His fondness for the former amusement affords another of his numerous

resemblances to Byron. Like the Byron of Southwell and Cambridge, the

Shelley of Field Place and Oxford, seized every convenient occasion for

blazing away with powder and ball, and perfecting himself in the use of

'the hair-trigger,'--a practice that would have been more remarkable in

each of the poets, had it not been usual in the days of duelling for

youngsters to regard pistol-practice as an important part of the education

of every gentleman, who in his way through life might at any moment be

invited to exchange shots at ten paces. To the biographer of the two

poets, their fondness for this military pastime is the more interesting,

because they lived to fire away at the same mark day after day during

their residence at Pisa. That the sport in which he delighted in the last

year of his life was one of Shelley's favourite amusements at Oxford, we

know from Hogg, who tells how the youthful poet of 'mild aspect and

pacific habits,' used to equip himself for a country walk, with a pair of

duelling pistols and a good supply of powder and ball. On coming to a

solitary spot during a rural ramble, it was his use to fix a card, or some

other suitable object, upon a tree or embankment, and fire away at it till

his ammunition was exhausted. On one occasion he induced Hogg to have a

shot at a slab of wood, about as big as a hearth-rug. Taking the pistol,

Hogg discharged it at an unusally long range for pistol-practice, and sent

his bullet into the very centre of the wooden target. Shelley was amazed

and delighted at the goodness of his friend's firing, and running to the

board gazed intently at the place of the bullet's lodgment. After

satisfying himself that the ball was in the very middle of the board, he

more than once measured the distance from the target to the spot where the

trigger was pulled by the man, who had never before fired a pistol loaded

with ball. 'I never knew any one so prone to admire as he was, in whom the

principle of veneration was so strong,' Hogg remarks, in reference to the

poet's expressions of surprise and delight at the excellence of his

comrade's address with the weapon.

One may well smile at this tribute to the reverential disposition of the

Oxonian, who despised the tutors of his college for their dullness, spoke

contemptuously of his grandfather, held his father up to ridicule, wrote

disdainfully of his mother's mental narrowness, and had fought the whole

tribe of his Eton masters, from Dr. Keate to Mr. Bethell. But the tribute

was not altogether undeserved. All through life Shelley valued men for

their worth, and honoured superior men ungrudgingly for their superiority,

provided they were not placed in authority over him, or had not provoked

him to antagonism. Had Hogg been his tutor, Shelley would soon have

discovered flaws in his friend's character, and unsoundness in his

attainments,--would have found him overbearing, presumptuous,

hypocritical, tyrannical.

Finding the pistol-practice lessen his enjoyment of their country walks,

Hogg, with some difficulty, induced Shelley to relinquish the diversion;

but the north-countryman was unsuccessful in his attempts to wean the poet

from the other pastime, in which he delighted so keenly. On coming to a

large pond in their rambles, Shelley, indifferent to the coldness of wind,

even though it were a 'cutting north-easter,' drew up, took paper from his

pocket, twisted it into a boat, and floated it out upon the glassy

surface. If the frail bark succumbed quickly to the forces of wind and

water, another bark of the same description was speedily fitted and

launched for the perilous voyage. When the paper-boat was wafted safely to

the opposite shore, no child could have been more delighted than the

Oxonian student at so trivial a cause of satisfaction. Sometimes the

player at this curious game floated several paper-boats out upon the water

as nearly as possible at the same moment, and then watched the fortunes of

his fleet with the liveliest interest. After leaving Oxford, Shelley often

amused himself in the same manner, continuing to play thus childishly at

the water's brink, till he had made away with all his provision of

waste-paper to the last scrap. Even then he could not desist from the

fascinating pastime; but would prolong his enjoyment with the sacrifice of

letters written by his dearest friends, and fly-leaves torn from volumes

that he had in his pockets. It was told of him for the first time by an

imaginative humorist, and has been often repeated for true history by

dullards, incapable of recognizing and appreciating a humorous invention,

that on one occasion after consuming in this way all his store of

comparatively valueless pieces of paper, he manufactured a toy-ship out of

a bank-post bill for fifty pounds, which he committed to the water of the

Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, when the miniature lake was more than

usually agitated by a breeze from the northeast. 'The story, of course,'

says Hogg, 'is mythic fable, but it aptly portrays the dominion of a

singular and most unaccountable passion over the mind of an enthusiast.'

The pond at the foot of Shotover Hill, lying on the left of the pedestrian

about to make the ascent, was one of the waters near which Hogg (of the

adamantine patience) was often constrained to wait, whilst Shelley folded

and twisted scraps of paper into boats, with fingers empurpled by the

cold. By that same water the poet used to linger till dusk, 'repeating

verses aloud, or earnestly discussing themes that had no connexion with

surrounding objects.' Ever and again on these occasions the curious boy,

who developed into so marvellous a man, would throw a stone as far away

from himself as possible into the pond, and then exult in the splash and

disturbance of the usually tranquil waters. Hogg could also remember how

his friend, with the blue eyes and disorderly hair, used to split the

slaty stones into thin and flat pieces, with which he would gravely make

ducks-and-drakes on the water's surface.

That Shelley delighted in the scenery of the neighbourhood of Oxford we

know from Hogg's assurances. That the scenes, which delighted him in

1810-11, lived in his memory we know from the poem that was in the main an

outgrowth of his recollections of the quiet garden, to which reference has

just been made; and from the way in which he used in later years to dream

of one particular bit of Oxfordshire landscape.

'I have,' (Shelley wrote in the _Speculations on Metaphysics_, just

five years after this Michaelmas Term), 'beheld scenes, with the

intimate and unaccountable connexion of which with the obscure parts

of my own nature, I have been irresistibly impressed. I have beheld a

scene which has produced no unusual effect on my thoughts. After the

lapse of many years, I have dreamed of this scene. It has hung on my

memory, it has haunted my thoughts, at intervals, with the pertinacity

of an object connected with human affections. I have visited this

scene again. Neither the dream could be dissociated from the

landscape, nor the landscape from the dream, nor feelings, such as

neither singly could have awakened, from both. But the most remarkable

event of this nature, which ever occurred to me, happened five years

ago at Oxford. I was walking with a friend, in the neighbourhood of

that city, engaged in earnest and interesting conversation. We

suddenly turned the corner of a lane, and the view, which its high

banks and hedges had concealed, presented itself. The view consisted

of a windmill, standing in one among many plashy meadows, inclosed

with stone walls; the irregular and broken ground, between the wall

and the road on which we stood; a long low hill behind the windmill,

and a grey covering of uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. It

was that season when the last leaf had just fallen from the scant and

stunted ash. The scene surely was a common scene; the season and the

hour little calculated to kindle lawless thought; it was a tame

uninteresting assemblage of objects, such as would drive the

imagination for refuge in serious and sober talk, to the evening

fireside, and the dessert of winter fruits and wine. The effect which

it produced in me was not such as could have been expected. I suddenly

remembered to have seen that exact scene in some dream of long----

'Here I was obliged to leave off, overcome by thrilling horror.'

To this extraordinary revelation of one of the innermost chambers of a

human soul by the soul's own self, Mrs. Shelley long after her husband's

death appended this note:--

'I remember well his coming to me from writing it, pale and agitated,

to seek refuge in conversation from the fearful emotions it excited.

No man, as these fragments prove, had such keen sensations as Shelley.

His nervous temperament was wound up by the delicacy of his health to

an intense degree of sensibility, and while his active mind pondered

for ever upon, and drew conclusions from, his sensations, his reveries

increased their vivacity, till they mingled with, and were one with

thought, and both became absorbing and tumultuous, even to physical

pain.'

