supervise a Greek defeat of the Turks.104 These writers view the Greek war as the intersection of competing interests: it does not unite Europe behind a cause, but rather exacerbates existing tensions and controversies. In Chapter 6, I discussed these tensions in detail, showing how Byron and his circle saw international politics in terms of a conflict between “liberty” and monarchical “despotism.” This scheme, I argued, became intrinsic to their assessments of “congress politics” and their understandings of Europe in the early 1820s. Byron often treats the Greek revolution as a development of that conflict. He worries that the “Cause” could become corrupted if the Holy Alliance becomes involved for its own gain: one country (especially Russia) might seek to boost its own influence by claiming Greece as a protectorate, or, worse still, the powers might not support Greece in order to defend the principle of “legitimacy.” Sometimes, when he mentions Europe—for example, in the phrase “the sovereigns of Europe”—he refers to this monarchical faction rather than a unified set of states with shared interests.105 In this sense, Greece has become a space for ideological debate about the best form of European government. The Byron circle might try to define Greece and Europe according to the prospect of radical “progress.” However, this trajectory is not stable or assured, since the Greek Revolution also gives rise to disputes about Europe’s ideological and political direction. Looking back on the 1820s in their respective histories of the Greek Revolution, Finlay and Gordon both discuss how wider tensions in international politics impacted upon the course of the conflict. Gordon argues that Greece did not unify Europe, but instead managed to exacerbate existing rivalries. The Holy Alliance, he says, saw the revolution as a radical assault on legitimacy, while liberals feared a Russian-led plot to seize more land and power. An “active struggle had been going on in Christendom





betwixt two opposing principles, the Liberal and the Conservative; or to use a formula their disciples applied to each other, those of anarchy and despotism.”106 Likewise, Finlay identifies “two camps forming in hostile array, under the banners of despotism and liberty.”107 In this respect, Greece exposes the fault lines within Europe itself, divisions originally engendered, Gordon says, by the French Revolution.108 Unsurprisingly, given the radical inclinations of most of the individuals I have discussed, many warn against the possibility that Greece might become a base for monarchical ideas. Blaquiere, for example, tells Stanhope about “agents of the Holy Alliance,” apparently in Greece “to form a kingly faction.”109 Similar ideas also come from less predictable quarters. Hughes, a Tory clergyman, reacts angrily to the British government’s refusal to support Greece, saying that “the support of what is called ‘the balance of power’ and ‘the peace of Europe’ ” is in fact a cover for the protection of legitimacy “and infidel exterminating government.”110 To this extent, Greek affairs are inseparably bound up in the ideological controversies of post-Napoleonic diplomacy. Sheridan also uses Greece to frame a critique of the “congress system.” While he is careful not to criticize monarchy directly, Greece “has given republicanism a persecuted, interesting air”; that is, it has revitalized a different way of thinking about Europe: exactly the result the monarchical powers had hoped to avoid.111 Meanwhile, the Whig Lord Erskine frames a monarchical case for intervention in Greece, arguing that Turkish despotism should be overthrown and replaced with a constitutional monarchy.112 As different as these assessments are, they all see Greece as a way to reassess types of government within Europe: if there are many potential forms of European government all competing with one another, then the idea of Europe itself is open to debate—and Greek affairs are a chance to discuss the terms of that dispute. However, these disagreements do not simply reveal conflict between Finlay’s “two camps”: they also reveal disruption in the “liberal” camp itself. What kind of “radical cause” should be pursued in Greece, and what vision of Europe does this have at its core? Stanhope writes about his desire to “engraft English and Anglo-American principles on the minds of my visitors,” by which he means specifically “the establishment of free presses and free discussion.”113 He hopes to export his own idea of the perfect liberal government to Greece, a project which he frames in terms of ideological opposition to the Holy Alliance. He talks aggressively about how this “corporation of tyrants” have “become the allies of the barbarians, and have formed a league against civilisation and the rights of man.” Even a limited monarchy must be prevented as it will inevitably degenerate into a tyranny.114 Parry’s book ostensibly articulates the same concerns about the spread of “tyranny,” noting that Greece may form “a distinguished



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province of some one of those mighty European monarchies.” However, Parry also unleashes a withering assault on Stanhope’s vision for Greece. In Parry’s view, Stanhope’s printing presses and Greek Societies are Benthaminspired vanity projects, rather than useful contributions to the war-effort: “he pretended, indeed, to govern on his liberal principles; but despotism only consists in an individual having everything his own way, which is precisely what Colonel Stanhope wanted.” Caught up in “world-reforming pretensions,” Stanhope used the war to pursue his own “European political object”—his own idealized vision of the perfect state—rather than constructively contributing to more pressing problems.115 Gamba also attacks Stanhope for his doctrinaire radicalism, suggesting that Byron was his enemy. While this is probably an exaggeration,116 Byron certainly does critique the Colonel’s radical ambition. They argued over Stanhope’s various newspapers, which Byron felt were irreligious, politically extreme and would discredit Greece at a time when it desperately needed both help and official recognition.117 According to Byron, Stanhope accused him of having “despotic principles—and I him with Ultra-radicalism,” phrasing which shows Greek affairs being debated through the language of rival political systems. Byron insists that Stanhope and his ally Jean-Jacques Meyer (whom Gordon describes as a “hot-headed Republican”)118 misuse the concept of freedom: “with his unrestrained freedom of the Press—[he] takes the Freedom to exercise an unlimited discretion—not allowing any articles but his own and those like them to appear.”119 What interests me here is not the clash of personalities, but these alternative interpretations of freedom and the radical cause. Byron and Stanhope ostensibly have the same purpose—to free Greece—but their disagreements over how to achieve this objective reveal deeper fractures in the implementation of radical politics. Traditionally, Byron’s dispute with Stanhope has been seen as a disagreement over the usefulness of Bentham’s political theories. St Clair sees Stanhope as a kind of fantasist, who saw in Greece “a Benthamite idyll” and “political democracy returning to the land from which it had sprung.”120 After scouring the London Greek Committee’s archives, de Beer and Seton claim that its members were “steeped in Benthamite idealism.”121 However, more recent research has suggested that neither Stanhope nor his paymasters in the London Committee were pursuing Benthamite projects in Greece. Although Stanhope shared with Bentham an enthusiasm for secular republicanism, the liberty of the press, and universal education, he did not hold “a coherently formulated ideal” and instead flirted with authoritarianism by courting the brigand leader Odysseus. Stanhope was essentially a centralizing paternalist, who insisted on giving the Greeks what they ought to want and who merely used Bentham to give his





“particular brand of liberalism an authenticity and respectability [it] otherwise lacked.”122 This appropriation of Bentham’s name shows how an attempt to import radical European ideas to Greece in fact exposes conflicts at the heart of that radical cause. How should revolutionary politics function? What kind of radical society should Greece be? How is this best achieved? These issues do not relate solely to Greece, since they are also questions about how to shape Europe and the ideal European state. Byron’s and Stanhope’s disagreements are therefore not just bureaucratic quarrels about newspaper articles: they are disagreements about how to understand and shape the idea of Europe. Furthermore, these various notions are articulated through debates about Greece and the wider import of the War of Independence. Greece can be an idealization of Europe; a degenerated Europe; the intellectual and moral source of European civilization; an “other” indicating what Europe is not; an expression of European “high culture” or non-European barbarism; the scene of a radical political cause or its authoritarian discontents. Most crucially of all, Greece and Europe are self-reflexive concepts: Europe and Greece construct ideas about one another, but this is never a straightforward process, since the relationship leads in many possible ideological directions. This complexity also has practical consequences and might help explain an otherwise puzzling aspect of Byron’s involvement in the Greek Revolution. Why, after having devoted time, large amounts of money, and, ultimately, his life to the “cause,” does he often seem skeptical about the validity and likely success of the endeavor? “I believed myself on a fool’s errand from the outset,” he tells Napier, since organizing the Greeks is a “kind of bear-taming.” He complains to Hobhouse of “divisions amongst the Greeks themselves” as well as disillusionment among philhellenes, many of whom give up “in disgust”: everywhere there is “treachery,” “jealousy of strangers and a desire of nothing but money.”123 This might seem like ironic detachment—perhaps not unlikely from the author of Don Juan—but such sentiments are, I want to suggest, intrinsic to the political nature of the enterprise. In his ambivalence about the Revolution, Byron grapples with the difficulties of translating ideas about Greece and Europe into political reality. For the Shelley–Byron circle, as I have shown, ideas about Europe are always underpinned by the prospect of actual political change; those ideas can never be divorced from the concrete political circumstances that they both interpret and seek to alter. To put it differently, Europe is partly an artificial and abstract construct, comprised of particular, and sometimes contradictory, interpretations of history, culture, space, and politics. But is also real in the sense that it shapes how identities, histories, cultures, and politics can be understood. In Greece, Byron attempts to reshape Europe in reality as well as ideologically, and



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he discovers the practical consequences of competing interpretations of Greece and Europe. Even as those interpretations motivate and define practical action (in this case devotion to the “cause”), they are also challenged by the circumstances and complexities of their own implementation. Ideas of Europe and European politics may be inseparably reciprocal, but the relationship between idea and practice also foregrounds the range of ideological tensions upon which both depend: in the philhellenic case, (national) liberty, revolution, imperial universalism, and shared classical history. The Greek experience shows that Europe is more than an idea, since it represents ways to understand, construct, and effect real political and social identities. But at the apparent moment of potential realization, the conflicts and uncertainties of competing and incompatible visions become devastatingly apparent. Byron’s philhellenism demonstrates that ideas about Europe always have a practical aspect, but that those concepts have an uneasy passage to political reality. If The Island revealed the difficulty of escaping one’s ideas of Europe, Byron’s Greek excursion shows the still more intractable problems of realizing those ideas.







Introduction 1. Peter Rietbergen, Europe: A Cultural History (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. xvii, xix. 2. Mikael af Malmberg and Bo Stråth, eds., introduction to The Meaning of Europe: Variety and Contention Within and Among Nations (Oxford: Berg, 2002), pp. 4, 10. See also Hayden White, “The Discourse of Europe and the Search for a European Identity,” in Bo Stråth, ed., Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2000), p. 74. 3. See Bo Stråth, ed., introduction to Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community: Historical Patterns in Europe and Beyond (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 19, 26. 4. See Hayden White, “Catastrophe, Communal Meaning and Mythic Discourse: The Uses of Myth in the Reconstruction of Society,” in Stråth, Myth and Memory, 49–50. 5. Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (London: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 3, 7, 8. 6. Thorsten Botz-Bernstein, “Europe: Space, Spirit, Style,” European Legacy 8, no. 2 (2003): 179. 7. Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: California University Press, 1997), p. xiv. See also J.G.A. Pocock, “Some Europes in Their History,” in Anthony Pagden, ed., The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union (Cambridge and Washington DC: Cambridge University Press / Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002), pp. 55–6. 8. Stuart Woolf, ed., Nationalism in Europe: 1815 to the Present (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 2, 10. 9. Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), pp. 87, 115. 10. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 7, 1. 11. Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History 1740– 1830 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), pp. 58–9, 50. 12. Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich, eds., Romanticism in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 5.



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13. Marlon B. Ross, “Romancing the Nation-State: The Poetics of Romantic Nationalism,” in Jonathan Arac and Harriet Ritvo, eds., Macropolitics of Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1991), pp. 75, 84. 14. Peter Mortensen, British Romanticism and Continental Influences: Writing in an Age of Europhobia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 8–9, 18. David Simpson also argues that British writers in the 1790s cultivated a “revolt against theory” or “culture of common sense” in reaction to the alleged rationalism of the French Jacobins. See Romanticism, Nationalism and the Revolt Against Theory (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993), pp. 4, 40–2. 15. Jonathan Reé, “Cosmopolitanism and the Experience of Nationality,” in Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, eds., Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1998), p. 83. 16. Steven Vertovec, “Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 447, 456–7. 17. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 4–7. 18. David Damrosch, What is World Literature? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 4–6, 22. See also Azade Seyhan, Writing Outside the Nation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 4–5, 9–10. 19. See Étienne Balibar, We, the People of Europe: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, trans. James Swenson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. viii. 20. Stuart Woolf, “The Construction of a European World-View in the Revolutionary-Napoleonic Years,” Past and Present 137 (1992): 99–101. 21. Felicity Nussbaum, ed., introduction to The Global Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 1, 3, 10. 22. Michael Scrivener, The Cosmopolitan Ideal in the Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1776–1832 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007), pp. 1, 203, 209; Adriana Craciun, British Women Writers and the French Revolution: Citizens of the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 9–11, 191–2. 23. Margaret Cohen and Carolyn Dever, eds., introduction to The Literary Channel: The Inter-National Invention of the Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 2–3, 19. 24. Margaret Cohen, “Sentimental Communities” and April Alliston, “Transnational Sympathies, Imaginary Communities,” in Cohen and Dever, Literary Channel, 106–7, 133. 25. Karen O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 1–2, 4. 26. William Robertson, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V with A View of the Progress of Society in Europe [. . .], 3 vols. (Dublin: Watson, Ewing, Watson, 1769), 3:432–3. 27. The word “cosmopolitan” derives from the Greek terms “kosmos” (world) and “polis” (city). According to Robert Fine and Robin Cohen, the word first referred to “someone who had no anchorage in any contemporary, real, city-state and was therefore a ‘citizen of the world.’ ” Fine and Cohen,



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28. 29.

30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

201

“Four Cosmopolitan Moments,” in Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, eds. Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 137–9, 158–9. David Harvey, “Cosmopolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils,” Public Culture 12, no. 2 (2000): 529–30. David Simpson, “The Limits of Cosmopolitanism and the Case for Translation,” European Romantic Review 16, no. 2 (2005): 141–2. For a less skeptical account of the “conceptual and theoretical diversity” surrounding cosmopolitanism, see Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, introduction to Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, 1–22. Thomas J. Schlereth, The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought: Its Form and Function in the Ideas of Franklin, Hume and Voltaire, 1694–1780 (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1977), p. xii. See also Reitbergen, Europe, 459; Damrosch, What is World Literature? p. 8. Newman, Rise of English Nationalism, 39, 46; Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 2. See Schlereth, Cosmopolitan Ideal, 130. Balibar, We, the People of Europe, 10. Bruce Robbins, “Actually Existing Cosmopolitanisms” and “Comparative Cosmopolitanisms,” in Cheah and Robbins, Cosmopolitics, 2, 258–60. Nussbaum, Global Eighteenth Century, 2–3. Goodman, Republic of Letters, 4. See also Roberto Dainotto, Europe (in theory) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 138–40; Martyn Thompson, “Ideas of Europe during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars,” Journal of the History of Ideas 55, no. 1 (1994): 38–9. Simpson, “The Limits of Cosmopolitanism,” 146, 151–2. Denys Hay, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea, rev. ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), pp. 116–20. Pocock, “Some Europes in Their History,” 65, 70. It was for this reason, says Pocock, that Burke feared the Revolution: the prospects of fanaticism and hegemony threatened to overwhelm the dominant view of Europe as a “civilization of states, commerce and manners.” M. E. Yapp, “Europe in the Turkish Mirror,” Past and Present 137 (1992), 143, 147. Enrique Dussel, “Europe, Modernity and Eurocentrism,” Nepantla: Views from the South 1, no. 3 (2000): 468–9. Biancamaria Fontana, “The Napoleonic Empire and the Europe of Nations,” in Pagden, The Idea of Europe, 127. Thompson, “Ideas of Europe,” 38, 58. Woolf, “Construction of a European World-View,” 74, 77–8. Dainotto, Europe (in theory), 54–5, 62–3, 151, 8. Peter Burke, “Did Europe Exist Before 1700?” History of European Ideas 1, no. 1 (1980): 21. See Jeffrey N. Cox, Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and their Circle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),



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pp. 5, 8–9, 12; Cox, “Communal Romanticism,” European Romantic Review 15, no. 2 (2004): 329–34; Greg Kucich, “Keats, Shelley, Byron and the Hunt Circle,” in Thomas Keymer and Jon Mee, eds., The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 263–79; Gillian Russell and Clare Tuite, eds., Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture in Britain, 1770– 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1–20. 48. James Chandler, England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998), pp. xiv–xv, 39, 195–7, 102, 124, 250, 221–2, 207–8. 49. Heikki Mikkeli, Europe as an Idea and an Identity (London: Macmillan, 1998), p. 209. 50. Malmberg and Stråth, The Meaning of Europe, 4.

