Proserpine and Midas | Page 8

concerning after life & the Judgements of God than the
Greeks [--] Angels disappear at one time in the Bible & afterwards
appear again. The revelation to the Greeks more complete than to the

Jews--prophesies of Christ by the heathens more incontrovertible than
those of the Jews. The coming of X. a confirmation of both religions.
The cessation of oracles a proof of this. The Xtians better off than any
but the Jews as blind as the Heathens--Much more conformable to an
idea of [the] goodness of God that he should have revealed himself to
the Greeks than that he left them in ignorance. Vergil & Ovid not truth
of the heathen Mythology, but the interpretation of a heathen-- as
Milton's Paradise Lost is the interpretation of a Christian religion of the
Bible. The interpretation of the mythology of Vergil & the
interpretation of the Bible by Milton compared--whether one is more
inconsistent than the other--In what they are contradictory. Prometheus
desmotes quoted by Paul [Footnote: Shelley may refer to the proverbial
phrase 'to kick against the pricks' (Acts xxvi. 14), which, however, is
found in Pindar and Euripides as well as in Aeschylus (Prom. 323).] [--]
all religion false except that which is revealed-- revelation depends
upon a certain degree of civilization--writing necessary--no oral
tradition to be a part of faith--the worship of the Sun no
revelation--Having lost the books [of] the Egyptians we have no
knowledge of their peculiar revelations. If the revelation of God to the
Jews on Mt Sinai had been more peculiar & impressive than some of
those to the Greeks they wd not immediately after have worshiped a
calf--A latitude in revelation--How to judge of prophets--the proof [of]
the Jewish Prophets being prophets.
The only public revelation that Jehovah ever made of himself was on
Mt Sinai--Every other depended upon the testimony of a very few &
usually of a single individual--We will first therefore consider the
revelation of Mount Sinai. Taking the fact plainly it happened thus. The
Jews were told by a man whom they believed to have supernatural
powers that they were to prepare for that God wd reveal himself in
three days on the mountain at the sound of a trumpet. On the 3rd day
there was a cloud & lightning on the mountain & the voice of a trumpet
extremely loud. The people were ordered to stand round the foot of the
mountain & not on pain of death to infringe upon the bounds--The man
in whom they confided went up the mountain & came down again
bringing them word

The draft unfortunately leaves off here, and we are unable to know for
certain whether this Shelleyan paradox, greatly daring, meant to
minimize the importance of the 'only public revelation' granted to the
chosen people. But we have enough to understand the general trend of
the argument. It did not actually intend to sap the foundations of
Scriptural authority. But it was bold enough to risk a little shaking in
order to prove that the Sacred Books of the Greeks and Romans did not,
after all, present us with a much more rickety structure. This was a task
of conciliation rather than destruction. And yet even this conservative
view of the Shelleys' exegesis cannot--and will not-- detract from the
value of the above document. Surely, this curious theory of the equal
'inspiration' of Polytheism and the Jewish or Christian religions,
whether it was invented or simply espoused by Mrs. Shelley, evinces in
her--for the time being at least--a very considerable share of that
adventurous if somewhat uncritical alacrity of mind which carried the
poet through so many religious and political problems. It certainly
vindicates her, more completely perhaps than anything hitherto
published, against the strictures of those who knew her chiefly or
exclusively in later years, and could speak of her as a 'most
conventional slave', who 'even affected the pious dodge', and 'was not a
suitable companion for the poet'. [Footnote: Trelawny's letter, 3 April
1870; in Mr. H. Buxton Forman's edition, 1910, p. 229.] Mrs.
Shelley--at twenty-three years of age--had not yet run the full 'career of
her humour'; and her enthusiasm for classical mythology may well have,
later on, gone the way of her admiration for Spinoza, whom she read
with Shelley that winter (1820-1), as Medwin notes, [Footnote: I. e. ed.
H. Buxton Forman, p. 253.] and 'whose arguments she then thought
irrefutable--tempora mutantur!'
However that may be, the two little mythological dramas on Proserpine
and Midas assume, in the light of that enthusiasm, a special interest.
They stand--or fall--both as a literary, and to a certain extent as an
intellectual effort. They are more than an attitude, and not much less
than an avowal. Not only do they claim our attention as the single
poetical work