Why this horror, that caused Shelley to drop the pen, at this recollection

of a common-place bit of landscape, justly styled 'a tame and

uninteresting assemblage of objects,' beheld by him for the first time

just five years ago;--no, not this horror _at_ the recollection of so tame

a scene, but this horror _at_ recollecting how often the uninteresting

scene had recurred to him in his dreams? Those who would know the Real

Shelley, whose long locks, peculiar dress, and eccentric aspect, were

matters of tattle and laughter in the common-rooms of the colleges in

1810-11, should ponder this self-revelation of Shelley's own soul, and

should also take heed of his widow's note upon it. Let readers recall what

they have been told of the way in which Byron's memory, sensibility, and

imagination acted and inter-acted upon one another; the memory stirring

the sensibility, the sensibility quickening the imagination, the

imagination stimulating the memory again and again, till the recollections

of old impressions far surpassed the original impressions in vividness and

intensity; and let them then observe how Shelley was similarly

constituted, with a memory singularly retentive of particular impressions,

a sensibility (apt to be roused to morbid activity by these recollected

impressions), and an imagination no less quick at the instance of

sensibility to intensify the pictures of memory. It was thus that the tame

scene, so clearly and deeply printed in his mind as to be repeatedly

offered by memory to his re-awakening consciousness, acquired a vividness

that was in itself terrifying. But the terror begotten of this vividness

was not the terror that made the poet drop his pen. Whilst his sensibility

was being stirred to morbid and distressing activity by recollection and

fancy, he was suddenly surprised by remembering how repeatedly the same

tame scene had come back to him in dreams,--_i.e._ at the moment of the

re-awakening of consciousness,--and in his agitation, heightened by

perplexity at so singular a fact, the surprise affected him with horror,

even as any surprise (one that is the merest trifle to a cool and

self-possessed mind)--a surprise arising from the rustling of a leaf, the

echo of a footfall, the shadow of a spray by moonlight,--is apt to plunge

the agitated and unbalanced mind into the Horror of Perplexity.

Happy in themselves, Hogg and Shelley did not care to be happy with other

undergraduates, either of their own college or of the other colleges. A

few old Etonians, belonging to other colleges, occasionally visited

University College, to see the whilom Atheist of their former school; but

though Shelley was civil to them, and on the eve of his abrupt withdrawal

from the University paid Halliday a farewell call, he showed no

disposition to be intimate with them. Three or four other undergraduates,

to whom the supremely self-sufficient Mr. Hogg refers loftily as harmless

and inoffensive persons, also found themselves now and then in the young

poet's rooms; but no cordial pressure was put upon them to come oftener.

Mr. Hogg and the freshman were sufficient unto themselves.

Necessarily known, under these circumstances, within their own college as

'the Inseparables,' the two close friends were also known throughout the

University as 'the Inseparables.' How could it be otherwise, when they

were seen by walking men and riding men, day after day (weather

permitting) walking along the roads and over the meadows round about

Oxford? Whilst both were almost daily seen together, it was seldom that

either of them was ever seen 'out of college' without the other. Men who

thus 'keep themselves to themselves' are never popular with the multitude

from whom they hold aloof. There was much curiosity about the two singular

young men, after the publication of the _Posthumous Fragments of Margaret

Nicholson_ (published on, or just before, 17th November, 1810), of which

they were generally understood to be joint-authors;--but the curiosity was

not flattering nor even friendly. It was averred that they aimed at

eccentricity in costume and deportment; that they thought too well of

themselves, and said by their looks, 'We are superior to everybody;' that

Shelley's turn-down collars (worn, of course, so that he might be taken

for another Lord Byron, and capable of writing a better satire than the

_English Bards_), and his blue coat with glittering (Birmingham steel)

buttons, were unutterably ludicrous; that his shock of wildly flowing hair

was a disgrace to the University; that known as Mad Shelley, before he was

sent away from Eton in disgrace, he seemed bent on justifying the

nickname.

If the gossip about the young poetaster and novelist had the note of

malice, it had, also, the ring of sincerity, and was not altogether

wanting in justice. Though the morning on which he awoke to find himself

famous was still in the future, Byron had made himself a celebrity before

he started for the East; and had not the success of the _English Bards and

Scotch Reviewers_ (published in 1809) brought his peculiar collars into

vogue with young gentlemen of poetical aspirations, Shelley would never

have thought of wearing them to everybody's amusement at the University.

Possibly, his blue coat with glittering buttons was not more defiant of

the academic orders touching costume than other coats worn by modish

Oxonians of his period; but the freshman who donned it must have meant to

be observed and talked about. Even Hogg admits that his young friend's

appearance was peculiar even to eccentricity, and that his long and bushy

hair was remarkable, when all other undergraduates wore their hair short,

and that, in consequence of the conspicuous superfluity of his tresses,

the 'little round hat upon his little round head' had a 'troubled and

peculiar' air.

Eccentric in his costume, Mr. Bysshe Shelley, of University College, was

even more eccentric in his demeanour in the public ways. The poor scholar

who fights his way to higher knowledge, whilst toiling for his daily bread

as a clerk or craftsman, must needs read as he runs to and fro between his

place of nightly rest and his place of daily labour, must con the printed

page whilst eating his meals, and seize moments for study without care for

his spectators. But though Hogg commends the Oxonian Shelley for seldom

appearing by himself in the High Street without an open volume under his

eyes, most people will attribute the needless show of studious zeal to a

whimsical affectation rather than to sincere delight in learning, and an

insatiable appetite for knowledge. Why could not Mr. Shelley read his

books in those pleasant rooms where he spent so much time daily in writing

letters for mere amusement, in correcting the proof-sheets of a comically

bad novel, in playing with his air-pump and solar microscope, and in

holding desultory conversations with an agreeable companion?

To appreciate this comical parade of scholarly enthusiasm, readers must

remember how much time the undergraduate consumed in playing with paper

boats and 'making ducks-and-drakes' at the pond under Shotover Hill. Why

did the freshman, so prodigal of precious hours, thus affect the part of a

student set on turning every minute of his time to the best account? What

was his motive in figuring under the public gaze in a character so widely

different from his real character? In answering these questions, readers

should forget, as far as possible, the freshman's subsequent greatness,

and thinking of him as the Eton scatter-brain, judge him precisely as they

would judge any youngster, who should behave in the same absurd fashion in

this present year of grace.

The freshman, who read the Latin and Greek classics as he paced 'the

High,' had other ways of calling attention to himself in the public

places of Oxford. On their return from a stroll, in cap and gown, Shelley

and Hogg were holding high discourse on certain Platonic questions, when

they encountered on Magdalen Bridge, a woman with a child in her arms,--an

infant that might have been taken clean out of her arms, had the eccentric

freshman encountered no resistance from the lawful owner of the baby.

'Will your baby tell us anything about pre-existence, Madam?' the excited

disputant asked in a piercing voice, as he suddenly caught hold of the

long-robed infant.

The woman was still in the act of recovering the self-possession, of which

so singular an assault had deprived her for a few moments; when Shelley

repeated the question in the same penetrating tone and with unabated

earnestness.

'He cannot speak, Sir,' the woman replied with respectful seriousness.

'Worse and worse!' cried the eccentric undergraduate, shaking his long

locks in a manner that must have heightened the woman's perplexity and

alarm. 'But surely, Madam, the babe can speak if it will, for he is only a

few weeks old. He may fancy, perhaps, that he cannot, but it is only a

silly whim; he cannot have forgotten entirely the use of speech in so

short a time; the thing is absolutely impossible.'

'It is not for me,' replied the woman, eyeing the two youthful gownsmen,

with mingled deference and consternation, 'to dispute with you, Gentlemen,

but I can safely declare that I never heard him speak, nor any child,

indeed, of his age.'

Having thus troubled and frightened the worthy woman, for no purpose,

except that he might execute an awkward and feeble pleasantry, the

gownsman, who liked to be talked about, pressed the baby's cheeks with his

fingers, and turned away saying to his companion, 'How provokingly close

are those new-born babes! But it is no less certain, notwithstanding their

cunning attempts to conceal the truth, that all knowledge is reminiscence:

the doctrine is far more ancient than the times of Plato, and as old as

the venerable allegory, that the Muses are the daughters of Memory; not

one of the Nine was ever said to be the child of Invention.'

Whilst the freshman amused himself at Oxford in ways glanced at in the

foregoing pages, how did he get on with the tutors of his college, and the

other academic authorities? That he had no cause to complain of their

treatment of him during the earlier weeks of his brief time at Oxford, he

admitted in clear and noteworthy terms, to the Etonian who inquired of him

in Hogg's hearing, 'Do you mean to be an Atheist here, too, Shelley?'

To this inquiry, whether he meant to worry, harass, and defy the tutors of

his college as he had worried, harassed, and defied the persons put in

authority over him at Eton, the University College freshman answered

decidedly, 'No! certainly not. There is no motive for it; there would be

no use in it; they are very civil to us here; they never interfere with

us; it is not like Eton.'