1 “Spain, Portugal, and Greece”: Byron on the Borders of Europe, 1809–11 1. See Byron to Francis Hodgson, August 6, 1809, and John Cam Hobhouse, October 4, 1810, in Byron, Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 13 volumes (London: John Murray, 1973–94), 1:217; 2:24. 2. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Byron’s poetry are from Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, 7 volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–93). For the preface to Childe Harold, see 2:3–5. References to Childe Harold are by canto and line number. 3. Stephen Cheeke, Byron and Place: History, Translation, Nostalgia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 45, 48. 4. Byron to Dallas, June 23, 1810, in Letters, 1:248. 5. Byron to Hodgson, August 6, 1809, in Letters, 1:217. 6. Byron to Hodgson, August 6, 1809, in Letters, 1:216. 7. Sir John Carr, Descriptive Travels in the Southern and Eastern Parts of Spain and the Baleric Islands in the Year 1809 (London: Sherwood et al., 1811), pp. 109, 68–9, 86, 88, 90. 8. Carr, Descriptive Travels, 198. 9. John Galt, Voyages and Travels in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811: Containing Statistical, Commercial and Miscellaneous Observations on Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Serigo and Turkey (London: Cadell and Davies, 1812), p. 180. 10. Galt, Letters from the Levant, Containing Views of the State of Society, Manners, Opinions and Commerce, in Greece and Several of the Principal Islands of the Archipelago (London: Cadell and Davies, 1813), p. 347. 11. Town Talk 3 (August 1812): 217–222, (September 1812): 302–5, (October 1812): 372–7, in Donald H. Reiman, ed., The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers, Part B, Byron and Regency Society Poets, 5 volumes (New York: Garland, 1972), 5:2289–97. 12. Christian Observer 11 (June 1812): 376–386, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 2:560.



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13. Critical Review, 4th ser., 1 (June 1812): 565, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 2:613. 14. Edinburgh Review 19 (February 1812): 466–77; Satirist 11 (October 1812): 344–358, (December 1812): 542–550, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 2:837; 5:2113. 15. Quarterly Review 7 (March 1812): 180–200, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 5:1993. 16. Jane Stabler, Byron, Poetics and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 21–6. 17. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: A Romaunt, 1st ed. (London: John Murray, 1812), pp. 203–26. 18. Galt, Voyages and Travels, 389–92. 19. John Cam Hobhouse, A Journey through Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, During the Years 1809 and 1810 (London: Cawthorn, 1813), pp. 25–6. 20. Galt, Voyages and Travels, 235. 21. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. 20 volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), “frank” (adj.), sense 1. 22. For more on how representations of the (Islamic) Orient have “helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience,” see Edward Said, Orientalism, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 2003), esp. pp. 1–2. 23. Byron, Poetical Works, 2:201, 211. 24. Byron to his mother, November 12, 1809, in Letters, 1:226–31. 25. Byron to his mother, March 19 and April 10, 1810, in Letters, 1:234–5. 26. Byron to Henry Drury, May 3, 1810, in Letters, 1:237–8. 27. William Martin Leake, Researches in Greece (London: Booth, 1814), pp. 237, 242, 250, 258. 28. Hobhouse, Journey, 6–8, 148. 29. Hobhouse, Journey, 825, 867, 840. 30. Montesquieu, De l’esprit des loix, 2 volumes (Geneva: Barillot, 1748), 1:365. The translations are from Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. and trans. Anne Cohler, Basia Miller, Harold Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 234. 31. Dainotto, Europe (in theory), 62–69, 98–9, 151–64, 167–71. 32. Balibar, “The Borders of Europe,” trans. J. Swenson, in Cheah and Robbins, Cosmopolitics, 225. 33. For more on the Scythians, see Maurice Olender, “Europe, or How to Escape Babel,” trans. Jordan Kellman, History and Theory 33, no.4 (1994): 12–22. 34. Hobhouse, Journey, 127. 35. Carr, Descriptive Travels, 114–17. 36. Galt, Voyages and Travels, 1–2. 37. Byron to John Hanson, February 28, 1811, in Letters, 2:41. 38. Byron to Hodgson, June 29, 1811, in Letters, 2:54. 39. For all these poems see Childe Harold, 1st ed., pp. 166–83. 40. Hobhouse, Journey, 289, 540, 584.



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41. Galt, Levant, 342–5. 42. Saree Makdisi uses similar language to discuss British relations with India in the period. The sea is “an obstacle, which can be crossed in one direction but not in the other (or, rather, by one party in both directions). It figures as a gap in status and development between India and Britain, simultaneously a material and a metaphorical barrier.” Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 102. 43. Hobhouse, Journey, 542–4. 44. William St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 184–5. 45. Quoted in St. Clair, Lord Elgin, 260. 46. Byron, Poetical Works, 1:445–6n. 47. Galt, Levant, 130, 305, 52, 24. 48. Galt, Levant, 338. 49. Balibar, We, the People of Europe, 1.

2 “Repairing Shattered Thrones”: Post-Waterloo Europe and the Shelley–Byron Circle, June 1815–December 1816 1. Byron to Hobhouse, May 16, 1816, in Letters, 5:77. 2. Charles Clairmont to the Shelleys, November 18, 1816, in Clairmont et al., The Clairmont Correspondence: Letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont and Fanny Imlay Godwin, ed. Marion Kingston Stocking, 2 volumes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 1:95. 3. Robertson, Charles V , 1:ix. The idea that print technology disseminated different localized histories prefigures Benedict Anderson’s much later thesis connecting printing with “the origin and spread of nationalism” in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 4. Robertson, Charles V, 1:x–xi; 3:431. 5. Lord Broughton (John Cam Hobhouse), Recollections of a Long Life, with Additional Extracts from his Private Diaries, ed. Lady Dorchester, 6 volumes (London: John Murray, 1909–11), 1:305–7. 6. Hobhouse, The Substance of Some Letters Written by an Englishman Resident at Paris During the Last Reign of the Emperor Napoleon, 2 volumes (London: Ridgways, 1816), 1:214–6. 7. Hobhouse, Last Reign, 1:216; 2:239; 1: xiii. 8. Helen Maria Williams, A Narrative of Events Which Have Taken Place in France, from the Landing of Napoleon Bonaparte, on the 1st of March, 1815 till the Restoration of Louis XVIII [. . .](London: John Murray, 1815). Williams explains her change of mind on pp. 7–11 and also reveals her own interest in “multiple histories,” noting Napoleon’s promotion of “official” history and remarking on the many interpretations of Waterloo (26, 185).



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9. References to Childe Harold are by canto and line number. Childe Harold III was composed between May and June 1816 as Byron and John Polidori traveled southward from Britain to Switzerland. See Byron, Poetical Works, 2:297–300n. 10. Hobhouse, Last Reign, 1:12; 2:217. 11. Hobhouse, Last Reign, 2:152–6; 1:65–6, 74–5. 12. [Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley], History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland: With Letters Descriptive of a Sail Round the Lake of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni (London: Hookham / Ollier, 1817), 85–7. For details concerning the dual authorship of this volume, see Percy Shelley, The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. E. B. Murray, 1 volume to date (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 1:429–40. The reflections quoted here were written during the trip of 1816, not the journey of 1814 to which the volume’s main title alludes. 13. Percy Shelley, Alastor; or The Spirit of Solitude and Other Poems (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy / Carpenter, 1816), pp. 69–70. 14. Percy Shelley, A Philosophical View of Reform, in Percy Shelley, Shelley’s Prose, ed. David Lee Clark (Albuquerque: New Mexico University Press, 1954), p. 236. 15. Percy Shelley to Hogg, August 1815, in Percy Shelley, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Frederick L. Jones, 2 volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 1:429–30. 16. Byron to Moore, July 7, 1815, in Letters, 4:302. 17. Manfred, act 2, scene 3, lines 62–5 in Byron, Poetical Works, 4:53–102. For composition dates, see 4:463n. 18. Hobhouse, Last Reign, 2:233; 1:304. 19. [T. H. Horne], An Illustrated Record of Important Events in the Annals of Europe, During the Last Four Years [. . .] (London: Bowyer, 1816), pp. 3, 20. 20. The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics and Literature for the Year 1815 (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy et al., 1816), iii–v. 21. George Ensor, On the State of Europe in January 1816 (London: Hunter, 1816), 19. Percy Shelley sent a copy of A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote to Ensor in 1817. See Percy Shelley, Letters, 1:533. 22. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, Six Weeks’ Tour, 6, 40, 24, 77. 23. John Polidori, The Diary of Dr John William Polidori 1816, ed. William Michael Rossetti (London: Elkin Matthews, 1911), pp. 43, 196, 76. Economic hardship was exacerbated by the disastrously poor weather following the eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia in 1815. The dust in the stratosphere filtered out the sun, lowered global surface temperatures, and led to three years of poor harvests and food riots in “nearly every country in Europe.” See Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth (London: Picador, 2000), pp. 96–8; John D. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), esp.pp. 24–36, 53–68 24. Hobhouse, Recollections, 2:6–15, 25–6; and Polidori, Diary, 141–51. For more on Staël’s circle and their ideas of Europe see Dainotto, Europe (in theory), 134–65; Susan Tenenbaum, “The Coppet Circle and Europe: Visions of Despotism—Visions of Freedom,” in Kurt Kloocke and Simone Balayé,



Notes

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44.

Notes eds., Le groupe de Coppet et ĽEurope, 1789–1830: actes du cinquième colloque de Coppet, 8–10 juillet 1993 (Lausanne: Institut Benjamin Constant, 1994), pp. 361–8. Annual Register 1815, 11. Byron’s note to Childe Harold, in Poetical Works, 2:304n. Byron, “Napoleon’s Farewell (From the French),” lines 5, 17–18, 10, in Poetical Works, 3:312. Percy Shelley, Alastor, v. Sir Walter Scott, The Field of Waterloo; A Poem (Edinburgh: Constable / Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown / John Murray, 1815), pp. 43, 45, 40–1. Hobhouse, Last Reign, 1:1–2. Ensor, State of Europe, 17, 129. Annual Register 1815, 601. Hobhouse to Byron, May 9, 1815, in Hobhouse, Byron’s Bulldog: The Letters of John Cam Hobhouse to Lord Byron, ed. Peter W. Graham (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), p. 202. William Guthrie, A New Geographical, Historical and Commercial Grammar; and Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World (London: Knox, 1770), vii. This work ran to 24 editions by 1827. Guthrie, A New System of Modern Geography, 5th ed. (London: Dilly and Robinson, 1792), pp. 59–60. These arguments appear to be influenced by Montesquieu’s idea that topographical and atmospheric factors determine the construction of social systems. See The Spirit of the Laws, 231–333. A Complete System of Geography, 2 volumes (London: Imyes et al., 1747), 1:1. The same details are repeated in D. Fenning and J. Collyer, A New System of Geography, 2 volumes (London: Crowder: 1765–66), 2:3; Charles Middleton, A New and Complete System of Geography, 2 volumes (London: Cooke, 1777), 2:3; The English Encyclopaedia, 10 volumes (London: Kearsley, 1802), 3:351; The Imperial Encyclopaedia, 4 volumes (London: Cundee, [1812?]), 2:341; The Modern Encyclopaedia, 10 volumes (London: Richards, [1816–20?]), 5:77; The London Encyclopaedia, 22 volumes (London: Tegg, 1826–29), 8:699. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., “frank” (adj.), sense 1. See Yapp, “Europe in the Turkish Mirror,” 134–55, 139. Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 6 volumes (Edinburgh: Constable, 1824), 4:188–9. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, Six Weeks’ Tour, 87. Michael Rossington, “ ‘The Destinies of the World’: Shelley’s Reception and Transmission of European News in 1820–21,” Romanticism 13, no. 3 (2007): 237. Alliston, “Transnational Sympathies, Imaginary Communities,” 133. See also Cohen, “Sentimental Communities,” 106. Byron, Poetical Works, 2:307n. Caroline Franklin, “ ‘Some examples of the finest Orientalism’: Byronic Philhellenism and Proto-Zionism at the time of the Congress of Vienna,” in



206

45. 46.

47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

64.

207

Tim Fulford and Peter Kitson , eds., Romanticism and Colonialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 226. Byron Poetical Works, 3:491–2n. The questioning tone is particularly notable given the Morning Chronicle’s general sympathy for the Emperor. See leading articles on June 3, 7, 10, 13, 1815. Napoleon’s abdication (reported June 26) is called the most important event “in the history of the world.” On March 15, 1816, the newspaper also bore advertisements for the sale of “Napoleon medals,” presumably expecting a pro-Bonaparte reaction from its readership. Byron, Poetical Works, 3:481n. Malcolm Kelsall, “ ‘Once she did hold the gorgeous East in fee’: Byron’s Venice and Oriental Empire,” in Fulford and Kitson, Romanticism and Colonialism, 245–8. Hobhouse, Recollections, 1:286; 2:3. Hobhouse, Last Reign, 1:216–8; 1:222; 1:225. Horne, Annals of Europe, 3, 16. Castlereagh to the Allied Ministers, September 11, 1815, in Annual Register 1815, 601. Robertson, Charles V, 1:112. Ensor, State of Europe, 129–30. Percy Shelley, “[The Elysian Fields]” fragment, in Prose Works, 1:163. For information on possible composition dates, see 1:399–400n. J. Wedderburne Webster, “Waterloo,” stanza XLV, in Waterloo and Other Poems (Paris: Ridgway / Kirby / Constable, 1816), p. 25. For Byron’s friendship with Webster, see Byron, Letters, 1:171; 10:129. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, Six Weeks’ Tour, 50. Hobhouse, Last Reign, 1:xi; 2:217. “Journal in Cephalonia” (September 28, 1823) and Byron to John Bowring, May 12, 1823, in Letters, 11:30; 10:170. Byron to Edward Church, June 21,1823, in Letters, 10:202 The Annual Register, or View of the History, Politics and Literature for the Year 1816 (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy et al., 1817), p. vi–vii. Hazlitt, “On Patriotism—A Fragment,” in William Hazlitt [and Leigh Hunt], The Round Table, 2 volumes (Edinburgh: Constable, 1817), 1:238. Although only Hazlitt’s name appears on the title page, the “Advertisement” explains that some essays were written by Hunt (vi). The essay was first published in the Morning Chronicle, January 5, 1814. See William Hazlitt, The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt, ed. Duncan Wu, 9 volumes (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1998), 2:353. J. G. A. Pocock, “Catherine Macaulay: Patriot Historian,” in Hilda L. Smith, ed., Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 246. Hazlitt’s father became friendly with Price in the 1770s. See Duncan Wu, “William Hazlitt (1737–1820), the Priestley Circle, and The Theological Repository: A Brief Survey and Bibliography,” The Review of English Studies,



Notes

65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83.

Notes n. s., 56, no. 227 (2005): 758–66. For the correspondence between the elder Hazlitt and Price, see Richard Price, The Correspondence of Richard Price, ed. W. Bernard Peach and D. O. Thomas, 3 volumes (Durham: Duke University Press, 1983–94), 2:238–9, 320–2. For letters recording the younger Hazlitt’s reading of Price, see Willaim Hazlitt, The Letters of William Hazlitt, ed. Herschel Moreland Sikes, assisted by Willard Hallam Bonner and Gerald Lahey (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 65, 133–4. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. C. D. Clark (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 155–179, 211–13, 224–5. Hazlitt, The Eloquence of the British Senate; or, Select Specimens from the Speeches of the Most Distinguished Speakers [. . .] (1807), William Hazlitt, The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe 21 volumes (London: Dent, 1930–4), 1:151. Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (London: Cadell, 1789), p. 49. Price, Discourse, 19, 50. Percy Shelley to Peacock, May 15, 1815, in Letters, 1:474–5. Price, Discourse, 1–2, 5. Friedrich Meinecke notes that contemporaneous German writers also unite patriotism and cosmopolitanism in setting out their various political and religious ideals. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, for example, suggests that the idea of the “German nation” best represents post-Revolutionary freedom and spirituality and that, for this reason, “patriotism is completely universal. Its objectives are those of mankind in general.” Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and the National State, trans. Robert Kimber (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 73–5. Hobhouse, Last Reign, 1:v, vii–viii. Byron’s note to Childe Harold, in Poetical Works, 2:311–313n. Alliston, “Transnational Sympathies, Imaginary Communities,” 133. Cheeke, Byron and Place, 8. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, Six Weeks’ Tour, 129. Michael Rossington, “Rousseau and Tacitus: Republican Inflections in the Shelleys’ History of a Six Weeks’ Tour,” European Romantic Review 19, no. 4 (2008): 322. Gregory Dart, Rousseau, Robespierre and English Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 123–5. Rossington, “Rousseau and Tacitus,” 329. Helen Maria Williams, A Tour in Switzerland, 2 volumes (London: Robinson, 1798), 1:3–4; 2:104–8, 119, 181. Hobhouse, “Byron in the Alps: The Journal of John Cam Hobhouse, September 17–29, 1816,” in John Clubbe and Ernest Giddey, Byron et la suisse: deux études, Université de Lausanne publications de la Faculté des Lettres 24 (Geneva: Libraire Droz, 1982), pp. 38–9. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, Six Weeks’ Tour, 118–19. “[Epistle to Augusta],” lines 33–4, in Byron, Poetical Works, 4:35–40.



