Memorabilia

( Men and Women , 1855—when the title was Memorabilia (on Seeing Shelley) ; Lyrics , 1863; Dramatic Lyrics , 1868.) A man with a soul cro es a vast moor, a blankne of miles, but on one hand-breadth spot he spies an eagle’s feather, which he cherishes. An eagle’s feather meant something to the man with the soul, the miles of blank moor had nothing to say to him; and so once he saw Shelley plain, and even spoke to him. The man had lived long before and had lived long after, but the sight of Shelley and the words he spoke made just that hand-breadth of his life something different from all the colourle remainder. [Some there are who love to say the same of Robert Browning!] Mr. Browning early in his youth (1825) fell under the influence of Shelley. Mr. Sharp, in his Life of Browning , says that, as he was one day pa ing a bookstall, “he saw, in a box of second-hand volumes, a little book advertised as ‘Mr. Shelley’s Atheistical Poem,—very scarce.’ He had never heard of Shelley, nor did he learn for a long time that the Dæmon of the World and the miscellaneous poems appended thereto constituted a literary piracy.” He discovered that there was such a poet as Shelley; that he had written several volumes, and was dead. He begged his mother to procure him Shelley’s works, which she had some difficulty in doing, as several booksellers to whom she applied knew nothing of them. The books were ultimately purchased at Ollier’s shop, in Vere Street. Shelley, as Mr. Sharp says, “enthralled” Browning. His first work, Pauline , was written under the dominance of the Shelley pa ion. He refers to Shelley in Sordello . Memorabilia was composed in the Roman Campagna in the winter of 1853-54.