For the precise words of this reply, represented by Hogg as having been

made by Shelley, the biographer was doubtless indebted in some degree to

his imagination. But even the 'Shelleyan enthusiasts' will admit that the

tenor of the reply was something Hogg might have remembered. Bearing in

mind also that Hogg disliked the University College 'dons,' and held them

in bitter remembrance as the authors of his own academic disgrace, the

same enthusiasts will admit that he was not likely to have invented such a

piece of testimony to the general inoffensiveness of 'the dons' he

detested. Even by them, therefore, it will be admitted that at this early

point of his brief 'residence' in college, Shelley admitted that the

'dons' of University College treated him, as gentlemen in their position

should treat a gentleman in his position; that they did not 'interfere'

with him, that he had no grievance against them, or any grounds for

worrying them. They were not like the Eton masters. They were gentlemen.

This admission is the more noteworthy because Hogg (wildly wrong-headed

and considerably less than historically truthful in matters touching his

own and the poet's expulsion from University College) in his bitterness

against those same 'dons,' was at much pains to declare them no gentlemen.

If the 'dons' were civil to Shelley, it must be admitted that he was less

than civil to them. One would like to be able to say otherwise; but the

evidence is conclusive that the undergraduate was uncivil to the 'dons' of

his college, and to 'dons' not of his college, both in his bearing towards

them, and his speech of them.

On the very first evening of their acquaintance, Shelley withdrew from

Hogg's rooms at 6.45 p.m., immediately 'after wine,' in order to attend a

lecture on mineralogy,--leaving his entertainer with a promise to return

to tea. An hour later he reappeared, chilly and disappointed. The evening

was raw and cold, and the lecture had 'bored' him. He would never listen

to another lecture by the dull lecturer.

Coming close up to Hogg, and speaking in a shrill whisper, the young

gentleman said with an arch look,--

'I went away, indeed, before the lecture was finished. I stole away

for it was so stupid, and I was so cold, that my teeth chattered. The

Professor saw me, and appeared to be displeased. I thought I could

have got out without being observed; but I struck my knee against a

bench, and made a noise, and he looked at me. I am determined that he

shall never see me again.'

'What did the man talk about?' Hogg asked.

'About stones! about stones!' answered the freshman (just then

affecting to be an enthusiastic student of natural science). 'About

stones!--stones, stones, stones!--nothing but stones!--and so drily.

It was wonderfully tiresome--and stones are not interesting in

themselves!'

Discreditable to the youngster's intelligence and scientific knowledge,

the story is highly discreditable to his breeding. Instead of being

'uninteresting things in themselves,' stones are things of extreme

interest. If the lecture was dull, he was bound by academic etiquette and

common social courtesy, to remain to the end of it. As the lecture was

poorly attended, he was especially bound by politeness to hear it out to

the last word. Leaving the lecture as he did, blundering out of the room

with noise so as to attract the lecturer's attention, he was guilty of an

extravagance of incivility and rudeness to one of the Professors[5] of his

University. The freshman, who in the first week or ten days of his

'residence in college,' could behave in this way to the lecturer, who had

bored him, was a freshman who on the slightest provocation would be 'an

Atheist' at Oxford, in the same sense in which he had been an Atheist at

Eton.

A few days after this incident, the freshman (the _brilliant_ author of

_Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_) discovered that the tutors of University

College were '_very dull people_.' One of these very dull people, in the

performance of his official duty, sent for the freshman to speak with him

about the subjects of study to which he should give his mind, and the

lectures he should attend. The interview between the dull person and the

brilliant Mr. Bysshe Shelley (author of _Zastrozzi_ and certain _Original

Poetry_ that was not original) left the younger gentleman with a mean

opinion of his intellectual adviser, and probably left the elder gentleman

with a no less unfavourable opinion of his pupil. What took place at this

interview shall be told here in the words of the pupil, whose _ex parte_

account of the matter (given to his friend, Mr. Hogg) is by no means

creditable to the narrator.--

'They are very dull people here!' the freshman remarked one evening

soon after he came 'into college.' 'A little man sent for me this

morning, and told me, in an almost inaudible whisper, that I must

read. "You must read," he said many times in his small voice. I

answered that I had no objection. He persisted: so, to satisfy him,

for he did not appear to believe me, I told him I had some books in my

pocket, and I began to take them out. He stared at me, and said that

was not exactly what he meant. "You must read _Prometheus Vinctus_,

and _Demosthenes de Corona_, and _Euclid_!" "Must I read _Euclid_?" I

asked sorrowfully. "Yes, certainly; and when you have read the Greek

works, I have mentioned, you must begin _Aristotle's Ethics_, and then

you may go on to his other treatises. It is of the utmost importance

to be well acquainted with Aristotle." This he repeated so often that

I was quite tired, and at last I said, "Must I care about Aristotle?

What if I do not mind Aristotle?" I then left him, for he seemed to be

in great perplexity.'

The reader may be left to fill in and expand this brief sketch of an

interview between one of the tutors of University College and the

freshman, who acknowledged that the same tutors were 'very civil' to the

undergraduates of the college. However, filled in and expanded, it must

remain the account of an interview, in which the tutor, behaving with

proper considerateness, and in no degree going outside the lines of his

official duty, was treated with freedom, bordering on gross impertinence,

by the pupil. Can anyone peruse the brief account without coming to the

conclusion that Shelley gave and meant to give Hogg the impression, that

he had treated the tutor saucily, _smoked_ him elegantly (if I may use a

word of obsolete slang), or, as school-boys would say, 'cheeked him' to

his face. Of course Shelley's words come to us through Hogg, who is

stigmatized as a treacherous and false friend by the 'Shelleyan

enthusiasts.' But even they will admit that Hogg (with a personal interest

in making the world imagine that the authorities of University College

treated him and Shelley with unprovoked harshness) was not likely to

misrepresent Shelley in this particular matter to his disadvantage.

Having discovered that the tutors of University College were 'dull

people,'--a sentiment in which his familiar friend concurred,--Mr. Bysshe

Shelley reminded Hogg on a subsequent occasion how very dull they were.

Hogg was looking over one of his friend's Latin exercises, a translation

into Latin of a portion of a paper in the _Spectator_, when he drew

Shelley's attention to 'many portions of heroic verses, and even several

entire verses,' observing that they were 'defects in a prose composition.'

Smiling archly, the freshman replied in his peculiar piercing whisper, 'Do

you think they will observe them? I inserted them intentionally to try

their ears! I once showed up a theme at Eton to old Keate, in which there

were a great many verses; but he observed them, scanned them, and asked

why I had introduced them? I answered, that I did not know they were

there; this was partly true and partly false; but he believed me, and

immediately applied to me the line, in which Ovid says of himself:

"Et quod tentabam dicere, versus erat."'

It was thus that the modest and loyal Shelley (as he is styled by 'the

enthusiasts') dealt with the tutors who were very civil to him,--putting

blemishes into his Latin exercises, in the hope that, by overlooking them,

the dull people would afford him another occasion for ridiculing their

dullness. Surely the freshman, who dealt with and talked of his tutors in

this style, was ripe and yearning to rebel against them, even as he had

rebelled against his masters at Eton. 'I answered,' he says of his reply

to Dr. Keate, 'that I did not know they were there; _this was partly true

and partly false_,'--words to remind the reader of the semi-delusions (as

Peacock called them) of the poet's later time. 'This was partly true and

partly false!' What an admission respecting the Etonian Shelley, who (to

use Lady Shelley's words), was 'more outspoken and truthful than other

boys!'

Though they saw at once he had no intention of throwing himself heartily

into the studies of the place, and had reason to smile at certain of his

more grotesque eccentricities, the tutors of University College discovered

no more serious cause for complaining of the freshman's behaviour during

Michaelmas term. On the contrary, as they of course were not ignorant of

the character he had borne, and the trouble he had given at Eton, and even

of the circumstances that occasioned his premature withdrawal from the

school, the tutors of the Oxford College may well have congratulated

themselves on the general orderliness of his behaviour, and have imagined

if they left him to his own course, and interfered with him as little as

possible, the perverse and contumacious Atheist of Eton would go through

an ordinary academic career without discredit. It is not to their shame

that they neither detected nor suspected his latent genius, which, besides

being latent, was so absolutely dormant, that it may be said to have had

no existence up to a time, considerably later than his expulsion from

Oxford. All they could say of him in the earlier of his two

residence-terms was that he behaved fairly well.