208

209

84. Cheeke, Byron and Place, 68. 85. “[A Fragment],” lines 25–8, in Byron, Poetical Works, 4:29–30. 86. Byron to Augusta Leigh, September 14,1816 and Alpine Journal entries for September 19, 22 and 23, in Letters, 5:94, 99, 101, 102. 87. Polidori, Diary, 62 and 214. Byron purchased such souvenirs himself, sending helmets, swords and other “Spoils of Waterloo” to John Murray. See John Murray, The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron, ed. Andrew Nicholson (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), pp. 190, 193–4. 88. Philip Shaw, Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 71. Shaw argues that this avoidance of death and violence serve a nationalist purpose by transforming the “opacity of battle into the clarity and ‘sense’ of national victory” (73). However, I do not find such unambiguous nationalism in Polidori’s reflections. 89. Polidori, Diary, 70. 90. Charles Clairmont to the Shelleys, August 8, 1816, Clairmont Correspondence, 64–5. 91. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, Six Weeks’ Tour, 151–2, 144. 92. Percy Shelley, The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, gen. ed. Donald H. Reiman, volume 11, The Geneva Notebook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Bodleian MS. Shelley adds. e. 16 and MS. Shelley adds. c.4, Folios 63, 65, 71 and 72, ed. Michael Erkelenz (New York: Garland, 1992), notebook p. 9, lines 3–19. 93. Cian Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 122. 94. Percy Shelley, Geneva Notebook, notebook , p. 7. 95. Percy Shelley to Hogg, August 1815, in Letters, 1:430.

3

“The Elysium of Europe”: Byron, Italy, and Europe, June 1817–July 1818

1. Byron, dedication to Childe Harold Canto IV, in Poetical Works, 2:122. 2. Bernard Beatty, “Byron and the Paradoxes of Nationalism,” in Vincent Newey and Ann Thompson, eds., Literature and Nationalism (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), pp. 154–5, 161. 3. My translation. According to McGann, the line is from Alfieri’s Del Principe e delle lettere (1795), book 3, chapter 2. See Byron, Poetical Works, 2:319n. 4. Byron, dedication to Childe Harold IV, in Poetical Works, 2:123–24. 5. References to Childe Harold are by canto and line number. 6. The fragment was drafted in December 1816. See Byron, Poetical Works, 4:47, 461n. 7. The poem was written in July 1818 and published with Mazeppa in June 1819. See Byron, Poetical Works, 4:201, 494n. 8. Hobhouse’s note to Childe Harold, in Byron, Poetical Works, 2:219n, my translation. The Venetian dialect version is not given here. 9. Byron to Murray, September 4, 1817, in Letters, 5:262.



Notes

Notes

10. [W. S. Rose], Letters from the North of Italy, Addressed to Henry Hallam Esq., 2 volumes (London: John Murray, 1819), 2:2; 1:297. 11. Samuel Rogers, The Italian Journals of Samuel Rogers, with an Account of Rogers’s Life and of Travel in Italy in 1814–1821, ed. J. R. Hale (London: Faber and Faber, 1956), pp. 172–3, 177. Rogers made these observations in October 1814 and eventually used them in Italy, A Poem: Part the First (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1822), pp. 63, 67. 12. William Berrian, Travels in France and Italy in 1817 and 1818 (New York: Swords, 1821), p. 305. 13. Hobhouse’s note to Childe Harold, in Byron, Poetical Works, 224–5n, 227n. 14. Byron to Murray, February 25, 1817, in Letters, 5:174; Murray to Byron, March 15, 1817, in Letters of John Murray, 206. 15. John Moore, A View of Society and Manners in Italy with Anecdotes Relating to Some Eminent Characters, 2 volumes (London: Strahan and Cadell, 1781), 1:70, 75, 232–3. 16. Jeremy Black, Italy and the Grand Tour (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 147. 17. Beatty, “Byron and the Paradoxes of Nationalism,” 154. 18. See James Thomson’s Liberty: A Poem in Five Parts, in James Thomson, Poetical Works, ed. J. Logie Robertson (London: Oxford University Press, 1965). 19. British Critic, 2nd ser., 9 (May 1818): 541; Monthly Magazine, 45 (June 1818): 434; Northern Star, 2 (June 1818): 471, all in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 1:285; 4:1669; 5:1953. 20. Quarterly Review, 19 (April 1818): 222–3, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 5:2052. 21. The significance of Rome here counterbalances Harry Levin’s suggestion that the “second romantic generation” rejected a “Latinized neo-classicism” and “purified the Greek tradition by repudiating Rome.” See The Broken Column: A Study in Romantic Hellenism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), pp. 20–1. 22. John Cam Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold: Containing Dissertations on the Ruins of Rome; and An Essay on Italian Literature (London: John Murray, 1818), pp. 47–50. 23. Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, 251. 24. Hobhouse attacks Eustace in the notes to Childe Harold, principally due to Eustace’s anti-French political sympathies. See Byron, Poetical Works, 2:202–3. 25. John Chetwode Eustace, A Classical Tour Through Italy, 3rd ed., 4 volumes (London: Mawman, 1815), 1:xii–xv. 26. Jeremy Black, The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992), pp. 238, 249. 27. British Critic, 2nd ser., 9 (May 1818): 545, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 1:287. 28. Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, 316–17.



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211

29. Journal entry for October 19, 1819, in Thomas Moore, Memoirs, Journals and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, ed. Lord John Russell, 8 volumes (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, 1853–6), 3:40. 30. Austrian influence in Italy increased after the restorations, culminating in 1821 when Austria suppressed liberal revolutions in Naples and PiedmontSardinia. See Derek Beales and Eugenio F. Biagini, The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy, rev. ed. (London: Longman, 2002), pp. 40–3; Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800–1914, 3rd ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 60–1, 66–7. 31. Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, 196. 32. Stephen Cheeke, “ ‘What So Many Have Told, Who Would Tell Again?’: Romanticism and the Commonplaces of Rome,” European Romantic Review 17, no. 5 (2006): 522–3,535. 33. Kenneth Churchill, Italy and English Literature, 1764–1930 (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 1–4. 34. Malcolm Kelsall, Byron’s Politics (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1987), pp. 64–8. 35. James Buzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800–1918 (Cambridge: Clarenden Press, 1993), pp. 109–10. 36. John Moore, A View of Society and Manners, 1:69; Henry Coxe, A Picture of Italy, Being a Guide to the Antiquities and Curiosities of that Classical and Interesting Country (London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1815), p. iii. 37. Black, Italy and the Grand Tour, 164. 38. J. R. Hale, “English Travelers in Italy, 1814–21,” in Samuel Rogers, The Italian Journals, 93–5. 39. Eustace, Classical Tour, 1:vi. 40. Eustace, Classical Tour, 1:xiv–xv. 41. Henry Sass, A Journey to Rome and Naples, Performed in 1817, Giving an Account of the Present State of Italy, and Containing Observations on the Fine Arts (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1818), pp. 101, 325–31. 42. Buzard, The Beaten Track, 10; and Buzard, “A Continent of Pictures: Reflections on the ‘Europe’ of Nineteenth-Century Tourists,” PLMA 108, no. 1 (1993): 33–4. 43. Cheeke, Byron and Place, 103–4. 44. Cheeke, Byron and Place, 99. 45. British Lady’s Magazine, 3rd ser., 1 (December 1818): 266, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 1:375. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., “Elysium” can mean “the supposed state or abode of the blessed after death” and “a place or state of ideal or perfect happiness.” See “Elysium,” senses 1, 2, and 3. 46. Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, 1–2. 47. See Kelsall, Byron’s Politics, 60. Kelsall’s examples are Robertson’s Charles V, Eustace’s Classical Tour and Sismondi’s Histoire république Italiennes du Moyen Age.



Notes

Notes

48. C. P. Brand, Italy and the English Romantics: The Italianate Fashion in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), pp. 202,197–9. 49. John Moore, A View of Society and Manners in Italy, 1:72. 50. Rose, Letters, 2:139–40. 51. Jerome McGann, The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 326. 52. For a more recent interpretation of the Mediterranean in comparable terms see Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1966), trans. Siân Reynolds, abridged by Richard Ollard (London: HarperCollins, 1992), esp. pp. 65–102, 201–13. 53. Byron to Hoppner, February 28, 1818, in Letters, 6:16. 54. Byron to Michele Leoni, May 20, 1818, in Letters, 6:42. 55. Byron to John Murray and to Thomas Moore, both March 25, 1817, in Letters, 5:191, 187–8. 56. Byron to Murray, July 15, 1817, in Letters, 5:253. 57. Byron to Moore, November 6, 1816, in Letters, 5:123. 58. Byron to Douglas Kinnaird, November 27, 1816, in Letters, 5:135. 59. “Col Fitzgerald returned to serve—not his country, for that’s Ireland—but England, which is a different thing.” Byron to Moore, December 24, 1816, in Letters, 5:146–7. 60. Buzard, The Beaten Track, 100. 61. John Moore, A View of Society and Manners in Italy, 2:495. 62. Coxe, A Picture of Italy, xxxvii–xxxix. 63. Rogers, Italy, A Poem: Part the Second (London: John Murray, 1828), p. 69. 64. Rose, Letters, 1:9, 15–18, 224, 151. 65. Andreas Fahrmeir, Citizenship: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 46–50. 66. Hale, “English Travelers,” 79. 67. Fahrmeir, Citizenship, 46. 68. Sass, Journey to Rome and Naples, 1, 5. 69. [James Sloan], Rambles in Italy in the Years 1816–17, by an American (Baltimore: Maxwell, 1818), pp. 23–8, 31–3, 203. 70. Byron to Thomas Moore, November 6, 1816, in Letters, 5:123. 71. Hobhouse’s notes to Childe Harold, in Byron, Poetical Works, 2:230–1n, 242n. 72. Byron to Murray, August 7 and September 17, 1817, in Letters, 5:255, 266. 73. Byron’s note to Childe Harold, in Poetical Works, 2:235–6n. 74. Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 1, 4. 75. Byron, Poetical Works, 4:475n. 76. Byron’s note to “Mournful Ballad,” in Poetical Works, 4:476n. 77. Cheeke, Byron and Place, 121, 132–3, 95. 78. [John Hookam Frere], Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stow-Market in Suffolk, Harness



212

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89.

90.

91.

92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

213

and Collar Makers [. . .], 2nd ed., 2 volumes (London: John Murray, 1818), 1:1–4. Byron, Poetical Works, 4:485n. British Review 11 (May 1818): 329–30, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 1:456–7. British Review 12 (August 1818): 1–2, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 1:459. Literary Gazette 2 (May 1818): 274, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 4:1399. Edinburgh Review 30 (June 1818): 89, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 2:894. Edinburgh Review 30 (June 1818): 98–9, 118, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, B, 2:899, 908. Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, 348. Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, 483–4. Germaine de Staël, “De l’esprit des traductions,” in Oeuvres Complètes, 2 volumes (Paris: Didot, 1836), 2:297. The translations are my own. An Italian version of the essay was published in Biblioteca Italiana in June 1816 under the title “Sulla maniera e l’utilita delle traduzioni.” Staël, “Traductions,” 2:294, 296. For contemporary criticisms of Staël, see Robert Casillo, The Empire of Stereotypes: Germaine de Staël and the Idea of Italy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 82, 273n. Hobhouse, Byron’s Bulldog, 238–9n. Hobhouse collaborated with Ugo Foscolo in writing the essay. See E. R. Vincent, Byron, Hobhouse and Foscolo: New Documents in the History of a Collaboration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949), pp. 18–20. John Claiborne Isbell, introduction to Corinne, or Italy, by Germaine de Staël, trans. and ed. Sylvia Raphael (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. xii. Isbell, The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda in Staëľs De l’Allemagne, 1810–13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 1. Casillo, The Empire of Stereotypes, 81. Staël, Corinne, ou l’Italie, 3 volumes (London: Peltier, 1807), 1:28–9, 327. Translations are from Corinne, trans. Raphael. Pierre Macherey, The Object of Literature, trans. David Macey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 21. McGann, The Beauty of Inflections, 324. Joanne Wilkes, Lord Byron and Madame de Staël: Born for Opposition (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 100–4. Wilkes, Lord Byron and Madame de Staël, 117–18, 145–9. Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, 347. Kelsall, Byron’s Politics, 79; Hobhouse, Historical Illustrations, 424, 466, 468, 514, 484. Hobhouse’s note to Childe Harold, in Byron, Poetical Works, 2:237n.



Notes

4

Notes

“Revolution in a European Nation”: The Shelley Circle, January 1817–March 1818

1. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text, ed. Marilyn Butler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 13, 122, 138, 161. 2. William St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), p. 437. 3. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 254–5n. 4. Franco Moretti, Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms (London: Verso, 1983), pp. 84–6. 5. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 37–8. 6. Joseph Lew, “The Deceptive Other: Mary Shelley’s Critique of Orientalism in Frankenstein,” Studies in Romanticism 30 (1991): 272–6. 7. Percy Shelley to Byron, September 8 and 29, 1816, in Letters, 1:504, 508. 8. Percy Shelley to an unknown publisher, October 13, 1817, in Letters, 1:563–4. 9. Quotations from Laon and Cythna are from the text edited by Jack Donovan contained within The Poems of Shelley, ed. Geoffrey Matthews and Kelvin Everest, 2 volumes to date (New York: Longman, 1989–). For Percy Shelley’s preface, see 2:32, 35. References to Laon and Cythna are by line number. 10. St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, 431. 11. Mary Shelley, The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–1844, ed. Paula Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert, 2 volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 1:87. 12. Wollstonecraft, An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and the Effect it has Produced in Europe, 2nd ed. (London: Johnson, 1795), pp. 220–1, 231, 502, 305, vii, 498. 13. Examiner, February 9, 1817, 81; February 23, 1817, 113; April 6, 1817, 209. 14. Mary Shelley, Journals, 1:100. 15. Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, France (London: Colburn, 1817), p. 89. 16. Examiner, January 12, 1817, 17; September 21, 1817, 611; April 27, 1817, 275. 17. Monthly Review, 2nd ser., 88 (March 1819): 323–4, in Donald Reiman, ed., The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers. Part C: Shelley, Keats, and London Radical Writers, 2 volumes (New York: Garland, 1972), 2:702–3. 18. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 4 (January 1819): 476–9, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, C, 1:97–100. 19. Examiner, March 1, 1818, 140; August 5, 1821, 481–2. See also Kevin Gilmartin, Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 214–15. 20. Examiner, March 1, 1818, 141. 21. Leigh Hunt, Foliage; or Poems Original and Translated (London: Ollier, 1818), pp. 9–10. 22. Percy Shelley, The Poems of Shelley, 2:37, 41. 23. Percy Shelley et al., Shelley and His Circle 1773–1822: The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection, ed. Kenneth Neill Cameron, Donald H. Reiman, and Doucet



214

24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

215

Devin Fischer, 10 volumes to date (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961–), 5:155. Percy Shelley, Letters, 1:533. The list includes, among others, Henry Brougham, Lords Grosvenor, Holland and Grey, Sir Francis Burdett, William Cobbett, Douglas Kinnaird, John Cartwright, Robert Owens, George Ensor, and the editors of the Statesman, Morning Chronicle and Independent Whig. Percy Shelley to Ollier, December 11, 1817, in Letters, 1:579. For more on how the scholarly world in this period “considered itself to be in some ways separate from the rest of society,” see Goldgar, Impolite Learning, 3. For Shelley, however, this apparent separation enables greater freedom of thought and potential activism rather than indifferent detachment. Examiner, December 28, 1817, 827. Examiner, January 12, 1817, 17; March 9, 1817, 145. Peacock, “Memoirs of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Part II,” Fraser’s Magazine 61 (January 1860): 101, quoted in Michael Rossington, “Shelley’s Republics,” in Heather Glen and Paul Hamilton.eds., Repossessing the Romantic Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 65. Rossington, “Shelley’s Republics,” 63–69, 73. Rossington discusses several nineteenth-century writers who identify a “connection between the utopianism of the 1790s and the 1650s.” Furthermore, Percy Shelley’s understanding of the English Revolution was “Europeanized” by his reading of Rousseau’s works and Sismondi’s Histoire des républiques italiennes (1818). See also Timothy Morton and Nigel Smith, eds., Radicalism in British Literary Culture, 1650–1830: From Revolution to Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Examiner, February 23, 1817, 113; March 29, 1818, 199. Jeffrey Cox, “Leigh Hunt’s Foliage: A Cockney Manifesto,” in Nicholas Roe, ed., Leigh Hunt: Life, Poetics, Politics (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 63. Hunt, Foliage, 8, 15, 13, 10. Hunt, “To The Right Honourable Lord Byron, On His Departure for Italy and Greece,” in Foliage, lxxi–lxxii. Hunt, “On the Poetic Character,” in Hazlitt [and Hunt], Round Table, 1:183. Examiner, August 17, 1817, 520. Hazlitt, “On the Literary Character” and “On Poetical Versatility” in Round Table, 2:192, 232–3. Wollstonecraft, French Revolution, 21, 3, 498. [Constantin François de Chasseboeuf, Comte de] Volney, The Ruins; or A Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, Translated from the French (London: Searle, [1795]), pp. 112–13. Sir Charles Morgan, “Summary of the State of Political Opinion in France,” in Lady Morgan, France, clxxviii. Examiner, March 8, 1818, 157; January 12, 1817, 17; July 13, 1817, 433. Quarterly Review, 21 (April 1819): 460–71, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, C, 2:770–6. Percy Shelley to an unknown publisher, October 13, 1817, in Letters, 1:563.



Notes

Notes

43. Nigel Leask, Romantic Writers and the East: Anxiety of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 128, 89. 44. Percy Shelley to Ollier, December 11, 1817, in Letters, 1:579. Hunt also described Shelley as “a patrician-looking young cosmopolite” (Hunt to Mary Shelley, July 25–27, 1819, in Shelley and His Circle, 6:846). 45. Percy Shelley, An Address to the People on The Death of the Princess Charlotte, in Prose Works, 1:232. 46. Volney, Ruins, 115–16. 47. Percy Shelley to an unknown publisher, October 13, 1817, in Letters, 1:563. 48. Mary Shelley, Journals, 2:642. 49. Edward Daniel Clarke, Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, 6 volumes (London: Cadell and Davies, 1810–23), 1:669; 2:4–8, 20–1, 49. 50. Quarterly Review 11 (April 1819): 466, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, C, 2:773. 51. Examiner, October 10, 1819, 653, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, C, 1:447–8. 52. St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, 234, 432. 53. Montesquieu, “Some Reflections on the Persian Letters” (1754), in Montesquieu, Persian Letters (1721), trans. C. B. Betts (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 284. 54. Leask, British Romantic Writers and the East, 72–3, 10. 55. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 4. 56. Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1817), pp. 378–9; Examiner, January 12, 1817, 26. 57. Hunt, Foliage, 26. 58. [T.J. Hogg], Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff, Translated From the Original Latin MSS, Under the Immediate Inspection of the Prince [. . .] (London: Hookham, 1813), pp. 75–6. 59. Mary Shelley, Journals, 1:92. 60. Henry Weber, Tales of the East, Comprising the Most Popular Romances of Oriental Origin [. . .], 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Ballantyne / Doig and Stirling, 1812), 1:iii. Ros Ballaster notes how eighteenth-century “oriental tales” are typically received both as “feigned stories” and “faithful representations” of the East. See Fables of the East: Selected Tales 1662–1785 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 1–2. 61. Price, Discourse on the Love of Our Country, 49–50. 62. Examiner, April 13, 1817, 230; January 12, 1817, 18; June 1, 1817, 337–8. 63. Wollstonecraft, French Revolution, 13–14. 64. Volney, Ruins, 117–18. 65. Hogg to Peacock, September 8, 1817, in Hogg, The Athenians: Being a Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson Hogg and his friends Thomas Love Peacock, Leigh Hunt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and others, ed. Walter Sidney Scott (London: Golden Cockerel, 1943), p. 38. 66. [Peacock], Rhododaphne; or, The Thessalian Spell: A Poem (London: Hookham / Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1818), p. 3.



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67. Thomas Ashe, Travels in America, 3 volumes (London: Philips, 1808), 1:2–4, 56–66. 68. William Baxter to Percy Shelley, December 25, 1817, in Percy Shelley, Letters, 1:586. The text of the letter was first published in the London Star, March 8, 1894 (see Shelley and his Circle, 5:380). 69. David Booth to Isabel Booth, June 9, 1818, in Shelley and his Circle, 5:391–2. 70. Percy Shelley to Byron, September 24 and January 17, 1817, in Letters, 1:557, 530. 71. “Declaration in Chancery,” in Percy Shelley, Prose Works, 1:168–9. The document is in Mary Shelley’s handwriting and bears evidence of revision by Godwin (Percy Shelley, Prose Works, 409n). 72. Godwin to an unknown correspondent, May 9, 1797, in St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, 173. 73. The use of the incest theme in Laon and Cythna indicates, once again, how it represents both a European social revolution and a degenerate non-European “other.” 74. Examiner, November 16, 1817, 731. 75. Cox, “Leigh Hunt’s Foliage,” 71. 76. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 2 (October 1817): 38–41, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, C, 1:49–52. 77. Richard Polwhele, The Unsex’ d Females, A Poem (London: Cadell and Davies, 1798), pp. 9–10, 19, 30. 78. Anthony Holden, The Wit in the Dungeon: A Life of Leigh Hunt (London: Little, Brown, 2005), p. 124. For more on Rimini and Hunt’s complex marital situation see Nicholas Roe, Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt (London: Pimlico, 2005), pp. 250–1. 79. Quarterly Review 21 (April 1819): 467–8, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, C, 2:774. 80. Examiner, October 10, 1819, 653, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, C, 1:448. 81. Ronald Paulson, Representations of Revolution (1789–1820) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 65, 268. 82. Peacock, Melincourt (1817), in Thomas Love Peacock, The Works of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones, 10 volumes (London: Constable, 1924–34), 2:401. 83. Lady Morgan, France, vii–viii. 84. Baxter to Isabel Booth, October 3, 1817, in Shelley and his Circle, 5:340.

5

“From a Particular to a Universal”: The Shelley Circle, 1820–22

1. Quarterly Review 21 (April 1819): 466, in Reiman, Romantics Reviewed, C, 2:773. 2. The Defence was composed between February and March 1821; Hellas was probably begun as early as April or June, and finished in October the same



Notes

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

Notes year. See Percy Shelley, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2002), pp. 509, 426–7. Percy Shelley, preface to Hellas, in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 430–1. Percy Shelley, preface to Hellas, 431. Percy Shelley, preface to Hellas, 431–2. Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847), ed. H. Buxton Forman (London: Milford, 1913), p. 264. For details of Medwin’s inaccuracies and exaggerations, see Medwin, Life of Shelley, ix–xxii. Examiner, October 7, 1821, 627. Michael Erkelenz, “Inspecting the Tragedy of Empire: Shelley’s Hellas and Æschylus’s Persians,” Philological Quarterly 76 (1997): 336n. Percy Shelley, preface to Hellas, 432. Percy Shelley, preface to Hellas, 432. Examiner, April 15, 1821, 231. William St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 83–7. Percy Shelley, preface to Hellas, 432. For more on the various meanings of “race,” see Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996), p. 5. Peter Kitson, for example, argues that the period witnessed a “paradigm shift in race theory and the ways in which ‘race’ was related to nationality and culture.” See Peter Kitson, “Romanticism and Colonialism: Races, Places, Peoples, 1785–1800,” in Fulford and Kitson, Romanticism and Colonialism, 20. See also Hannah Franziska Augstein, ed., Race: The Origins of an Idea, 1760–1850 (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996). Percy Shelley, preface to Hellas, 432. Quotations from Hellas are from the text in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. References are to line numbers. For more on the “Prologue,” see Percy Shelley, Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, volume 16, The Hellas Notebook, Bodleian MS. Shelley adds. e. 7, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Michael J. Neth (New York: Garland, 1994), xxxvi. Mary Shelley to Leigh Hunt, April 17, 1821, in Mary Shelley, The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed. Betty Bennett, 3 volumes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980–88), 1:189. Examiner, April 22, 1821, 248. The letter, dated April 5, also appears in Mary Shelley, Letters, 3:399. For a discussion about the relationship between the terms “Europe” and “the West,” see Delanty, Inventing Europe, 30–47. This practice is striking because it reverses the more common practice in the press copy of capitalizing some words and phrases (“The panther freedom fled to her old cover” (316) becomes “The panther Freedom [. . .] etc.”). See Percy Shelley, The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics: Shelley, gen. ed. Donald H. Reiman, volume 3, Hellas: A Lyrical Drama, ed. Donald H. Reiman (New York: Garland, 1985), pp. 26, 38.



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24. Hellas: A Lyrical Drama (London: Ollier, 1822), p. 6. For Shelley’s remarks on the printing of the poem, see Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 428. 25. Claire Clairmont, The Journals of Claire Clairmont, ed. Marion Kingston Stocking with David Mackenzie Stocking (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, University Press, 1968), p. 195. 26. See Melvin Richter, “Despotism,” in Philip Weiner, ed., Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 4 volumes (New York: Scribner, 1973), 2:1–18. 27. Percy Shelley’s note to Hellas, in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 462. 28. Percy Shelley to Claire Clairmont, February 18, 1821, in Letters, 2:267. Shelley is writing just before the Austrian army attacked Naples in March 1821 to suppress the constitutionalist uprising of 1820. In modern histories of the Risorgimento, the Neapolitan Revolution is often presented as an early episode in a national narrative leading to the formation of the Italian state. It is important, however, to see Shelley’s understanding of the Revolution and his language of “regeneration” outside this later nationalist framework. For him, the Revolution hints more broadly at “a system of future social life” in Europe and, perhaps, “the World.” For more on Naples, the revolutions of 1820–21, and the Austrian response, see Martin Clark, The Italian Risorgimento (London: Longman, 1998), pp. 36–7; Beales and Biagini, The Risorgimento, 40–43. 29. Luigi Battezzato, “Lyric (The Social and Poetic Status of the Chorus: Otherness, Authority and Integration),” in Justina Gregory, ed., A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), p. 154. 30. Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 510, 512, 535. 31. Percy Shelley, Defence, 515, 533. 32. Percy Shelley to Ollier, February or March 1821(?), in, Letters, 2:272–4. 33. [Peacock], “The Four Ages of Poetry,” Ollier’s Literary Miscellany 1 (1820): 184, 186–7, 195–7. 34. Clairmont, Journals, 226. 35. Percy Shelley to Byron, April 17, 1821, in Letters, 2:284. 36. Percy Shelley, Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, volume 20, The Defence of Poetry Fair Copies, A Facsimile of Bodleian MS. Shelley e. 6 and adds. d. 8, ed. Michael O’Neill (New York: Garland, 1994), p. 53. 37. Percy Shelley, Defence, 522, 518, 528. 38. Percy Shelley, Defence, 533. 39. [Mary Shelley], review of “The English in Italy, 3 volumes London 1826; Continental Adventures: A Novel, 3 volumes London 1826; Diary of An Émigré, London 1826,” The Westminster Review 12 (October 1826): 325, 326. 40. Percy Shelley to Byron, September 17, 1820, and Medwin, April 4, 1821, in Letters, 2:237, 280. 41. Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne, November 30, 1821, in Letters, 1:210. 42. Percy Shelley to John Gisborne, October 29,1820; Claire Clairmont, October 29,1820; Peacock, November 8, 1820, in Letters, 2:241, 243, 245. 43. Medwin, Sketches in Hindoostan (London: Ollier / Simpkin and Marshall, 1821). 44. Percy Shelley to Hogg, October 22, 1821, in Letters, 2:361.



Notes

Notes

45. Percy Shelley to Claire Clairmont, October 29, 1820, in Letters, 2:242. William St Clair speculates that this man may have been Trelawny, who at this point “was under the impression that the death of his father would make him a rich man, and made extravagant offers to his friends.” See Trelawny: The Incurable Romancer (London: John Murray, 1977), p. 41. 46. Line numbers refer to the text in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 393–407. 47. Marta Zając, “The Exiles of the Outside,” in Wojciech H. Kalaga and Tadewz Rachwa−t , eds., Exile: Displacements and Misplacements (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 78–9, 84. 48. Medwin, Hindoostan, 8. 49. Percy Shelley to Hogg, October 22, 1821, in Letters, 2:361. 50. Peacock to Percy Shelley, October 1821, in Percy Shelley, Letters, 2:361n. 51. Maria Schoina, “Leigh Hunt’s ‘Letters from Abroad’ and the ‘Anglo-Italian’ Discourse of The Liberal,” Romanticism 12, no. 2 (2006): 121. 52. Mario Curreli and Anthony Johnson, eds., introduction to Paradise of Exiles: Shelley and Byron in Pisa (Pisa: Ets Editrice Pisa, 1988), pp. xi, xv. 53. For details about “Mrs. Mason,” see Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, rev. ed. (London: Harper, 1994), pp. 575–6; St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, 221, 292–3. 54. The British Critic is cited in Stabler, Byron, Poetics and History, 38–9. Jeffrey Cox’s, Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School contains much information about Hunt’s circle and its critics. For a brief overview of the Carbonari and its activities, see Beales and Biagini, The Risorgimento, 29–30, 41. For Byron’s involvement with the group, see Leslie Marchand, Byron: A Biography, 3 volumes (London: John Murray, 1957), 2:849, 878–9, 890–1, 898; 3:1031, 1183. 55. For the dating of Charles I, see the different accounts in Percy Shelley, Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, volume 12, The “Charles the First” Draft Notebook, A Facsimile of Bodleian MS. Shelley adds. e. 17, ed. Nora Crook (New York: Garland, 1991), and Percy Shelley, Hellas Notebook, p. xxxi. 56. Quotations from Charles I are taken from the text in Shelley, Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, revised G. M. Matthews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970). References are to scene and line number. 57. Percy Shelley, “Charles the First” Draft Notebook, 89. 58. See Leo Salingar, “The New World in The Tempest,” in Jean-Pierre Maquerlot and Michèle Willems, eds., Travel and Drama in Shakespeare’s Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 216–17. For the play’s engagement with colonialism, see Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean 1492–1797, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 89–134. 59. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., “gynaecocoenic.” 60. Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989), pp. 81, 74. For the radical politics of pantisocracy, see James C. McKusick, “Wisely forgetful: Coleridge and the Politics of Pantisocracy,” in Fulford and Kitson, Romanticism and Colonialism, 107–128; Nigel Leask, “Pantisocracy and the Politics of the ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads,” in Alison



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61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68.

69. 70. 71.

72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79.

80.

221

Yarrington and Kelvin Everest, eds., Reflections of Revolution, Images of Romanticism (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 39–58. Clairmont, Journals, 180 Edward Williams’s “Journal,” in Maria Gisborne and Edward E. Williams: Shelley’s Friends, Their Journals and Letters, ed. Frederick L. Jones (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1951), p. 102. Shelley to Peacock, June 20 or 21, 1819, in C. L. Cline, Byron, Shelley and their Pisan Circle (London: John Murray, 1952), p. 3. For more on this affair, see Cline, Pisan Circle, 91–106. Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne, April 6–10, 1822, in Letters, 1:230. Mary Shelley to Leigh Hunt, December 3, 1820 and December 29, 1820–1, January 1821 in Letters, 1:165, 171. Percy Shelley to Mary Shelley, August 14, 1821, in Letters, 2:337; Edward Williams, Journals, 180. In fact, the relationship with the British was rather more complex: Mary did attend some balls and social events arranged by the expatriates. See Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne, February 9 and March 7, 1822, in Letters, 1:217, 223. Percy Shelley to Teresa Guiccioli, August 9, 1821(?), in Letters, 2:238. Shelley may be exaggerating for effect, since he wrote this letter at Byron’s request to dissuade the Countess from wanting to move to Geneva, where there was a sizeable British community. Percy Shelley to Mary Shelley, August 15–16, 1821, in Letters, 2:339. Percy Shelley to Peacock, January 11, 1822(?), in Letters, 2:373. Hasia R. Diner, “History and the Study of Immigration: Narrative of the Particular,” and Caroline Brettell, “Theorizing Migration in Anthropology,” in Caroline Brettell and James Hollifield, eds., Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 33–6, 114. Homi Bhabha, ed., in the introduction to Nation and Narration (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 4. Schoina, “Leigh Hunt’s ‘Letters from Abroad’ ” 116; Schoina, “ ‘To engraft ourselves on foreign stocks’: Byron’s Poetics of Acculturation,” Romanticism on the Net 43 (2006) http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2006/v/n43/013593ar. html (accessed on March 11, 2009), paragraphs 8–9 of 16. For Mary Shelley’s own record of her internationalist Pisan circle, see her Journals 1:349. Mary Shelley, review of “The English in Italy,” 328. Buzard, The Beaten Track, 7. Mary Shelley, Valperga or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823), ed. Stuart Curran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 38. Percy Shelley to Ollier, September 25, 1821, in Letters, 2:353. Martin Clark notes that one Italian revolutionary secret society was called the “Guelfi,” a name which perhaps alludes to the medieval conflicts and implies a conceptual connection between the two periods and their respective struggles over the region’s future (The Italian Risorgimento, 36). Mary Shelley, Valperga, 8, 22.