Thus much they could say of him. Living almost entirely with a single

friend (even as Byron in his earliest time at Cambridge lived in shy

seclusion almost entirely with a young chorister and a single friend of

gentle degree), he kept morning chapels with fair regularity, attended a

sufficient number of the college lectures, 'pricked _æger_' (when he was

quite well) no oftener than usage permitted, gave no noisy wine-parties,

had no noisy acquaintances, never 'knocked' into college after the

appointed hours for 'knocking in,' showed no propensity to any kind of

dissipation. It was true that he appeared 'in hall' less often than so

quiet a young gentleman might be expected to appear at the freshmen's

dinner-table; but attendance 'at hall' was not insisted on. True, also,

that he was understood to have written an extremely silly novel and a very

absurd book of poems; but it was well and needful young men should amuse

themselves, and better that they should amuse themselves with pen and ink

than with dice and cards.

Throughout the term, Shelley was more occupied with his literary

diversions than with the serious studies recommended by his tutor. Whilst

correcting the proofs of the _Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson_

(published _on_ or a little before 17th November, 1810, by J. Munday, of

the firm of Munday and Slatter, Printers and Booksellers, _Herald_ Office,

High Street, Oxford), he was in correspondence with Mr. John Joseph

Stockdale, of Pall Mall, about _The Wandering Jew_, and writing verses

that were shown to Hogg, and probably sent without delay to his sister

Elizabeth and Miss Harriett Grove, to each of whom he wrote frequently.

Before there was laughter in the colleges over the _Posthumous Fragments_

(a performance that, doubtless, found more readers than admirers in the

University), he had returned the amended manuscript of _St. Irvyne_ to the

Pall Mall publisher; and before he had done with the proofs of that

singular tale, or, at the latest, before the story was offered to the

circulating libraries, he was at work upon another novel (which never saw

the light, and probably was never finished),--the work of which he wrote

to Mr. Stockdale on 18th December, 1810:--

'I have in preparation a novel; it is principally constructed to

convey metaphysical and political opinions by way of conversation, it

shall be sent to you as soon as completed, but it shall receive more

correction than I trouble myself to give to wild Romance and Poetry.'

In the same term (probably during the second month of it) he found time to

make, with Hogg's assistance, 'the very careful analysis' (mentioned in

Hogg's _Life_) of Hume's _Essays_, to which he was chiefly indebted for

the theological views of _The Necessity of Atheism_, and for the other

arguments, with which he troubled the minds of the several indiscreet

persons, whom he lured with delusive letters into confidential controversy

on matters pertaining to religion.

From this survey of his literary diversions and other ways of spending his

time during this academic term, it is obvious that the freshman had not

many hours for strenuous study. Few, indeed, were the minutes left to him

out of the twenty-four hours for any purpose, when he had spent _five_

hours in bed, an hour in attending chapel and breakfasting, two or three

hours in attending lectures, an hour in playing with his scientific toys,

an hour or two in writing letters to some of his numerous correspondents,

two hours in correcting proofs and producing fresh copy for the printers,

four hours in walking (with 'breaks' for pistol practice, playing with

paper boats, and 'making ducks-and-drakes' on the water), an hour at

dinner and supper, from two to four hours in his usual evening-nap, and

four hours in conversation with his peculiar friend. Some reading,

together with much talk, was doubtless done by the friends during these

last-mentioned four hours; but though it may be refreshing and otherwise

serviceable, the reading, which two sociable and naturally loquacious

fellow-students get through in each other's company, is never strenuous

and 'hard reading,'--must ever be more or less light and desultory. The

best apology to be made for the freshman's practice of conning the printed

page in the High Street, is that his various diversions left him so little

time for reading in his own rooms.

Whilst amusing himself with his young friend, whose eccentricities

afforded him so much amusement, the lightly humorous and severely

practical Hogg (ever with an eye to the 'first-class' and the

'fellowship,' that should serve him as stepping-stones to higher social

success, if not to social greatness) held to his hard-reading and was a

prudent economist of the time, which the freshman spent in busy idleness.

Rising from his bed at seven, and passing the earlier hours of the day on

the work for which he had come to Oxford, the reading-man never entered

Shelley's rooms before one p.m., and sometimes kept away from them till a

later hour of the afternoon. In the evening he resumed his studies, and

pursued them without interruption, whilst Shelley took his

evening-slumber, lying sometimes on a sofa, but oftener on the hearth-rug

before the large fire, that, ever bright and fierce, never burnt too

fiercely for his comfort. Suddenly overcome by drowsiness the slight and

nervous stripling surrendered himself to torpor almost in an instant, and

dropping on the sofa or rug, lay in deep lethargy for two or three (on

some evenings for four) hours, stretched like a cat before the glowing

fire. If he dropt off in this fashion at six o'clock, he slept for four

hours; if he fell into slumber at eight o'clock he slept for only two

hours. Whatever the time when it began, the nap of profound slumber--never

a short one--ended at ten o'clock, or within a few minutes. That the heat

of the glowing stove affected the sleeper agreeably, was obvious from the

way in which he rolled away from any object that screened him from the

fire, and placed his little head so that it felt more sensibly the ardour

of the burning coals. Occasionally he talked in his sleep, more often his

rest was not less silent than long. Whilst the youngster slept, the

reading-man worked steadily at his books and papers.

Recovering consciousness as suddenly as he lost it, Shelley was no sooner

awake than he was restored to perfect mental alertness. Rising to his feet

with startling alacrity, he was ready for talk as soon as he had rubbed

his eyes and passed his long fingers through his long hair. At the same

instant, the north-countryman looked up from his books and turned away

from his papers. On different evenings, the talk ran on poetry and

science, logic and history, morals and religion, man's relation to the

universe, the soul's immortality, the errors of the creeds, and the

reasons why a reasonable man should not believe in anything. Sometimes the

talk resulted in reference to books, and the reference to books for

particular passages led sometimes to larger reading of them. If it was not

begun and perfected, the 'very careful analysis' of Hume's _Essays_ was

often referred to, reconsidered and amended at these nocturnal

conferences.

At other times, when the youthful philosophers were weary of high and

exhausting themes, the talk turned on their domestic interests, their

kindred and prospects, their respective homes and counties, the humours of

Durham and Yorkshire, and the manners of Sussex. When the gossip played

about these homely topics, the freshman was even more entertaining to his

delightful and incomparable friend, than when they discoursed on loftier

matters. Lying back in his chair, and laughing in his sleeve as he tried

to discriminate between the fact and fiction of his companion's marvellous

communications, Mr. Hogg, of University College, learnt many things that

were not altogether true of Field Place, its inmates, and its traditions.

From the commencement of their friendship, it was obvious to the young

gentleman from the neighbourhood of Stockton-on-Tees, that his friend's

statements were to be taken with allowance for the vigour of a fertile

fancy, and the speaker's propensity for drawing the colloquial long-bow.

When the scientific enthusiast described with needless emphasis and much

extravagant gesticulation how nearly he had killed himself at Eton, by

inadvertently swallowing some mineral poison, the interested but scarcely

sympathetic listener suspected that a lively imagination was in some

degree accountable for the thrilling tale. The stories about the 'Old

Snake' were received in the same sceptical spirit by the auditor, who

regarded the staggering legends as signally wanting in 'the commonplace

truth of ordinary matters of fact,' though doubtless rich in 'the far

higher truth of poetical verity and mythological necessity.' The

Michaelmas Term was still young, when the same sceptical auditor listened

with more interest than credulity to Shelley's account of the way in which

he was saved from the madhouse, to which he would have been consigned by

his inhuman father, had it not been for Dr. Lind's timely and intrepid

action. Before the Term had grown old, Mr. Hogg had heard much, of which

he believed little, to the discredit of the worthy, though curiously

pompous gentleman, who retained the confidence of the New Shoreham

electors, without possessing his eldest son's good opinion.

To say that Shelley told his whole heart and mind to his fellow-collegian

during this season of their closest and most cordial intimacy, would be

saying too much of a young man, whose candour was less real than

apparent:--of the rash and seemingly reckless speaker who, resembling

Byron in the freedom with which he talked of his private affairs to slight

acquaintances and the whole world, resembled him also in having reserves

from those to whom he was most communicative, even at the moments when he

seemed most incapable of secresy or any other kind of self-restraint.

Hogg, however, may well have imagined that nothing was withheld from him

by the freshman, who, talking to him copiously of half-a-hundred matters

he had better have kept to himself, submitted his letters from Field Place

to so recent an acquaintance, letters from his father, and letters

(containing specimens of her poetry) from his sister. Expressing great

admiration of the young lady's verse and prose, Mr. Hogg was vastly

tickled by the peculiarities of Mr. Timothy Shelley's epistles, which he

turned to ridicule with much piquant sprightliness, and to the lively

gratification of their writer's son.