Notes

Notes

81. Stuart Curran, introduction to Valperga, xxi–xxii. Curran also explains how these ideas of locality and universalism stem from Mary’s reading of Sismondi’s Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen âge. For a discussion of how Sismondi’s ideas about northern and southern European literature were influenced by Montesquieu, see Dainotto, Europe (in theory), 163. 82. Mary Shelley, Valperga, 22. 83. Mary Shelley, Valperga, 109–10. In the later nineteenth century, Dante became a “national icon” of the Risorgimento, used to shape “awareness of the nature and significance of [Italian] unification.” See Andrea Ciccarelli, “Dante and the Culture of Risorgimento: Literary, Political or Ideological Icon?” in Albert Russell Ascoli and Krystyna von Henneberg, eds., Making and Remaking Italy: The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento (Oxford: Berg, 2001), p. 77. For the Shelley–Byron circle, however, Dante is a European (and universal) figure, whose literary and political import spreads beyond a specific region or period. 84. Byron, The Prophecy of Dante, Canto 2, lines 19–29, in Poetical Works, 4:222. 85. Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays (London: Granta, 2000), pp. 176, 183. 86. Shelley began translating Calderón in January 1822 and continued into April. He had translated Faust as early as 1815–16, but began a new version in the first quarter of 1822. See Percy Shelley, The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics: Shelley, volume7, Shelley’s 1821–22 Huntington Notebook: A Facsimile of Huntington MS. HM2111, ed. Mary A. Quinn (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. xxxvi–xxxvii; and Percy Shelley, The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, volume 19, The Faust Draft Notebook, A Facsimile of Bodleian MS. Shelley adds.e.18, ed. Nora Crook and Timothy Webb (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. lvii–lviii. 87. Kalaga, “Translating the Exile Self,” in Kalaga and Rachwa−t, Exile: Displacements and Misplacements, 49, 54. 88. Timothy Webb, The Violet in the Crucible: Shelley and Translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 30–37. 89. Percy Shelley to an unknown correspondent, spring 1821(?), in Letters, 2:278. See also Percy Shelley to John Gisborne, January 12 and April 10, 1822, Letters 2:376, 407. 90. Percy Shelley’s note to the “Prologue in Heaven,” in Poetical Works, 749n. 91. See the drafts of this passage in Percy Shelley, Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, volume 7, “Shelley’s Last Notebook”: Bodleian MS. Shelley adds.e.20, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Hélène Dworzan Reiman (New York: Garland, 1990), p. 141. 92. Percy Shelley, Defence, 515. 93. Medwin, Life of Shelley, 263. 94. Webb, Shelley and Translation, 21. 95. Percy Shelley to Claire Clairmont, February 18, 1821, in Letters, 2:266. 96. Percy Shelley to Ollier, June 16, 1821, in Letters, 2:303. 97. Taaffe, A Comment on the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (London: John Murray, 1822), pp. vi, xv–xvii.



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98. Percy Shelley, Faust Draft Notebook, xxxv, lviii. 99. Mary Shelley, Journals, 1:383. 100. Donald H. Reiman, introduction to Thomas Medwin, Oswald and Edwin, Sketches in Hindoostan, Ahasuerus (New York: Garland, 1978). 101. Percy Shelley to Taaffe, June 5, 1821(?), in Letters, 2:293. 102. Clairmont, Journals, 272, 278–83. 103. For more on collaboration and “the group as a site of literary production,” see Cox, Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School, 4–12. 104. Percy Shelley to John Gisborne, April 10, 1822, in Letters, 2:406. 105. Webb, Shelley and Translation, 153. 106. Percy Shelley, Hellas Notebook, 197. The square brackets indicate probable readings of problematic words. 107. Webb, Shelley and Translation, 246–8. Quotations from Shelley’s translation of Calderón’s El Mágico Prodigioso are from the text in Poetical Works, 731–48. References are to scene and line number. Prose translations from Calderón are from The Prodigious Magician: El Mágico Prodigioso, trans. Bruce Wardropper (Madrid: José Porrúa Toranzas, 1982). 108. Percy Shelley, “Letter to Maria Gisborne,” lines 175–82, in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 333–4. For a brief summary of the 1820 Spanish Revolution, see Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 65–7. 109. Schlegel, A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, trans. John Black, 2 volumes (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1815), 2:340–2. Percy and Mary Shelley read this edition in 1818 (Mary Shelley, Journal, 2:671). 110. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., “cession,” sense 2. 111. Webb, Shelley and Translation, 262–3. 112. Webb, Shelley and Translation, 198. Quotations from Shelley’s translation of Faust are from the text in Poetical Works, 748–62. References are to scene and line number. The prose translation from German is Webb’s. 113. For more on the association of Napoleon and Satan, see Simon Bainbridge, Napoleon and the English Romantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 110–33. For the contemporaneous view of Napoleon as an overreacher, see Paul Stock, “Imposing on Napoleon: The Romantic Appropriation of Bonaparte,” Journal of European Studies 36, no. 4 (2006): 378–80. 114. Percy Shelley, The Triumph of Life, lines 217–9, in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 490. 115. For a summary of these issues, see Jeremy Munday, Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 134–5; Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva, “Translation and Traveling Theory: The Role of Translation in the Migration of Literary Theories Across Culture and Power Differentials” (PhD diss., University of London, 2002), p. 24. 116. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 37–8. 117. Lawrence Venuti, ed., “Translation, Community, Utopia,” in The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 483, 491–5, 501. 118. Susanne Stark, “Behind Inverted Commas”: Translation and Anglo-German Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century (Clevedon: Multilingual



Notes

Notes

Matters, 1999), pp. 65–7. Stark bases her analysis on Goethe’s private correspondence with Thomas Carlyle, which remained unpublished until 1886. 119. Susan Bassnet, Translation Studies, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 68. 120. Ruth Evans, “Metaphor of Translation,” in Mona Baker, ed., The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies (New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 150.

6 “A Congress for Outworn Europe”: Byron’s International Relations, October 1822–July 1823 1. “Treaty of Alliance and Friendship between Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia,” November 20,1815, in David Douglas, gen. ed., English Historical Documents, volume 11, English Historical Documents 1783–1832, ed. A. Aspinall and E. Anthony Smith (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1959), pp. 955–7. 2. Byron, “Dedication” to Don Juan, lines 108–10, 127, in Poetical Works, 5:3–8. Subsequent quotations from Don Juan are from the text in this edition. References are to Canto and line number. 3. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in NineteenthCentury Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 3. 4. Leigh Hunt, preface to The Liberal no. 1, in The Liberal: Verse and Prose from the South, 2 volumes (London: John Hunt, 1822), 1:vii. 5. According to George Dumas Stout, the Examiner was edited from October 1821 to 1830 by Henry Leigh Hunt, John Hunt’s son, and Leigh Hunt’s nephew. See The Political History of Leigh Hunt’s Examiner, Washington University Studies New Series: Language and Literature 19 (St Louis: Washington University Press, 1949), p. 63n. 6. The Examiner, July 28, 1822, 465–7. 7. See “Convention between the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia,” September 14/26, 1815, in Annual Register 1816, 381–2. 8. Thomas Moore, Fables for the Holy Alliance, Rhymes on the Road. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1823), pp. 57–8. Castlereagh had opposed intervention when the Spanish Revolution began in 1820. At Verona, his replacement as Congress delegate, Wellington, used Castlereagh’s views as a precedent when the issue reemerged. See “Confidential Minute of Viscount Castlereagh on the Affairs of Spain,” May 1820, in Annual Register, or A View of the History, Politics and Literature of the Year 1823 (London: Rivington, 1824), pp. 469–77. 9. Byron, preface to Canto 6 of Don Juan, lines 9–16, in Poetical Works, 5:295. See also Byron to Hobhouse, March 9, 1822, and Kinnaird, September 18, 1822, in Letters, 9:124; Don Juan 9.387, 10.468. 10. Hunt, The Liberal, 1:ix. 11. The Examiner, August 18, 1822, 514.



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12. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Dodsley, 1790), p. 31. 13. Quotations from The Age of Bronze are from the text in Poetical Works, 7:1–25. References are to line number. 14. Moore, Holy Alliance, 17, 50–1. 15. Annual Register 1823, 3–4. 16. Moore, Holy Alliance, 159; The Examiner, December 8, 1822, 769. 17. The Examiner, January 26, 1823, 67. 18. Byron to Moore, August 8, 1822, and Kinnaird, January 29, 1823, in Letters, 9:191; 10:92. 19. Hazlitt, “Arguing in a Circle,” in The Liberal, 2:347–8, 351. 20. Moore, Memoirs, 4:43. 21. Lord John Russell, Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht, 2 volumes (London: John Murray, 1824–9), 1:9–16, 55–8, 61, 70–1. 22. Byron to Lady Hardy, 17 May 1823, in Letters, 10:173. 23. Byron to Edward Dawkins, April 28, 1822, in Letters, 9:149. 24. Byron to Lady Hardy, March 28, 1823, in Letters, 10.129. 25. Byron to Murray, November 18, 1822, in Letters, 10.36. 26. Byron to Kinnaird, December 30, 1822, and Goethe, July 22, 1823, in Letters, 10:73, 213. 27. Byron to Count Alfred D’Orsay, April 22, 1823, in Letters, 10:156. 28. Moore, Holy Alliance, 33–4. 29. Hunt, “To the Abusers of The Liberal ” and “The Monarchs, An Ode for Congress,” in The Liberal, 1:245; 2:191. 30. The Liberal published translations of scenes from Goethe’s Faust, the first Canto of Pulci’s Morgante Maggiore and poems by Alfieri and Ariosto. 31. Hunt, “The Giuli Tre,” in The Liberal, 1:207. 32. The Examiner, July 28, 1822, 467. 33. Leigh Hunt to Elizabeth Kent, December 20,1822, in Leigh Hunt, The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, ed. Thornton Hunt, 2 volumes (London: Smith and Elder, 1862), 1:201. 34. Angela Esterhammer, The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 23–4, 330. 35. Carsten Holbraad, The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory 1815–1914 (London: Longman, 1970), pp. 3–4, 8. 36. Paul Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 537–9, 578–81. 37. René Albrecht-Carrié, The Concert of Europe (London: Macmillan, 1968), p. 30. 38. “Definitive Treaty of Peace and Amity between Austria, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Russia and Sweden, and France,” May 30, 1814, in Clive Parry, ed., The Consolidated Treaty Series 231 volumes (New York: Oceana, 1969–81), 63:172. 39. “Speech of the King to both Houses of the British Parliament on the Opening of the Session,” February 5, 1822, in British and Foreign State Papers, 170 volumes (London: Ridgway / Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1841–1977), 9:1.



Notes

Notes

40. Wellington to the French delegation [at Verona], October 30, 1822, and “Minute by Wellington,” November 20, 1822, in British and Foreign State Papers, 10:6–10. 41. “Declaration between Austria, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain, and Sweden respecting the Departure of Napoleon from Elba,” Vienna March 13, 1815, in Consolidated Treaty Series, 63:497. 42. “Treaty of Alliance and Friendship between Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia,” November 20, 1815, in English Historical Documents, 11.955–7. 43. Metternich, Castlereagh, Hardenberg and Capo D’Istria to Richelieu, November 20, 1815, in Annual Register 1815, 419–21. 44. “George IV’s Communication to the Cabinet on the South American Question,” January 27, 1825, in English Historical Documents, 11:967. 45. Lord Ellenborough, speech in the House of Lords, April 24, 1823, in Parliamentary Debates, 2nd ser., 25 volumes (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy et al., 1820–30), 8:1179–84. 46. Liverpool to Castlereagh, October 3, 1815, in English Historical Documents, 11:951. 47. “Treaty of Union, Concert and Subsidy between Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia,” March 1, 1814, in Consolidated Treaty Series, 63:84–6. 48. “Substance of Treaties between Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia,” March 25, 1815, in Annual Register 1815, 367. 49. “Memorandum on the Treaties of 1814 and 1815, Submitted by the British Plenipotentiaries at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle,” October 1818, in Albrecht-Carrié, Concert of Europe, 36–41. 50. “Declaration of the Five Cabinets,” November 15, 1818, in Albrecht-Carrié, Concert of Europe, 46. 51. “Convention between the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia,” September 14/26, 1815, in Annual Register 1816, 381–2. 52. See Consolidated Treaty Series volumes 63 and 64 for many examples. 53. “Declaration relative to the Slave Trade,” in Annual Register 1815, 358–9. 54. See, for example the Congress of Verona “Declaration respecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade between Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia,” November 28, 1822, in Consolidated Treaty Series, 73:32; and Wellington’s “Memorandum at Verona,” November 24, 1822, in British and Foreign State Papers, 10:98–9. 55. See Irby C. Nichols, The European Pentarchy and the Congress of Verona 1822 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), pp. 7, 20, 244–57. Austria and Britain worked to separate the Moldavia-dispute from the Greek War. At Vienna, the powers supported Russia in the former conflict. 56. “Note presented to the Sublime Porte [of Turkey] by Baron de Strognov, the Russian Envoy Extraordinary,” in Annual Register, or A View of the History, Politics and Literature of the Year 1821 (London: Rivington, 1822), p. 411. 57. “Speech of the King of France on opening the Session of the Chambers,” June 4, 1822, in Annual Register, or A View of the History, Politics and Literature of the Year 1822 (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1823), p. 527. 58. Annual Register 1821, iv–v; 1822, vi–vii; 1823, iii–vi.



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59. “Circular despatch of the Courts of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, to their Ministers and Charges d’Affairs at the German and Northern Courts,” in Annual Register 1821, 355–6. 60. “Despatch from the Count de Nesselrode to the Chargé d’Affaires of Russia at Madrid,” November 14/26, 1822; “Despatch of Metternich to the Chargé d’Affaires of Austria at Madrid,” December 14,1822; and “Despatch from the Count de Bernstorff to the Chargé d’Affaires of Prussia at Madrid,” November 22, 1822, in Annual Register 1822, 565–8, 569–71, 572–4. 61. Hamilton, speech in the House of Commons, March 27, 1823, in Parliamentary Debates, 2nd ser., 8:773–6. 62. Lord King, speech in the House of Lords, April 24,1823, in Parliamentary Debates, 2nd ser., 8:1218–20. 63. “The Secret Treaty of Verona,” Morning Chronicle, June 11, 1823, 3. 64. An account of the forgery appears in Nichols, The European Pentarchy, 317–19. 65. See, for example, the Gentleman’s Magazine, January 1823, 74. The circular was prepared at Verona. 66. Byron, “Detached Thoughts,” October 15, 1821– May 18, 1822, and Byron to Kinnaird, February 17, 1822, and Hanson, February 17, 1822, in Letters, 9:30, 105–6. 67. Thomas Moore, Memoirs, 3:343, 347. 68. Jane Stabler has shown that while being abroad Byron received much of his news from Galignani’s Messenger, an English language magazine, reprinting various newspapers and journal articles. Partly for this reason, she says, Byron’s writing in the 1820s displays “a juxtaposition of political outlooks,” drawing from Galignani’s “collage of literary and journalistic voices” (Byron, Poetics and History, 138–46). However, I have not found such a “collage” of political perspectives in Byron’s interpretations of the congress system. Aside from his praise for George Canning (see later text), he adopts a steadfastly anti-Holy Alliance and anti-Tory government perspective which is consistent with contemporary Whig and liberal thinking. See also Kelsall, Byron’s Politics, 2–33. 69. Nichols, The European Pentarchy, 320–5. 70. Byron, Poetical Works, 7:126n. 71. Nichols, The European Pentarchy, 26–33, 135. 72. “Despatch from Nesselrode,” November 14/26, 1822, in Annual Register 1822, 566. 73. “Despatch of Metternich to the Chargé d’Affaires at Madrid,” December 14, 1822, in Annual Register 1822, 569–70. 74. “Confidential Minute of Viscount Castlereagh on the Affairs of Spain,” May 1820, in Annual Register 1823, 469–70. 75. “Circular Despatch to His Majesty’s Missions at Foreign Courts,” January 19, 1821, in Annual Register 1821, 357. 76. See, for example, Castlereagh’s speech in the House of Commons on May 4, 1821 in Parliamentary Debates, 2nd ser., 5:515–18. Here, he refutes radical calls for war with France using very similar arguments: intervention in other countries affairs, for any reason, would contravene the “peace of Europe.”