Because these epistles began in kindly fashion with 'My Dear Boy,' the

writer was suspected of wishing to imitate the style of Chesterfield's

Letters, and also of thinking he resembled the courtly Earl in elegance,

accomplishments, and worldly wisdom. It was easy, and no less pleasant

than easy to the two undergraduates, to make fun of the epistles, so

curiously deficient in coherence and perspicacity. Always _franked_ by

the member for New Shoreham, the letters sometimes 'scolded the dear boy

nobly, royally, gloriously.' One of these franked, furious and fiery

missives having moved Hogg to speak of it derisively, and with a sprightly

reference to a familiar line of Campbell's 'Hohenlinden,' Shelley

henceforth took to speaking of his father as 'the fiery Hun.' The son had

other nicknames for the father, whom he so often offended,--sometimes

unintentionally, and sometimes with deliberate and malicious purpose to

rouse and exasperate the irritability, that afforded the two youthful

Oxonians so much diversion;--the irritability which the son (of whose

poetical light and sweetness so much has been written by fantastic

adulators) was bound by filial duty to consider tenderly and soothe to the

utmost of his ability; was bound by honour and care for his own dignity to

screen and palliate. Writing and talking of him as 'the Fiery Hun,'

Shelley could also speak of his father contemptuously as 'Killjoy' and

'the Old Boy,' in the letters that passed between him and Hogg after their

dismissal from University College.

Whilst Hogg was exquisitely droll about the defects of Mr. Timothy

Shelley's letters, he of course heard all about his friend's passion for

his cousin, Harriett Grove, which, though it never touched the boy's

deepest and strongest affections, was still a sufficiently fervid

sentiment to justify him in thinking it a grand and eternal devotion. It

is not surprising that Shelley opened his heart on this interesting topic

to his constant companion. On the contrary, it would be strange had he

done otherwise. It is rare for a boy to pass through his first love-fever

without confiding to a sympathetic hearer of his own sex, how he fares

under the violent delights and still more violent anxieties of his heart's

unrest. In speaking to his dear and incomparable Hogg of Miss Harriett

Grove's beauty and accomplishments, her irresistible voice and richly

radiant tresses, her composure that too nearly resembled coldness, and the

circumspection that might not be imputed to her for unkindness, young

Bysshe Shelley only did as most youngsters would have done under similar

circumstances,--as most youngsters under similar circumstances will do, to

the end of Time and Love.

But though he did nothing unusual or otherwise remarkable in talking of

his love and his Harriett's loveliness to his one familiar male friend,

Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley did what few young Englishmen of gentle lineage

and culture would have done,--what no young gentleman could do, without

lacking in some degree the delicate fastidiousness and proud reserve

befitting a youth of breeding and quality,--when, out of fraternal concern

for the young lady's welfare, and in the fervour of his generous affection

for so incomparable a friend, he invited Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg to

visit Field Place on the first convenient opportunity, for the express

purpose of seeing the eldest daughter of the house, falling in love with

her, and marrying her. It is not often that a young lady (_ætat._ sixteen,

living under the protection of her father and mother) is thus offered in

marriage by her elder brother (_ætat._ eighteen) to a young gentleman whom

she has never seen. It does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Bysshe

Shelley that his father and mother were entitled to a voice on the

disposal of their daughter in marriage, that before entering on

negotiations on so delicate a subject, with a gentleman of whose person

and family they were alike ignorant, he should consult the Fiery Hun on

the business, and learn from the Fiery Hun's wife, whether the arrangement

would be agreeable to her feelings.

From what is known of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg's character and lively

humour in his later time, one may imagine that in the lightness and levity

of his earlier time he was vastly tickled by his young friend's flattering

proposal for this alliance of their respective houses; that he saw the

probable advantage of wedding the daughter of so wealthy a baronet, as Mr.

Timothy Shelley would become on the death of his aged father; and that he

was strongly predisposed to admire his young friend's sister, who was said

to resemble her brother in the colour of her eyes and hair, no less than

in the pink-and-white freshness of her complexion, and to surpass him

greatly in facial comeliness, by virtue of the delicate symmetry of a

countenance, whose most prominent feature was faultless in size and shape.

Anyhow, the undergraduate from the northern county, who, on account of its

remoteness, had no intention of returning to his father's roof at

Christmas or Easter, consented readily to a project that, even if nothing

more came of it, would enable him to pass the shorter vacations in

congenial society at no inconvenient distance from the University.

It was doubtless a matter for regret and apologetic explanation with Mr.

Bysshe Shelley, that, owing to the Fiery Hun's peculiarities, he could

not safely carry his friend with him to Sussex at the close of the

Michaelmas term, but was under the necessity of preceding him to Field

Place and foregoing the delights of his society, until he should be

authorized by the capricious, and too often austere Killjoy, to invite him

thither for the gaieties of Christmas and the New-Year. The evidences are

not conclusive on the point; but they afford particulars from which it may

be fairly assumed that, for several days after Shelley's withdrawal from

the University for the Christmas holidays, Hogg (whether lingering at

Oxford, or staying at the London Hotel, where he received several letters

from Shelley in the closing days of December, 1810, and the opening days

of January, 1811) looked to each successive post for an invitation to

Field Place, and to the presence of the young lady, with whom he was

predisposed to fall in love, and had promised to fall in love, if he found

it in his power to do so.

CHAPTER XI.

THE CHRISTMAS VACATION OF 1810-11.

Presentation copies of _St. Irvyne_--Shelley resorts to

Deception--Shelley in Disgrace at Field Place--Harriett Grove's

Dismissal of her Suitor--The Squire's Anger--Mrs. Shelley's Alarm for

her Girls--Shelley's Troubles--His Rage against Intolerance--His Wild

Letters to Hogg--'Married to a Clod'--Stockdale's Design--His

Intercourse with Shelley's Father--More Negotiations with the

Pall-Mall Publisher--Shelley a Deist--Controversial

Correspondence--Shelley's Attempt to enlighten his Father--His Passage

from Deism to Atheism--The Squire relents to his Son--Hogg invited to

Field Place--Stockdale's Disappointment--Hogg invited to Field

Place--Stockdale's Character--His Scandalous _Budget_.

Leaving Oxford at the end of Michaelmas term, 1810, and journeying to

Sussex by way of London, Mr. Bysshe Shelley was at Field Place on the 18th

of December, on which day he wrote to Mr. John Joseph Stockdale, of Pall

Mall, expressing approval of the publisher's advertisement of _St.

Irvyne_, and begging him to send a copy of the absurd story to each of the

three following persons:--Miss Marshall, of Horsham, Sussex; Thomas

Medwin, Esq., of the same place; and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Esq., at the

Reverend Mr. Dayrell's, Lynnington (a misspelling of Lillingstone)

Dayrell, Buckinghamshire. At the same time the author requested that six

copies should be sent to himself, and observed, at the close of his brief

note, 'I will enclose the printer's account for your inspection in another

letter;' words of some moment to the reader who would get a view of the

circumstances that soon resulted in the young author's rupture with his

publisher. Under ordinary circumstances, the printer's bill for printing a

book published at the author's risk would be paid by the publisher, and

would not come under the author's notice save as an item of his

publisher's account. Paying the printer with a bill, or with ready-money,

on which discount would be allowed, the publisher would charge the author

with the full sum of the printer's account, making on the transaction a

considerable profit (to the amount of the discount), if he pays the

printer in 'cash' and is promptly repaid by the author. Mr. Stockdale, of

course, would not have been slow to arrange for getting this advantage,

had he not by the middle of December discovered grounds for mistrusting

the author's ability to pay the charges for which he was responsible; or

had he not somehow come to the opinion that the author (a minor) should be

pressed for immediate payment of the costs of producing a book, whose sale

would necessarily be trifling. That Mr. Gosnell, of Little Queen Street,

London (the printer to whom Mr. Stockdale had himself sent 'the copy' of

_St. Irvyne_, after the MS. had been 'fitted for the press'), was thus

asked to press the author for immediate payment for the printing, is alike

significant of the publisher's distrust of the author's solvency, and of

the publisher's unfavourable opinion of the book.