Notes

Notes

77. Canning to the French government, February 1, 1823, in George Canning, Some Official Correspondence of George Canning, ed. Edward Stapleton, 2 volumes (London: Longman and Green, 1887), 1:72. 78. See Parliamentary Debates, 2nd ser., 8:904–64, for details of the various papers. They were also printed in Annual Register 1823. 79. See Wellington to the French delegation at Verona, October 30, 1822, and Canning to the Viscount de Marcellus, January 10, 1823, in British and Foreign State Papers, 10:6, 21. 80. Lansdowne, speech in the House of Lords April 24,1823, in Parliamentary Debates, 2nd ser., 8:1249, 1252. 81. Grey, speech in the House of Lords April 24,1823, in Parliamentary Debates, 2nd ser., 8:1250. 82. Hobhouse, speech in the House of Commons, April 28,1823, in Parliamentary Debates, 2nd ser., 8:1335–6, 1343, 1349. 83. See Byron, Poetical Works, 7:119n; and Moore, Memoirs, 4:43. Moore also reveals here that the idea for the Fables was conceived after a conversation with Lord Lansdowne. 84. Hunt, “The Monarchs, An Ode for Congress” and “The Dogs,” in The Liberal, 2:188; 1:245. 85. Hobhouse to Byron, March 2, 1823, in Byron’s Bulldog, 326. 86. Percy Shelley to Claire Clairmont, February 18, 1821, in Letters, 2:267. 87. Moore, Memoirs, 3:346; 4:84. 88. Hunt, advertisement for The Liberal no.3, in The Liberal, 2:viii. 89. Byron to Hoppner, January13, 1823 and John Hunt, May 5, 1823, in Letters, 10:83, 166. 90. The Examiner, December 8, 1822, 769. 91. The Times, December 3, 1822, 2 92. The Examiner, January 26, 1823, 65; March 2, 1823, 145. 93. The Examiner, January 26, 1823, 67; April 27, 1823, 274. 94. The Examiner, April 27, 1823, 273. The paper had demanded the publication of Verona documents on March 2, 1823. 95. Bruce Robbins, “Actually Existing Cosmopolitanisms,” 1–2. 96. Byron bases his account on the mutiny of the Bounty in 1789, which had become notorious following a pamphlet war between the ship’s captain William Bligh and Edward Christian, brother of the mutineer Fletcher Christian. For the main texts in the Bounty controversy, see William Bligh and Edward Christian, The Bounty Mutiny, ed. R. D. Madison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001). Byron also acknowledges his debt to William Mariner’s Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands (1817) in a headnote to his poem (see Poetical Works, 7:26). 97. Quotations from The Island are from the text in Poetical Works, 7:26–74. References are to Canto and line number. 98. Byron to Joshua Hayward, March 29, 1823, and Kinniard, September 24, 1822, in Letters, 10:131; 9:215. 99. Denis Diderot, Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, ed. Gilbert Chinard (Paris: Droz, 1935), p. 177. The translation is from Diderot, Political Writings,



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trans. and ed. John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 66. 100. James C. McKusick, “Wisely forgetful,” 107–8. Carl Thompson also emphasizes the radical “political dimension” of The Island ’s South Seas setting: Toobonai is a “Rousseauistic paradise, where all property is held in common and where distinctions of rank and class barely exist.” See The Suffering Traveller and the Romantic Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 268–71. 101. Fulford and Kitson, eds., “Texts, contexts, issues,” in Romanticism and Colonialism, 10–11, 5.

7 “The Cause of Greece, the Cause of Europe”: The Byron Circle, July 1823–April 1824 1. The Cause of Greece, the Cause of Europe, Translated from the German (London: Ridgway, 1821). 2. Byron died before the loan was delivered, and this contributed to further delays in its distribution. See William St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 211–17. 3. Byron to the Greek Government, November 30, 1823, in Letters, 11:69. 4. C. M. Woodhouse, The Philhellenes (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1969), pp. 26–7, 52–5. Hughes’s journey is recorded in his Travels in Sicily, Greece and Albania, 2 volumes (London: Mawman, 1820). 5. T. S. Hughes, An Address to the People of England in the Cause of Greece (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1822), p. 1. 6. Edward Blaquiere, Report on the Present State of the Greek Confederation, and on its Claims to the Support of the Christian World (London: Whittaker, 1823), p. 7. 7. Erskine was also a founding member, and Sheridan spoke at the first public meeting of the Committee on May 15, 1823. Although Hughes does not appear on any membership list, Frederick Rosen argues that he was an “unofficial member” through his connections with E. H. Barker, another founder. See Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece: Constitutionalism, Nationalism and Early Liberal Political Thought (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1992), pp. 225–30. A full membership list appears as an appendix to Woodhouse’s The Philhellenes. 8. Byron to Napier, September 8, 1823, and Hobhouse, October 6, 1823, in Letters, 11:21, 42. 9. David Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow: Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 35. 10. “Address of the Greek Committee, 3 May 1823,” in Thomas Gordon, History of the Greek Revolution, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1832), 2:85-6. 11. St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 27. 12. Alexandros Ypsilantis, “Proclamation of Revolt,” February 24, 1821, in The Movement for Greek Independence 1770–1821: A Collection of Documents, ed. and trans. Richard Clogg (London: Macmillan, 1976), p. 201.



Notes

Notes

13. The Provisional Constitution of Greece, Translated from the Second Edition of Corinth, trans. “A Member of the London Greek Committee” (London: John Murray, 1823), p. 3. 14. Mavrocordato and the Provisional Government to Bentham, June 22 and May 12, 1823, August 11, 1824, in Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Bowring, 11 volumes (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1843), 4:580–1, 583. 15. Alexis Dimaras, “The Other British Philhellenes,” in Richard Clogg, ed., The Struggle for Greek Independence: Essays to mark the 150th Anniversary of the Greek War of Independence, (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 207. 16. W. H. Humphreys, “Journal of a Visit to Greece,” in A Picture of Greece in 1825, as Exhibited in the Personal Narratives of James Emerson Esq., Count Pecchio and W. H. Humphreys, Esq., 2 volumes (London: Colburn, 1826), 2:265. 17. Blaquiere, Report, 13. 18. Blaquiere, Narrative of a Second Visit to Greece, Including Facts Connected with the Last Days of Lord Byron (London: Whittaker, 1825), part 1, p. 118. 19. Blaquiere, Report, 21. 20. William Parry, The Last Days of Lord Byron: With His Lordship’s Opinions on Various Subjects, Particularly on the State and Prospects of Greece (London: Knight and Lacey, 1825), p. 170. Much of Parry’s book is in direct speech, purporting to record the opinions of Byron on Greek matters. It would be unwise, however, to take this entirely at face value, so throughout the chapter, I treat the ideas presented in the book as Parry’s and not as Byron’s. To add a further level of complexity, the volume was probably ghostwritten by Thomas Hodgskin. See William St Clair, “Postscript to The Last Days of Lord Byron,” Keats-Shelley Journal 19 (1970): 4–7. 21. The Cause of Greece, the Cause of Europe, 5. 22. Leicester Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824 (London: Sherwood and Jones, 1824), p. 31. 23. Rosen explains how two key figures in the London Committee, John Bowring and E. H. Barker, sought to build its support base upon liberal political views and classical study respectively. See Byron, Bentham and Greece, 222. 24. Hughes, Considerations on the Greek Revolution (London, 1823), p. 202. 25. Blaquiere, Greece and Her Claims (London: Whittaker, 1826), p. 7; and The Greek Revolution; its Origins and Progress (London: Whittaker, 1824), pp. 7, 178, 284. 26. Gordon, Greek Revolution, 1:314. 27. Byron to Andreas Londos, January 30, 1824, in Letters, 11:103. 28. Lytton H. Bulwer, An Autumn in Greece (London: Ebers, 1826), p. 62. 29. Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, vii. 30. James Hamilton Browne, “Narrative of a Visit, in 1823, to the Seat of War in Greece,” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 36, no. 226 (1834): 392, 400. 31. Byron to Hobhouse, October 6, 1823, in Letters, 11:42. 32. Thomas, Lord Erskine, A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, on the Subject of the Greeks, 4th ed. (London: John Murray, 1823), pp. 3, 14.



230

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61.

231

The Cause of Greece, the Cause of Europe, 3, 15, 24. [Sir Charles Napier], War in Greece (London: Ridgway, 1821), p. 8. Byron to Mavrocordato, October 1, 1823, in Letters, 11:38. Pietro Gamba, A Narrative of Lord Byron’s Last Journey to Greece (London: John Murray, 1825), p. 1. Blaquiere, Report, 12–14; Greek Revolution, 20. Browne, “Voyage from Leghorn to Cephalonia with Lord Byron, and a Narrative of a Visit, in 1823, to the Seat of War in Greece,” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 35, no. 217 (1834): 67. The traveler William Leake also speaks of Asian Illyrians as “very inferior to the Greeks in the scale of civilisation and humanity.” See An Historical Outline of the Greek Revolution (London: John Murray, 1825), pp. 15–16. George Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution, 2 volumes (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1861), 1:8–11. The most well-known explorations of racial theory in this period include, for example, Robert Knox’s The Races of Men (1850) and Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1870). Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow, 8. Examiner, April 15, 1821, 231. Parry, Last Days, 170–1. Humphreys, “Journal of a Visit to Greece,” 2:200. Byron to Bowring, May 21, 1823, in Letters, 10:181; James Kennedy, Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron and Others, Held in Cephalonia, a Short Time Previous to His Lordship’s Death (Paris: Galignani, 1830), p. 203. Byron to Charles Hancock, May 10, 1824, in Letters, 11:133. Gordon, Greek Revolution, 1:1–5. Charles Brinsley Sheridan, Thoughts on the Greek Revolution, 2nd ed. (London, 1824), p. 427; Hughes, Address, 8. Julius Millingen, Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece, Containing an Account of the Military and Political Events which Occurred in 1823 and Following Years (London: Rodwell, 1831), p. 26. Humphreys, “Journal of a Visit,” 2:200, 202. Blaquiere, Greek Revolution, 120. Byron to Murray, February 25, 1824, in Letters, 11:124. Kennedy, Conversations, 169. Jennifer Wallace, Shelley and Greece: Rethinking Romantic Hellenism (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), p. 120. Hughes, Address, 8, 11–21. The Cause of Greece, the Cause of Europe, 20–1. Blaquiere, Report, 18, 4. Blaquiere, Greek Revolution, 3–6; Report, 14. Blaquiere, Report, 18; Claims, i, 13. For more on medieval ideas of Europe and the concept of Christendom, see William Chester Jordan, “ ‘Europe’ in the Middle Ages,” in Pagden, The Idea of Europe, 72–90. Sheridan, Greek Revolution, 457.



Notes

Notes

62. Parry, Last Days, 209–10. 63. Martin Priestman, Romantic Atheism: Poetry and Freethought, 1780–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 226–8, 245–7. 64. David Constantine, Early Greek Travellers and the Hellenic Ideal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 3. See also Wallace, Shelley and Greece, 55. 65. Byron to Bowring, May 12, 1823, and Hobhouse, May 19, 1823, in Letters, 11:170, 176. 66. Byron to Moore, September 19, 1821, in Letters, 8:214. 67. Kennedy, Conversations, 169. 68. Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Lady Blessington’s Conversations of Lord Byron, ed. Ernest J. Lovell, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 85–6. 69. Byron to Blaquiere, April 5, 1823 and Hobhouse, April 7, 1823, in Letters, 10:139, 143. 70. Byron to Church, June 21, 1823, in Letters, 10:202. 71. From Byron, “Detached Thoughts” October 15, 1821–May 18, 1822, in Letters, 9:17. 72. Byron, “Journal in Cephalonia,” September 28, 1823, and letter to Kinniard, December 23, 1823, in Letters, 11:30, 80. 73. Byron to Augusta Leigh, October 12, 1823, and Charles Hancock February 5, 1824, in Letters, 11:44, 108. See also the letter to the Greek government (November 30, 1823) which warns of the dangers of civil war (11:69–70). 74. Byron to Guiccioli, November 29, 1823, in Letters, 11:66. 75. Hughes, Address, 5. 76. Blaquiere, Narrative, part 1, 43; Claims, i. 77. Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 133. 78. St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 9. 79. St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 30, 254. 80. Hazlitt, “On Classical Education,” in Hazlitt, Collected Works, ed. A. R. Wallace and A. Glover, 12 volumes (London: Dent, 1901–06), 1:4. Quoted in Wallace, Shelley and Greece, 29–30 and 5. 81. Jeremy Bentham, “To the Greek Legislators,” in Bentham, Securities Against Misrule and Other Constitutional Writings for Tripoli and Greece, ed. Philip Schofield (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 193. 82. Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 96. 83. For details of Bentham’s writings on Greece see Securities Against Misrule, xxxvii–xliii. For his principal theoretical interests in writing a Greek Constitution, see Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 78–92. 84. Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, v, x–xi, 14–15, 22. 85. Stanhope to Odysseus, March 15, 1824, in Greece in 1823 and 1824, 142. 86. Blaquiere, Narrative, part 1, vi, ix; part 2, 67. 87. Gordon, Greek Revolution, 1:40. 88. Bulwer, Autumn in Greece, 3. 89. Byron to Hobhouse, September 11 and October 6, 1823, and the “Journal in Cephalonia,” September 28, 1823, in Letters, 11:23–4, 40, 32.



232

90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121.

122. 123.

233

[Napier], Greece in 1824 (London: Ridgway, 1824), pp. 11–12; 16–18. Blaquiere, Claims, 22; Greek Revolution, 315. Parry, Last Days, 177. Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, 169. See Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 149. Dimaras, “The Other British Philhellenes,” 210–12. Byron to Bowring, May 12, 1823, in Letters, 10:171. Byron to Mavrocordato, December 2, 1823, in Letters, 11:71. Parry, Last Days, 134, 275, 271. Blaquiere, Report, 10. See also Sheridan, Greek Revolution, 461 (“the cause of the Greeks is unconnected with the spirit of revolution in Europe”). Byron to Bowring, May 12, 1823, in Letters, 10:170. Blaquiere, Claims, 6, 8, 18–19. Woodhouse, The Philhellenes, 17. Diary entry for May 1820, in Sir Charles James Napier, The Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier, ed. Lt-Gen Sir W. Napier, 4 volumes (London: John Murray, 1857), 1:292. See the “Postscript addressed to the Greek Committee,” in Erskine’s Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, 45. Byron to Kinnaird, October 29, 1823, Mavrocordato, December 2, 1823, and Bowring, December 26, 1823, in Letters, 11:58, 71, 83. Gordon, Greek Revolution, 1:315; 2:279. Finlay, Greek Revolution, 2:162. Gordon, Greek Revolution, 2:279. Blaquiere to Stanhope, May 24, 1824, in Narrative, part 2, 64. Hughes, Address, 6. See also Considerations, 204. Sheridan, Greek Revolution, 440. Erskine, Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, iv–vi. Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, 137, xi. Stanhope, Greece in 1823 and 1824, 234, 101, 142. Parry, Last Days, 178, 246, 235, 276. Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 185–212. See Gamba, Narrative, 102, 140. Gordon, Greek Revolution, 2:109. Byron to Kennedy, March 10, 1824 and Samuel Barff, March 19, 1824, in Letters, 11:131–2, 139. St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 187. E. S. de Beer and Walter Seton, Byronia: The Archives of the London Greek Committee (London: Whitefriars Press, n. d.), p. 3. The text is reprinted from The Nineteenth Century and After Review 100 (1926): 396–412. Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 154–62. Byron to Napier, September 8, 1823, and Hobhouse, September 11, 1823, in Letters, 11:20, 22–4.