If he was not in trouble and disgrace at Field Place from the first moment

of his return to his boyhood's home, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley did not pass

many days of the Christmas vacation in Sussex, before his father spoke to

him sharply, and his mother regarded him with sorrowful disapproval. A

letter he wrote to Hogg on 20th December, 1810--a letter to be found in

Hogg's _Life_--shows that, at so early a time of the holidays, he found

himself in a position of divers annoyances, several humiliations, and much

embarrassment. Acting in the name of their daughter, and also with the

authority pertaining to them as her natural guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Grove,

of Fern House, Wiltshire, had written to Field Place, expressing

reasonable surprise and displeasure at their nephew's conduct in abusing

the privileges of familiar intercourse so far and so outrageously as to

write his cousin Harriett Grove (_ætat._ 17 to 18) letters, whose main

purpose was to draw her into religious controversy, and lure her from

Christianity,--the faith in which she had been educated; the faith of her

parents and kindred. To Mr. and Mrs. Grove, it necessarily seemed that in

thus acting towards their daughter, Bysshe had acted dishonourably, and

shown himself unworthy of the love he required from her; unworthy even of

the friendly intercourse with her, to which he had been entitled as her

near kinsman. Under these circumstances, Shelley was informed that his

correspondence with Miss Harriett Grove must be stayed at least for the

present, and that his hope of marrying her must be dismissed for ever.

Holding old and wholesome views on certain questions of honour, though he

certainly was no person to be compared with the Saviour of the World, Mr.

Timothy Shelley concurred in the sentiments of Fern House on this affair,

and told his son so in terms none too daintily worded. 'The Fiery Hun'

blushed to think he had a son capable of sapping the faith and principles

of a young lady, to whose familiar confidence he had been admitted under

conditions of which no gentleman, old or young, was unmindful. To poor

Mrs. Shelley, the case was even worse. Regarding the point of honour with

her husband's eyes, she thought also of the monstrous wickedness of her

first-born child, who, throwing from him the truths of the Christian

religion, had covered them with ridicule. In alarm, she thought of her

girls. If Bysshe could act thus wickedly to his cousin Harriett, what was

there to withhold him from acting in like manner to his sister Elizabeth?

He and she were so closely attached to one another, that it was their

practice to read and walk and write poetry together. During the whole of

his single term of residence at Oxford, there had been letters passing

between them. Had he already inspired the dear girl with sceptical

sentiment? Instead of submitting to her father and mother, as Harriett

Grove had done, the evil counsel he was giving her, had Elizabeth taken

his impious words to heart? Was she pondering them secretly, and brooding

over them, in doubt whether she should reject them as false, or hold to

them as true? Or had she embraced them no less impetuously and strongly

than furtively? Was she already a disbeliever?--an infidel? Then the

terrified mother thought of her younger girls,--Mary, and Hellen, and

Margaret. If he could tamper with the religious tenets of so young a girl

as Elizabeth, still only sixteen years old, what was there in the

tenderness of their infantile years to render Bysshe more heedful for the

spiritual health and tranquillity of Elizabeth's younger sisters?

It needs no lively imagination to conceive the terror that agitated this

anxious mother, to realize the apprehensions that, fretting her spirits

incessantly, gave her sleepless nights and sorrowful days. Instead of

being touched and subdued by the words and looks, that made him cognizant

of her maternal solicitude, the young gentleman (who might have been the

Saviour of the World) wrote lightly to his fellow-collegian on January 11,

1811, about his mother's alarm. She imagined him on the high road to

perdition. She fancied him set on making infidels of his little sisters.

Could anything be more laughable? It was, however, no laughable matter to

the poor lady; and it should not have been a matter for laughter with her

son. Why was his mother a simpleton for allowing such fears to trouble

her, when the young gentleman was craftily and insidiously sapping his

eldest sister's belief in Christianity, apportioning the new doctrine of

Free Thought with nice consideration for her girlish timidity, and for the

weakness of her intellect,--giving it in doses large enough to awaken and

stimulate curiosity, without stirring her to amazement and horror?

As he was working in this condescending and considerate manner on

Elizabeth's darkness and weakness on the 26th of December, 1810, why was

his mother a mere goose for fearing he might be no less condescending, and

considerate, and slily beneficent to Elizabeth's younger sisters?

Moreover the time was near at hand when, in his fanatical intolerance of

all opinion from which he differed, the youthful philosopher regarded

Elizabeth's younger sisters as quite old enough to digest the crumbs of

truth, that fell from his lips. With all her disposition to minimize and

palliate the feelings of her poet, Lady Shelley admits that such a

youngster as the Oxonian Shelley would be a perplexing member of any

household with a brood of children to be thought for. Indeed, she even

goes the length of saying that, before accusing Mr. Timothy Shelley of

treating his heir with inadequate tenderness, people should ask themselves

how they would like to have in their houses a Spinozist or a Calvinist, so

set on making converts, as to seek them in the butler's pantry or the

children's schoolroom. Lady Shelley is even more particular, in moving

every Christian mother to think, how she would like to entertain for her

guest a Spinozist, desirous of making her 'youngest daughter' concur in

his opinions.

Readers should bear in mind how clearly the author of _Shelley Memorials:

From Authentic Sources_, intimates that, instead of being the absurd and

laughable fancy her son declared it, poor Mrs. Timothy Shelley's fear for

the spiritual safety of her younger girls was nothing less than a

reasonable anticipation of what actually took place in their schoolroom,

in respect to the youngest of them, before the poet turned his back on

Field Place for ever.

Just about the same time at which his attention was called to his son's

sceptical opinions, and his zeal for making converts to them, by Mr. and

Mrs. Grove, of Fern House, Mr. Timothy Shelley received some information,

touching the same matters of painful interest from Mr. John Joseph

Stockdale, of Pall Mall. As the man of business, who lived to be one of

the blackest sheep of 'the trade,' was at no point of his career a person

of extraordinary worth, the readers of the present chapter are not

required to attribute the publisher's action in this particular business

to any sincere concern for the younger gentleman's welfare, or for his

father's happiness. Before he became uneasy about the printer's bill, for

whose payment he was of course responsible, should the undergraduate of

University College fail to pay it, Mr. Stockdale had been warned by

several circumstances to exercise greater caution in his dealings with the

young gentleman, whose _Original Poetry_ had proved so inconveniently

wanting in originality. _Zastrozzi_, of which he doubtless took a view

after learning the name of its publisher, can scarcely have raised the

author of the Victor-and-Cazire book in Mr. Stockdale's estimation. The

quality of _St. Irvyne_, and the pains he had himself taken to fit it for

the press, cannot have disposed the man of business to think highly of the

author's ability. What he had heard about _The Wandering Jew_ cannot have

disposed the publisher to think less contemptuously of the young

gentleman's literary parts and ambition. The note touching the Hebrew

Essay to the discredit of the Christian religion, was only one of several

matters, to indicate to the publisher that his youthful client's reading

would possibly result in perilous writing. One can imagine how the

publisher of novels and inferior poetry received the suggestion that he

should publish the novel on _Metaphysical and Political Opinions_. On the

approach of the Christmas holidays (1810-11), it was clear to Mr.

Stockdale he had better press for a pecuniary settlement with Mr. Percy

Bysshe Shelley; and in case the young gentleman was not likely to pay his

debt, to take measures for getting the money out of the young gentleman's

father. Hence, the publisher's earlier interviews with the Member for New

Shoreham, who was instructed that his son had fallen into evil hands at

Oxford, and was a supporter of sceptical philosophy. How little the

publisher got by his pains, and how he avenged himself on the Member of

Parliament, whom he failed to bleed, are matters for subsequent pages.

When he wrote to Hogg on the 20th of December, 1810, Shelley had endured

and was still enduring several sharp annoyances. Angry words had escaped

'the Fiery Hun,' who scolded his son for writing ridiculous books when he

should be reading learned ones at Oxford; scolded him for running into

debt with a publisher and printer, whom he had no means of paying; scolded

him for adopting the damnable opinions of Hume, Paine, and the other

infidels; scolded him royally for his most ungentlemanlike behaviour, in

trying to lure his cousin Harriett from the sound Christian principles in

which she had been educated by her most virtuous and exemplary parents. It

was the way of fathers to scold their sons thus royally at the beginning

of the present century; and it being part of the paternal style of George

the Third's time, no sound-hearted and loyal-hearted son ever resented so

wholesome, though somewhat turbulent, an exercise of paternal authority.

Now-a-days, fathers bring, or try to bring, their disorderly sons to meet

contrition, with less noise and more dignity, but with speech quite as

galling at the time, and more likely to rankle in the memory. To argue

that Mr. Timothy Shelley was brutal and wanting in natural affection,

because he scolded his naughty boy in this manner, is wild nonsense.

However roundly he was spoken to, Mr. Bysshe Shelley received nothing more

than he deserved. For awhile the father threatened to take his son from

Oxford at once, but the threat was not carried out. It would have been

better for Shelley had his father held to the threat. Mr. Bysshe Shelley's

grand averment that the menace was withdrawn, because he 'would not

consent to it,' is a delicious piece of puerile 'bounce.'

Shelley had reason for discontent. Forbidden to write to his cousin

Harriett, he imagined, for a few days, he had loved her vehemently.

Dismissed by her on account of his opinions, he deemed himself the victim

of religious intolerance. By turns he thought of committing suicide, and

wreaking his vengeance on the religion, which he held accountable for his

greatest trouble. Swearing on what he was pleased to call the altar of

perjured love, he vowed he would put an end to religious intolerance, by

slaying secretly, stabbing secretly, the creed and the sentiment which

generated religious intolerance. Dismissing the thought of killing

himself, he confirmed himself in his purpose to kill superstition; and

whilst maturing his plans for the achievement of this resolve, he

determined to pursue his literary enterprises. But as 'the Fiery Hun'

disapproved of his dealings with publishers, he determined to conceal his

literary designs from his parents. On this point he wrote with instructive

frankness to Hogg. 'There is now,' he wrote to his friend, 'need of all my

art: I must resort to deception.' The deception he practised was to work

on a new novel, with a view to early publication, whilst telling his

father and mother he had no intention of publishing anything again.

'Inconveniences would now result from my owning the novel,' he wrote to

Hogg, 'which I have in preparation for the press. I give out, therefore,

that I will publish no more.' It pleased him to know that every one

believed his false statement, with the exception of the few, who, being in

his confidence, knew that it was a falsehood. One of the persons thus

taken into his confidence was his sister Elizabeth (_ætat._ 16), whom he

thus educated in deceit, by telling her how he was deceiving their

parents. This was the course taken by the singularly outspoken and

truth-loving Shelley in his own home,--towards his father and mother on

the one hand, and towards his sister on the other. At the same time,

whilst deceiving his father and mother, he was debating how he could

impose his new book on a publisher by misrepresenting the tendency and

purpose of the work. He was afraid that, though a thick-skulled man,

Stockdale would detect the falsehood of the statement he was ready to make

about the book.

What further evidence can readers of ordinary intelligence and temper

require that, instead of being more outspoken and truth-loving than other

people, the poet suffered from a deficiency of that repugnance to untruth

which is the prime characteristic of English gentlemen; that he was

capable of telling untruths, and did tell them, for small ends that would

not draw Englishmen of average veracity a single hair's-breadth out of

truth's clear and straight path? Of course the facts, which cannot fail to

bring impartial readers to this painful conclusion, are regarded in

another way, by those 'Shelleyan enthusiasts' who idolize the author of

_Laon and Cythna_ as a being worthy of being likened to the Saviour of the

World. The facts that to impartial minds are evidential of the poet's

untruthfulness, the most extravagant of the Shelleyan zealots regard as so

much evidence that their idol possessed an inordinately powerful

imagination. What stronger evidence can there be of the overpowering

vigour and sway of his fancy, than that so lofty and faultless a being

could imagine himself capable of deceiving his publisher, of telling

falsehoods to his father and mother, of educating his younger sister in

untruth; and could, moreover, deliberately write himself down guilty of

these flagrant offences, of which so faultless a being must have been

innocent as the new-born babe?

Scarcely less noteworthy than his avowal of the deceit he is practising on

his father and mother, are the terms in which Shelley refers to the abrupt

termination of his correspondence with Miss Harriett Grove, and declares

his purpose of avenging himself on Intolerance for the annoyance that has

come to him from the lady's disapproval of his religious scepticism.

As Miss Harriett Grove had never promised to be his wife, but had on the

contrary persisted in assuring her cousin Elizabeth that she might not

anticipate a successful issue to her brother's suit, this talk about

'perjured love' was very much out of place. Still it did no harm; and as

the young gentleman felt it needful to swear on something, and was

precluded by the exigencies of the case from swearing 'on the book,' he,

perhaps, exercised a wise discretion when he elected to 'swear on the

altar of perjured love.' To swear what? That, because he was very much

annoyed at being sent about his business by Miss Harriett Grove, and at

being otherwise reprimanded for troubling her mind with sceptical

sentiments, he would make war upon Intolerance, would fight Intolerance to

the bitter end, would be the death of Intolerance, would 'stab the wretch

in secret.' This was the oath sworn on the altar of perjured love! Having

suffered, more in self-love than in any other of his affections, from a

young lady's disapproval of his religious opinions, and from her parents'

no less cordial repugnance to those opinions, Mr. Bysshe Shelley regarded

himself as a victim of religious intolerance. Yet further,--seeing that

Christians, intolerant of opinions antagonistic to their religious tenets,

would not be intolerant Christians were it not for their Christianity, he

determined to render them tolerant by slaying the religion which he

regarded as the source of their intolerance. 'Indeed, I think it,' he

wrote, 'to the benefit of society to destroy the opinions which

annihilate the dearest of its ties,'--_i.e._ the ties uniting such lovers

as Mr. Bysshe Shelley and Miss Harriett Grove were, before religion

separated them. As the war against Christianity had begun long before the

poet's severance from his cousin, which was, indeed, one of the

consequences of the war, it would, of course, be absurd to attribute the

poet's hatred of the religion to the anger begotten of his dismissal by

Miss Grove. But in accounting for the vehemence with which Shelley pushed

the war, and the spirit in which he extended the field of his operations,

and from being the enemy of a single faith became the foe of all

religions, readers must make allowance for the sense of personal injury

which animated him to swear he would slay Religious Intolerance.

In the letters which Shelley poured upon Hogg, from the 20th of December,

till the end of the academic vacation, one comes upon much more about

Harriett Grove, and his correspondence with her. To skim these flighty and

rhapsodical letters is to miss the information that may be extracted from

them. But to study them carefully is to take the present writer's view of

Shelley's regard for his cousin, from the summer of 1810.

It is clear the cousins never plighted troth to one another. On 23rd

December, 1810, Shelley wishes to know, whether he did wrong in luring his

cousin to correspond with him, in order that they 'might see if by

coincidence of intellect,' it would be well for them 'to enter into a

closer, an eternal union;' the desire for information being clothed in

words, amounting to an admission there had been no regular engagement. In

the same letter, speaking of Miss Grove's coldness, Shelley speaks also of

the failure of his sister's efforts to make the self-possessed beauty

regard him with feelings warmer than those of cousinly kindness. That the

young gentleman's strongest affections were not concerned in the affair

appears from the fact that, within eight days of swearing on the altar of

perjured love, he could write with comparative calmness of his inability

to fall in love at present with any other young lady.

In language that may be suspected of having contributed something to Lord

Dundreary's colloquial style, he wrote to Hogg, on 28th December, 1810,

'at present a thousand barriers oppose any more intimate connexion, any

union with another, which, although unnatural and fettering to a virtuous

mind, are nevertheless unconquerable.' After writing thus calmly, however,

he relapsed into moods, of alternate dejection and fury. He 'slept with a

loaded pistol and some poison last night' (_i.e._ 2nd January, 1811), 'but

did not die.' Again he vowed vengeance on the religious intolerance that

had robbed him of his Harriett. On the 11th January, 1811, he wrote

fiercely to Hogg, 'She is gone! She is lost to me for ever! She is

married! Married to a clod of earth; she will become as insensible as

himself; all these fine capabilities will moulder!'

It may not be inferred from the words 'She is married,' that the

gentlewoman had already become a wife, or that Shelley meant to do more

than announce her engagement to Mr. William Helyar, of Coker Court, Co.

Somerset, whose wife she became in November, 1811, two months after the

future poet's Scotch marriage to Harriett Westbrook. Bearing in mind the

old distinction between marriage and its celebration, and remembering, at

the same time, the ancient doctrine of the Church, that a mere matrimonial

contract was wedlock--though not yet celebrated and sanctified into _holy_

wedlock--readers must take the words as a mere declaration that Miss Grove

had plighted her troth to her future husband. The old ecclesiastical law,

which made matrimonial pre-contract a sufficient ground for nullification

of marriage, was based on the doctrine that an interchange of nuptial

promises was, in itself, marriage. In his 'anti-matrimonialism'--a

sentiment growing more and more powerful in the author of _Zastrozzi_ and

_St. Irvyne_--Shelley, disdainful of the ecclesiastical celebration,

looked upon the interchange of promises ('the engagement' of ordinary

parlance) as the real marriage; and in doing so he was (strange to say) in

accord with the canonists, and with the old matrimonial law that,

surviving in North its extinction in South Britain, was, even to

yesterday, generally known as 'the Scotch marriage-law.'