Notes




Works are listed alphabetically by author or editor surname. Encyclopaedias and works with no known author are inserted in this sequence by title. Albrecht-Carrié, René. The Concert of Europe. London: Macmillan, 1968. Alliston, April. “Transnational Sympathies, Imaginary Communites.” In Margaret Cohen and Carolyn Dever, eds. The Literary Channel: The InterNational Invention of the Novel, pp. 133–48. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991. Annual Register or a View of the History, Politics and Literature for the Year [. . .]. London: various publishers, various dates 1815–23. Arac, Jonathan and Harriet Ritvo, eds. Macropolitics of Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1991. Ascoli, Albert Russell, and Krystyna von Henneberg, eds. Making and Remaking Italy: The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Ashe, Thomas. Travels in America, Performed in 1806, for the Purpose of Exploring the Rivers Alleghany, Monongahela, Ohio and Mississippi, and Ascertaining the Produce and Condition of Their Banks and Vicinity. 3 volumes. London: Philips, 1808. Aspinall, A., and E. Anthony Smith, eds.,English Historical Documents 1783–1832. Volume 11 of English Historical Documents, edited by David Douglas. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1959. Augstein, Hannah F., ed. Race: The Origins of an Idea, 1760–1850. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996. Bainbridge, Simon. Napoleon and English Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Baker, Mona, ed. The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies. London: Routledge, 1998. Balibar, Étienne. “The Borders of Europe.” Translated by James Swenson. In Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, eds. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, pp. 216–32. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1998. ———. We, the People of Europe: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Translated by James Swenson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.



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Æschylus, 122, 141–2 Africa, 26, 30, 69, 162, 184, 190 Age of Bronze, The (Byron), 1, 154, 165, 168–9 Alastor (P. Shelley), 47 Albania, 20, 27–9, 30, 68 Albrecht-Carrié, René, 159 Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, 153, 154, 162, 165, 172 Alfieri, Vittorio, 67, 94, 209n3 Ali Pasha, 28 Alliston, April, 50 Alps, the, 61–3, 89 American continents, 3, 13, 55, 99–100, 101, 113–15, 134, 172–3, 187–8 See also United States of America Anderson, Benedict, 108, 204n3 Annual Register, 45, 56, 154, 162, 163 Ashe, Thomas, 115 Asia border-zones between Europe and, 13, 20, 28–9, 69, 99, 113, 184, 187–8, 190–1 “oriental despotism” and, 49, 113, 124–6, 155–6, 180–2, 184, 231n38 see also Islam, Near East, Ottoman Empire Athens, 19, 31, 32, 70–1, 106, 113, 129 Augustus (Roman Emperor), 107

Austria Italian states and, 70, 37, 76, 82 Neapolitan Revolution and, 126–7, 137, 163, 211n30, 219n28 see also Holy Alliance Bacon, Francis, 107, 118, 140 Balibar, Étienne, 7, 30, 36 Barruel, Augustin, 100 Bassnet, Susan, 146 Battezzato, Luigi, 127 Baxter, William, 100, 116, 119 Beatty, Bernard, 66, 71 Bentham, Jeremy, 177, 179, 189, 195–6, 232n83 Bentinck, Lord William, 82 Beppo (Byron), 75, 89–90 Bernstorff, Christian Günter, Count von, 164 Berrian, William, 69 Bhabha, Homi, 136, 145–6 Black, Jeremy, 74–5, 78 Blaquiere, Edward, 176–7, 179–80, 182, 184, 185–6, 188–90, 192, 194 Blessington, Marguerite, Countess of, 187 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 87, 94 Bonaparte, Napoleon aftermath of defeat of, 41–4, 46–7, 50, 52–3, 56, 60, 63, 79



Index

Index

Bonaparte, Napoleon—Continued contemporary ideas of Europe, impact on, 5, 22, 23, 24, 39–63, 145, 160, 167–70, 171, 204n8 contemporary views on personal qualities of, 145, 157, 168, 169–70, 223n113 Italian states and, 70, 74, 79, 137 see also Napoleonic Wars Bonstetten, Charles Victor de, 46 Booth, David, 116 borders border-zones between European and non-European space, 20, 26–37, 68–70, 82–3, 100, 112–13, 132, 136, 145–6, 157, 171, 184, 204n42 Greek travel and, 31–7, 68, 184 Iberian travel and, 20, 21–31, 37, 82–3 Italian travel and, 66, 80, 82–3, 84, 85–6, 121–2 post-Waterloo politics and, 37, 40, 43–4, 45–6 Bowring, John, 177, 183, 191, 192, 230n23 Britain commercial power and, 26, 50 ideal European state, 34, 41–2, 53, 57–8, 67, 70, 71, 124, 125, 153, 167 Browne, John Hamilton, 177, 181, 182 Bulwer, Lytton, 177, 181, 182, 190 Burdett, Sir Francis, 164, 177, 215n24 Burke, Edmund, 56–7, 60, 119, 154, 167, 201n39 Burke, Peter, 10 Buzard, James, 80, 85, 137 Byron, George Gordon, Baron of Age of Bronze, The, 1, 154, 165, 168–9 Beppo, 75, 89–90

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 1, 12, 19–37, 39, 42, 46–7, 51–3, 59, 62, 65–83, 87–95, 176, 183, 205n9 congress politics and, 151–60, 164, 168–71 Curse of Minerva, The, 35 Don Juan, 151, 154, 155–7, 168, 171–2, 196 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 23 Europe, interest in, 10–11, 12–15, 196–7 Greece and, 20, 23, 31–7, 52, 176–97 Iberian states and, 19–26 Island, The, 152, 172–3, 197, 229n100 Italian states, travel in, 65–95 Lament of Tasso, The, 94 London Greek Committee and, 176–9 Manfred (Byron), 44 “Napoleon’s Farewell (From the French),” 47 Near East and, 19–37 post-Waterloo politics and, 42, 44–5, 47, 51–3, 62, 67, 70–2, 77, 158 Prophesy of Dante, The, 88–9, 138 radical politics and, 51–3, 62, 70–2, 76–7, 129, 151–9, 164, 168–71, 186–97 Siege of Corinth, The, 52 “Venice: An Ode,” 71–2 Werner, 157 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 139, 141, 142–4 Canning, George, 166–7, 169–70, 227n68 Carr, Sir John, 19, 22, 30 Casti, Giambatista, 158



254

Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount of congress politics and, 152, 153, 154, 161, 166, 169–70, 224n8, 227n76 post-Waterloo politics and, 41, 43, 44–5, 48, 53–4 Chandler, James, 12 Charles I (P. Shelley), 133–4, 144–5 Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de, 153, 165 Cheeke, Stephen, 19–20, 59, 61, 77, 80, 88 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Byron) Byron’s Italian tour and, 65–83, 87–95 Byron’s Mediterranean tour and, 12, 19–37, 176, 183 post-Waterloo politics and, 42, 46–7, 51–3, 59, 62, 205n9 reviews of, 23–4, 72–3, 75, 90 Christendom, 9, 29, 36, 41, 158, 161, 162, 178, 185, 193, 231n60 Christianity European commonality and, 13, 24–5, 27, 36, 48, 52, 65, 73–5, 88–9, 125, 129, 158 161–2, 176–8, 185–6, 192 Islam, contrast with, 26–31, 35, 52, 68–70, 89, 102, 112, 125, 177, 185–6 Church, Edward, 55, 187 Cintra, Convention of, 21 civilisation Europe and idea of, 9, 12, 27–8, 29–30, 33, 43, 48, 108, 121–9, 172, 176, 177–8, 179–86, 196 Clairmont, Charles, 40 Clairmont, Claire, 45, 116, 126, 129, 131, 134, 140, 141 Clarke, Edward Daniel, 111 classical inheritance Greece, Europe and, 9, 11, 12–14, 20, 23, 29–30, 32, 33–7, 107–8,

255

115, 121–7, 152, 175, 178, 180–1, 189, 197, 210n21, 230n23 Rome, Europe and, 11, 12–14, 65, 73, 74, 77–80, 107, 152, 210n21, 230n23 Cline, C. L., 134 Cohen, Margaret, 5–6, 50 Coleridge, John Taylor, 109, 111–12, 118, 121 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 80, 128, 134, 136, 220n60 Colley, Linda, 3 “congress system” (diplomacy), 67, 70, 82, 95, 151–73 conservative politics idea of Europe and, 41–2, 44–5, 48, 53–4, 80, 159–63, 164–7, 193–4, 200n14, 201n39 see also Holy Alliance Constantine, David, 186 Constantinople, 13, 20, 29, 31, 99, 111–13 cosmopolitanism definitions of, 1–2, 6–7, 200n27 nationalism and, 8, 58, 85, 92–3, 111, 208n71 problems with, 1–2, 6–7, 14, 46 reinterpretations of, 8, 171, 201n29 Coxe, Henry, 77, 85 Cromwell, Oliver, 76, 107 cultural encounter Greece and, 31–7, 121–2, 124–5, 182–3, 185, 196 Iberian states and, 25–6 Italian states and, 67–70, 74, 83–94, 117, 135–7, 140–1 Ottoman territories and, 27–37, 102, 124–5, 182–3, 185, 196 South Seas and, 171–3 Curran, Stuart, 138 Curse of Minerva, The (Byron), 35



Index

Index

Dainotto, Roberto, 10, 29 Dallas, Robert, 21 Dante Alighieri, 87, 88, 129, 138, 141–1, 158, 222n83 Defence of Poetry, A (P. Shelley), 1, 13, 111, 127–30, 133, 137, 138–9, 140, 142, 145, 217n2 Delphi, 20 Dever, Carolyn, 5–6 Diderot, Denis, 173 Dimeras, Alexis, 191 Diner, Hasia, 136 Don Juan (Byron), 151, 154, 155–7, 168, 171–2, 196 Drury, Henry, 28 Duffy, Cian, 62–3 Dussel, Enrique, 9 Elgin, Thomas Bruce, Earl of, 33–4 Ellenborough, Edward Law, Earl of, 160 “Elysian Fields, The” (P. Shelley), 54 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 49–50 Encyclopédie, 108, 118 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (Byron), 23 Ensor, George, 45, 48, 215n24 Epipsychidion (P. Shelley), 132–3 Erkelenz, Michael, 123 Erskine, Thomas, first Baron Erskine, 177, 181, 193, 194, 229n7 Esterhammer, Angela, 158–9 Eurocentrism, see universalism Europe borders in, 20–5, 26–37, 40, 43–6, 68–70, 82–3, 99–100, 112–13, 132, 136, 145–6, 157, 171, 184, 187–8, 190–1, 204n42 Christianity and, 3, 24–5, 27, 36, 48, 52, 65, 73–5, 88–9, 125, 129, 158, 161–2, 176–8, 185–6, 192 “civilisation” and, 9, 12, 27–8, 29–30, 33, 43, 48, 108, 121–9, 172, 176, 177–8, 179–86, 196

cultural encounters in, see cultural encounter eighteenth-century definitions of, 49 Greek civilisation and, 9, 11, 12–14, 20, 23, 29–30, 32, 33–7, 107–8, 115, 121–7, 152, 175, 178, 180–1, 189, 197, 210n21, 230n23 history and, 45, 40–8, 54, 58–63, 79–83, 99, 102–5, 121, 123–4, 129–30, 157, 170–2, 204n8 liberty and, 12–13, 34–6, 39–40, 42, 48–54, 56–8, 71–3, 76–7, 94–5, 108, 110–13, 125–6, 152–4, 158, 165, 187, 197 nationalism and, 3–9, 23–4, 26, 45–9, 55–8, 65–7, 75–6, 84, 92–3, 110–11, 156 non-European world and, see Africa, America, Asia, Islam, Near East, Ottoman Empire “progress” and, 9, 33, 40–1, 43, 44, 50, 52–4, 63, 77, 102–4, 109, 114, 121, 125, 128–9, 181–2, 193–4, 204n3 Roman civilisation and, 11, 12–14, 65, 73, 74, 77–80, 107, 152, 210n21, 230n23 Romantic studies and idea of, 2–3, 7–8, 9–11, 14–15 sexual mores and, 100, 107, 115–19, 186, 217n73 state independence in, 34–5, 39–40, 48, 55–8, 70–3, 110–11, 155, 158, 161, 165, 176, 178, 187, 197 transnationalism and, 2, 5–6, 7–8, 12, 15, 55–8, 65–7, 80–95, 110–11, 121–2, 145–7 travel in, see travel universalism and, 2, 13, 14, 43, 79, 90, 109–12, 121–2, 130, 142, 146–7, 158, 176, 192



256

Eustace, John Chetwode, 74, 78, 211n47 Evans, Ruth, 147 Examiner, The, 104, 106–7, 114, 117, 123, 125, 153, 156, 167, 170, 183 “Feelings of a Republican . . .” (P. Shelley), 44 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 208n71 Filicaia, Vincenzo di, 93 Finlay, George, 177, 182, 193–4 Foliage (L. Hunt), 107, 113, 117, 186 France idea of Europe and, 25–6, 48, 78, 125 post-Napoleonic wars and, 40–8, 50–6, 57–8, 82, 160 see also Bonaparte, Napoleon; French Revolution; Napoleonic Wars Francis I, Emperor of Austria, 70 “Frank” definition of, 27, 29, 32, 184 Frankenstein (M. Shelley), 100–2 Franklin, Caroline, 51 Frederick I (Holy Roman Emperor), 70 freedom, see liberty French Revolution idea of Europe and, 1, 3, 9, 13, 44, 51, 57–8, 62–3, 79, 99–111, 115, 178, 194 Frere, John Hookham, 89 Fulford, Tim, 173 Galignani’s Messanger, 227n68 Galt, John, 19, 22, 25–6, 27, 30, 32–3, 35 Gamba, Pietro, 182, 187 Geneva, Lake, 59, 60–1 George IV, King of Britain and Ireland, 104, 159, 160 German states, 56, 106, 208n71 see also Prussia

257

Gibbon, Edward, 6, 79 Gibraltar, 20, 26, 30, 68, 82 Gilmartin, Kevin, 105 Gisborne, John and Maria, 141, 142, 144 Godwin, William, 103, 106, 112, 116, 117, 133, 142, 189, 217n71 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 6, 101, 139, 141–2, 144, 146, 157–8, 224n118 Goldsmith, Oliver, 66 Gordon, Thomas, 177, 180, 184, 190, 193, 195 Greece classical inheritance and, 9, 11, 12–14, 20, 23, 29–30, 32, 33–7, 107–8, 115, 121–7, 152, 175, 178, 180–1, 189, 197 liberty, idea of, and, 49–50, 52, 71, 101, 154 Greek War of Independence, 13, 37, 55, 95, 122, 123–4, 126, 157, 162, 175–97 Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey, 164 Guiccioli, Teresa, 135, 182 Guthrie, William, 49 Hale, J. R., 78 Hamilton, Lord Archibald, 163–4 Hanson, John, 30 Hazlitt, William, 56–8, 107–8, 156, 167, 189, 207n62, 207n64 Hellas (P. Shelley), 1, 13, 111, 122–7, 133, 139, 141–2, 217n2 Hellespont, 30–1 Historical Illustrations (Hobhouse), 65, 73, 77, 91, 94–5 history theory and practice of, 40–8, 54, 58–63, 79–83, 99, 102–5, 121, 123–4, 129–30, 157, 170–2, 204n8 History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (P. and M. Shelley), 39, 43–4, 50, 60–2



Index

Index

Hobhouse, John Cam Byron’s intellectual interests and, 11 congress politics and, 164, 167–9 Historical Illustrations, 65, 73, 77, 91, 94–5 Italian states and, 65, 67, 69, 73, 74, 75, 77, 80, 87–8, 91 Letters Written During the Last Reign, 41–2, 44–5, 47–8, 53, 58–9, 67 liberty and, 53, 55, 94–5 Near East, travel in and, 19, 27, 28–9, 30, 32–3 philhellenism and, 177, 187, 196 post-Waterloo politics and, 41–2, 43, 44–6, 47–8, 53, 58–9, 60 Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, 44, 63, 99, 113, 115, 131, 132 Holbraad, Carsten, 159 Holy Alliance, 125, 153, 155, 161–2, 164, 165–6, 168–70, 171–3, 193–4 Homer, 91, 92, 129, 183 Hoppner, Richard Belgrave, 83, 169 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), 107 Horne, T. H., 45, 53–4 Hughes, T. S., 176–7, 180, 184, 185–6, 188, 194, 229n7 Humphreys, William, 177, 179, 183, 184 Hunt, Leigh congress system and, 153, 157, 158–9, 160, 168, 169 Foliage, 107, 113, 117, 186 philhellenism and, 123, 124, 183 radical politics and, 99, 104, 105, 112, 113, 119, 133, 144, 157, 158 Round Table, The, 107–8, 207n62 sexual politics and, 107, 117, 186, 217n78 Story of Rimini, The, 117, 217n78 see also Examiner, Liberal

imperialism Britain and, 26, 82, 101, 109, 124, 173 France and, 26, 42–3, 70, 160 Greece and, 190–1, 197 Italian states and, 75–6, 82 see also Britain, France, Greece, Holy Alliance, Italian states, universalism Ireland, 84–5 Isbell, John, 92 Islam border-zones and, 14, 26–32, 35, 68–70, 88–90, 102, 111–13, 181–3, 185–6 “oriental despotism” and, 49, 52, 112–13, 124–6, 155–6, 181–3, 184, 203n22 Island, The (Byron), 152, 172–3, 197, 229n100 Istanbul, see Constantinople Italian states, 12–13, 50, 65–95, 125, 133–9, 163, 221n79 see also Neapolitan Revolution, Rome, Venice Jeffrey, Francis, 24 Judaism, 36, 67, 74, 154, 169 Kalaga, Wojciech, 139 Kelsall, Malcolm, 52, 77 Kennedy, James, 177, 185, 187 King, Peter, seventh Baron King, 164 Kitson, Peter, 173 Lament of Tasso, The (Byron), 94 language revolutionary potential of, 94–5, 102–11, 128–30, 142–5, 157, 170–1 transnationalism and, 25, 83–4, 87–94, 139–47 Lansdowne, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Marquess of, 164, 167



258

259

Laon and Cythna (P. Shelley), 1, 11, 99, 102–14, 124, 127, 132 reviews of, 104–5, 109, 118 Leake, William Martin, 28, 231n38 Leask, Nigel, 109, 112 Letters Written During the Last Reign (Hobhouse), 41–2, 44–5, 47–8, 53, 58–9, 67 “Letter to Maria Gisborne” (P. Shelley), 142 Levant, see Near East Levin, Harry, 210n21 Lew, Joseph, 101 Liberal, The, 144, 153, 156, 157–8 liberty conservative views of, 53–4, 165 European tradition of, 12–13, 34–6, 39–40, 42, 48–54, 56–8, 71–3, 76–7, 94–5, 108, 110–13, 125–6, 152–4, 158, 165, 187, 197 freedom from tyranny, 11, 41, 44, 49, 57, 76–7, 112–13, 125–6, 154–9, 167, 170–1, 175, 187–97 state independence and, 34–5, 39–40, 48, 55–8, 70–3, 110–11, 155, 158, 161, 165, 176, 178, 187, 197 Lisbon, 21 Liverpool, Robert Jenkinson, Earl of, 46, 161 local identity idea of Europe and, see place, idea of Lockhart, John Gibson, 105, 117–18 London Greek Committee, 175, 176–97, 229n7 Louis XVIII, King of France, 41, 43, 162–3 Ludlow, Edmund, 60

Marathon, battle of, 51, 125 Marceau-Desgraviers, François Séverin, 51 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, 119 Marie Louise, Empress of the French, 60 “Mason, Mrs” (Lady Mountcasel), 131, 133, 135 Mavrocordato, Alexandros, 123, 178–9, 181, 191 McGann, Jerome, 51, 82, 88, 93, 165 McKusick, James, 173 Mediterranean, 19, 30, 83, 91–4, 212n52 Medwin, Thomas, 123, 131, 132, 142 Metternich, Klemens Wenzel, Prince von, 152, 164, 165, 166 Meyer, Jean-Jacques, 195 Millingen, Julius, 177, 184 Mill, James, 109 Milton, John, 83, 107, 129, 141, 158 “Mont Blanc” (P. Shelley), 62–3 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de, 9, 10, 29, 32, 36, 112, 156, 222n81 Moore, John, 71, 77, 82, 85–6 Moore, Thomas, 11, 44, 75, 84–5, 113, 153, 154, 157, 160, 168, 169, 177, 187 Morat, battle of, 51 Moretti, Franco, 101 Morgan, Sir Charles, 108 Morgan, Sydney Owenson, Lady, 104, 119 Morning Chronicle, 52, 164, 207n46, 215n24 Mortensen, Peter, 4 Murray, John, 88, 185

Macherey, Pierre, 93 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 94–5 Malmberg, Mikael af, 2 Manfred (Byron), 44

Napier, Sir Charles, 177, 181–2, 190, 193, 196 Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, see Bonaparte, Napoleon



Index

Index

Napoleonic wars, 1, 3, 9, 12, 21–3, 30, 39–48, 52–5, 58–63, 67, 104, 119, 151 see also Waterloo, battle of “Napoleon’s Farewell (From the French)” (Byron), 47 nationalism congress politics and, 158, 160–1, 166 cosmopolitanism and, 8, 58, 85, 92–3, 111, 208n71 Greece and, 26, 34, 188–9 idea of Europe and, 3–9, 23–4, 26, 45–9, 55–8, 65–7, 75–6, 84, 92–3, 110–11, 156 Italian states and, 65–7, 75–6, 84, 86, 93–4 Napoleonic Wars and, 21–3, 47–8, 55–8, 62 see also patriotism Neapolitan Revolution, 127, 137, 211n30, 219n28 Near East, 12, 19–37, 68–70, 111–13, 117, 131, 138, 162–3, 203n22, 216n60 Nesselrode, Count Karl Robert, 163, 164 Newman, Gerald, 3 Nichols, Irby C., 165 Nussbaum, Felicity, 5, 8 O’Brien, Karen, 6 Odysseus Androutsos, 195 Ollier, Charles, 106, 128 “oriental despotism,” 49, 113, 124–6, 155–6, 180–2, 184, 231n38 Ottoman Empire Greece and, 12, 20, 32–33, 35, 122–4, 126, 175–7, 180–2, 184–5, 193 Russia and, 155–6, 162–3 Venice and, 68–70 Otway, Thomas, 83, 87

Paine, Thomas, 106 Parnassus, 23 Parry, William, 177, 179–80, 183, 186, 190–1, 194–5, 230n20 Parthenon, 33 patriotism, 56–8, 111, 153–4, 156, 158–9 see also nationalism Paulson, Ronald, 119 Peacock, Thomas Love, 57, 60, 99, 115, 119, 130, 131, 132 Peninsula War, 21–3, 168 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), 87 philhellenism, 175–97 Pisa, 133 Pizarro, Francisco, 25 place, idea of Greece, Europe and, 124, 127, 180–1 Italian states, Europe and, 65–7, 68–9, 75, 77–83, 86–7, 94, 222n81 local identity, Europe and, 2, 13, 14–15 Near East, idea of Europe and, 31–2, 112–13 Switzerland, Europe and, 59–63 Plato, 141 Plutarch (Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus), 101 Pocock, J. G. A., 56 Polidori, John, 46, 61–2 Polwhele, Richard, 118 Portugal, 21–6, 117 Pratt, Mary Louise, 5, 112–13, 146 Price, Richard, 56–8, 114 printing invention of, 40, 105, 108–9 progress Europe and idea of, 9, 33, 40–1, 43, 44, 50, 52–4, 63, 77, 102–4, 109, 114, 121, 125, 128–9, 181–2, 193–4, 204n3



260

Prometheus, 101 Prophesy of Dante, The (Byron), 88–9, 138 Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote, A (P. Shelley), 106 Prussia, 151, 152, 153, 163, 165 see also German states, Holy Alliance Pufendorf, Samuel, 190 Quadruple Alliance, 151, 160 race, 114, 117, 123, 124, 182–3, 217n15–16, 231n40 radical politics congress politics and, 152–7, 167–71, 227n68 Greek War of Independence and, 175–6, 177–8, 186–97 ideal revolution and, 11, 99–101, 102–11, 112–13, 114–15, 116–19, 215n29, 230n23 Italian states and, 65, 67, 71–3, 75–9, 82, 94–5, 220n54 post-Waterloo Europe and, 39, 42–3, 48, 50–3, 55–8, 60, 63 translation and, 142–5 travel and, 133–6, 220n60 universalism and, 57–8, 88, 109–11, 124, 128–30, 134, 158, 176, 192, 215n25 see also French Revolution republicanism, 60, 76–8, 95, 107, 194, 215n29 see also radical politics restorations Europe and, 39–49, 76–7, 104 see also conservative politics, Holy Alliance Revolt of Islam, The (P. Shelley), see Laon and Cythna revolutionary politics, see radical politics

261

Robbins, Bruce, 171 Robertson, William, 6, 40–1, 54, 105, 211n47 Robison, John, 100 Roessel, David, 177, 183 Rogers, Samuel, 69, 85, 210n11 Roman Catholicism, 74–5 see also Christianity Romantic studies idea of Europe and, 1–2, 3–4, 7–8, 10–11, 12–15 Rome, 13, 65, 67, 71, 73–83, 93, 210n21 Rose, William Stewart, 69, 82, 85 Rosen, Frederick, 189, 229n7 Rossington, Michael, 107 Round Table, The (Hazlitt and L. Hunt), 107–8, 207n62 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 50, 59, 60, 90–1, 141, 215n29, 229n100 Russell, Lord John, 156, 164, 177 Russia, 56, 100, 155–6, 162–3, 165, 171, 193 see also Holy Alliance Said, Edward, 139, 203n22 Sass, Henry, 78–9, 86 Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von, 87, 106 Schlegel, August von, 46, 92, 142–3, 146–7 Schlereth, Thomas, 6 Schoina, Maria, 133, 136 Schroeder, Paul, 159 Scott, Sir Walter, 4, 47, 61–2, 72–3, 88 “sentimental communities,” 6, 50 sexual politics, 100, 107, 115–19, 186, 217n78 Shakespeare, William, 83, 87, 107, 134 Sheerwood, Neely and Jones (publishers), 106



Index

Index

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (née Godwin) Frankenstein, 100–2 History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, 39, 43–4, 50 Italian states and, 130, 133, 136–9, 141 post-Waterloo politics and, 43–4, 45–6, 50, 53, 55 radical politics and, 101–2, 116, 125, 133 Valperga, 137–8 Shelley, Percy Bysshe Alastor, 47 America and, 113–15 Charles I, 133–4, 144–5 Defence of Poetry, A, 1, 13, 111, 127–30, 133, 137, 138–9, 140, 142, 145, 217n2 “Elysian Fields, The,” 54 Epipsychidion, 132–3 Europe, interest in, 10–11, 12–15, 147 “Feelings of a Republican . . . ,” 44 Greece and, 121–7, 131, 132 Hellas, 1, 13, 111, 122–7, 133, 139, 141–2, 217n2 History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, 39, 60–2 Italian states, travel in, 122, 130–9 Laon and Cythna, 1, 11, 99, 102–14, 124, 127, 132 “Letter to Maria Gisborne,” 142 “Mont Blanc,” 62–3 Near East and, 111–13, 131 post-Waterloo politics and, 44, 47, 54, 57–8, 62–3, 169 Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote, A, 106 radical politics and, 54, 57–8, 99–100, 102–11, 115–19, 125–6, 133–6, 142–5 sexual mores and, 115–19 translation and, 122, 139–47

universalism and, 88, 109–11, 121–2, 127–30, 137–9, 140, 142, 146–7 Sheridan, C. B., 177, 184, 186, 194 Siege of Corinth, The (Byron), 52 Simpson, David, 8, 200n14 Sismondi, Léonard Simond de, 211n47, 215n29, 222n81 Sloan, James, 86 Sotheby, William, 84 Southey, Robert, 106, 128, 134 South Seas, 172–3, 228n96, 229n100 space, ideas of Europe and Alps, the, 59–63 Americas, the, 113–14 France, 45–8 Greece, 20, 31–7, 121–2, 180–1, 193 Italian states, 66–7, 68, 72–3, 75, 77, 82–3, 86–7, 135–9 Near East, 21–31, 82–3, 111–13, 132–3 post-war travel, 45–8 revolutionary politics and, 108, 111–14, 121–2, 133–9, 171–2 Rome, 75, 77 South Seas, 171–3 Switzerland, 59–63 Venice, 68, 72–3 Spain, 22–6, 30, 117 Spanish Revolution (1820–3), 144, 151–2, 153, 155, 156, 157, 163, 164–71, 224n8 Stabler, Jane, 24, 227n68 Staël, Anne-Louise-Germaine de, 6, 10, 46, 50, 60, 91–4, 205n24 Stanhope, Leicester, 177, 180, 181, 189–91, 194–6 Stark, Susanne, 146 St Clair, William, 33, 103, 112, 124, 178, 188–9, 195, 220n45 Story of Rimini, The, (L. Hunt), 117, 217n71 Sulla, Lucius Cornelius, 76



262

Switzerland, 55, 59–63, 84, 125, 189 Symonds, H. D., 106 Taafe, John, 140–1 Talavera, battle of, 22 Tambora (volcano), 205n23 Tasso, Torquato, 69, 70, 94–5 Thompson, Carl, 229n100 Thomson, James, 71 translation, 13, 25, 66, 83–4, 92, 122, 139–47, 158 transnationalism cultural encounter and, 25–6, 27–37, 68–73, 82–3, 117, 135–7, 171–3 idea of Europe and, 2, 5–6, 7–8, 12, 15, 55–8, 65–7, 80–95, 110–11, 121–2, 145–7 transnational community, 46, 50–1, 59, 77, 86–95, 122, 135–7, 139–47, 157, 176–9 travel France, 40–8 Greece, 20–1, 31–7, 131, 180–1, 190–2 Italian states, 67–83, 84–90, 121, 130–9 Portugal, 21–6 purpose of, 21, 62–3, 121, 130–9, 171–3 South Seas, 171–3 Spain, 21–6 Switzerland, 59–63 travel writing, 12–13, 19–37, 40–8, 58–63, 67–91, 130–9, 171–3, 180–1, 190–2 Trelawny, Edward, 131, 220n45 Turkey, see Ottoman Empire United States of America, 3, 55, 72, 99–100, 113–15, 172, 187, 189 universalism cosmopolitanism and, 6–7, 8

263 Eurocentrism and, 2, 13, 14, 43, 79, 90, 109–12, 121–2, 130, 142, 146–7, 158, 176, 192 literature and, 88, 90, 109–11, 127–30, 137–9, 140, 142, 146–7, 222n81 progress theory and, 40–1, 121–2, 127–30 radical politics and, 57–8, 88, 109–11, 124, 128–30, 134, 158, 176, 192, 215n25

Valperga (M. Shelley), 137–8 Venice, 13, 52, 65, 68–73, 82, 84, 87, 89 “Venice: An Ode” (Byron), 71–2 Venuti, Lawrence, 146 Verona (city), 87 Verona, Congress of, 151–2, 161, 162–3, 164–71 Vertovec, Steven, 5 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), 107 Vittorelli, Jacopo, 88 Volney, Constantin François de Chassboeuf, Comte de, 101, 108, 110, 114 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet, 6, 158 Wallace, Jennifer, 185, 189 Waterloo, battle of, 12, 39–48, 51–2, 55, 58, 61–2, 90, 209n87–88 see also Napoleonic Wars Webb, Timothy, 139, 140, 141, 144 Weber, Henry, 113 Webster, James Wedderburne, 55, 157 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 40, 41, 55, 159–60, 166–8, 224n8 Werner (Byron), 157 Whig politics, 11, 63, 77, 78, 106, 156, 160, 164, 227n68 White, Hayden, 152, 171 Wilkes, Joanne, 93–5



Index

Index

Williams, Edward, 125, 131, 134–5, 141 Williams, Helen Maria, 42, 60, 118, 204n8 Wilson, John, 90–1 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 99, 103–4, 106, 108, 114–15, 117–19, 133 Woodhouse, C. W., 193 Woolf, Stuart, 3, 9

Wordsworth, William, 4, 128, 141 writing revolutionary potential of, 94–5, 102–11, 116–17, 128–30, 142–5, 157, 170–1 Ypsilantis, Alexandros, 178 Zając, Marta, 132



264

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