The clod of earth had a good many acres of land in Wiltshire, Somerset,

and Devonshire, and instead of being the senseless and soulless wretch it

pleased Mr. Bysshe Shelley to imagine him, was a gentleman of good repute

in the three shires, for each of which he was a magistrate. Heir to an

ample estate, he married Miss Harriett Grove in November 1811, and living

with her till death divided them, was never moved to transfer his

affections to another lady. Would life have gone thus pleasantly with the

gentlewoman, who became the mother of children fair and gracious as

herself, had she yielded to the suit of her scatter-brain cousin?

Whilst he was fuming over his sentimental misadventure, and writing

extravagant nonsense about the 'altar of perjured love,' not so much

because he felt his cousin's unkindness acutely, as from a notion that the

poetical proprieties required him to use the language of indignation and

wretchedness, Mr. Bysshe Shelley made frequent mention of his sister

Elizabeth in the letters he sent in steady stream to the young gentleman,

who had been entreated to fall in love with her.

It sadly disarranged the brother's plans for his sister's welfare, that he

could not invite his peculiar friend forthwith to Field Place. The reason

why he could not do so was that his father, already instructed by

Stockdale to attribute his son's scepticism to the influence of his Oxford

friend, had declared his opinion of Mr. Hogg in terms, which satisfied

Bysshe he had better not ask for permission to summon the incomparable

Hogg to Sussex. But though he could not bring them together for the

present, the match-making brother did his best to inspire his sister and

his college-friend with a sentimental regard for one another, that could

not fail to result in mutual love, so soon as they should come together.

Speaking to his sister of his friend in terms of vehement admiration, he

read her the letters that came to him in steady stream from his idolized

and incomparable Hogg. That Hogg (whose sense of humour was allied with a

liberal measure of romantic sensibility) delighted in the notion of

becoming his friend's brother-in-law, and during the holidays even went so

far as to bind himself to fall in love with Miss Shelley, appears from the

letter in which Shelley overflowed with gratitude for so great a

concession to his wishes. 'How,' wrote Shelley to his friend, 'can I find

words to express my thanks for such generous conduct with regard to my

sister, with talents and attainments such as you possess, to promise what

I ought not, perhaps, to have required, what nothing but a dear sister's

intellectual improvement could have induced me to demand?' At Oxford it

had been enough for Shelley to declare a hope that Hogg would become his

brother-in-law. From Field Place, during the Christmas holidays, the

enthusiastic stripling begged Hogg to promise he would satisfy the hope.

Whilst he thus arranged a match between Hogg and his sister, Shelley knew

that his friend was a Freethinker on questions relating to religion. From

what had recently taken place in respect to his sceptical correspondence

with Miss Harriett Grove, he knew that his father and mother concurred

with his uncle and aunt Grove in regarding religious scepticism with

repugnance and horror; knew that his father and mother would regard their

eldest daughter's marriage to a Freethinker as a terrible and supreme

calamity. Yet he was coolly and secretly scheming for such a marriage of

their sixteen-years-old daughter, and was cautiously 'illuminating' her

out of the Christian religion, and otherwise training her to become the

fit wife of a man, whom he had good reason to know her parents would never

consent to accept for their son-in-law. The young gentleman does all this

in absolute indifference to the rights and feelings of his own father and

mother--with absolute carelessness for the serious trouble he is preparing

for his father, the agonizing sorrow he is preparing for his mother. Am I

wrong in saying that the young man (_ætat._ 18), who acted in this manner

to his father and mother and his younger sister, was guilty of domestic

treason?

What was the literary enterprise on which Shelley was at work during the

earlier weeks of this Christmas recess (1810-11)?--the work that was

offered to Mr. Stockdale during the recess?--the work about whose

publication Mr. Hogg, whilst staying at a London hotel, had several

interviews with the Pall-Mall publisher, who, sixteen years later,

professed to have been most unfavourably impressed by the Oxonian's

appearance, speech, and manner, at those interviews? The general opinion

of the 'Shelleyan enthusiasts' is that the work thus submitted to the

bookseller was _The Necessity of Atheism_, the pamphlet that resulted in

Shelley's expulsion from his college? Mr. Garnett has no doubt that the

work was 'either the unlucky pamphlet which occasioned Shelley's expulsion

from Oxford, or something of a very similar description.' Mr. Denis

Florence MacCarthy goes a step further, and speaks of it roundly as the

manuscript of _The Necessity of Atheism_. That the manuscript, which

afforded Stockdale another opportunity for warning Mr. Timothy Shelley to

remove his son from Mr. Hogg's pernicious influences, was a sceptical

performance is unquestionable. But there are grounds for a strong opinion

that it was neither _The Necessity of Atheism_, nor any tract written on

the same lines as that notorious pamphlet. The evidence is conclusive that

up to the time, and beyond the time, when Stockdale was invited to publish

the pamphlet, Shelley believed in the existence of a supreme Deity. He had

for a considerable period ceased to be a Christian. But he still believed

in God. To hold, therefore, that the manuscript declined by Stockdale was

_The Necessity of Atheism_, or 'something of a _very similar

description_,' is to hold that whilst believing in God Shelley wrote a

book to prove there was no God; that whilst believing in the existence of

the Deity he set himself deliberately to work, to force other people into

pure atheism. I cannot believe with Mr. Garnett, and Mr. Denis Florence

MacCarthy, that Shelley was capable of such amazing impiety. Nothing is

stranger in Shelley's story than that the hardest things said of him

should, in so many cases, be uttered by his extravagant idolaters. My

conception of the Oxonian Shelley is that he was an impetuous, unruly,

combative young scatterbrain; disloyal and deceitful to his parents;

certainly capable of falsehood in comparatively small matters to other

people; but I cannot believe he could have been so false to his own soul,

so prodigiously false to his own convictions on the most awful of all

solemn subjects, as to write and seek a publisher for a serious argument

against the belief in God, whilst he himself believed in the Deity.

Let us see from evidences, known to Mr. Garnett, when he wrote his

_Shelley in Pall Mall_, what were some of Shelley's views respecting God,

in the Christmas holidays of 1810-11. On 26th December, 1810, he writes to

Hogg from Field Place:--

'Thanks, _truly_ thanks, for opening your heart to me, for telling me

your feelings to me. Dare I do the same to you? I dare not to myself,

how can I to another, perfect as he may be. I dare not even to God,

whose mercy is great.'

On 3rd January, 1811, the future poet writes to the same correspondent:

'The word "God," a vague word, has been, and will continue to be, the

source of numberless errors, until it is erased from the nomenclature

of philosophy. Does it not imply "the soul of the universe, the

intelligent and necessarily beneficent, actuating principle." This it

is impossible not to believe in. I may not be able to adduce proofs;

but, I think, that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we

trample, are, in themselves, arguments more conclusive than [any]

which can be advanced [....] that some vast intellect animates

infinity. If we disbelieve this, the strongest argument in support of

the existence of a future state instantly becomes annihilated.'

Nine days later (12th January, 1811), the future poet writes from Field

Place:--

'I here take God (_and a God exists_) to witness, that I wish

torments, which beggar the futile description of a fancied hell, would

fall upon me; provided I could attain thereby that happiness for what

I love, which, I fear, can never be!... I wish, ardently wish, to be

profoundly convinced of the existence of a Deity, that so superior a

spirit might derive some degree of happiness from my feeble exertions;

for love is heaven, and heaven is love.... I think I can prove the

existence of a Deity--a First Cause.'

After declaring thus emphatically his belief in the existence of a Deity,

Shelley goes on to argue in defence of his conviction.

Thus Shelley is found declaring his belief in the existence of God so late

as 12th January, 1811, when the work declined by Stockdale (the work said

by Mr. Garnett to have been either _The Necessity of Atheism_, 'or

something of a very similar description'), must have already been in the

publisher's hands. The post did not travel seventy years since so quickly

as it travels in these railway times; the work, whatever it was, could not

have been written in a day; brief though it is, _The Necessity of Atheism_

could not have been designed and put on paper in a single morning; yet, on

14th January, 1811, Shelley could write indignantly to Hogg:--

'S[tockdale] has behaved infamously to me; he has abused the

confidence I reposed in him in sending him my work; and he has made

very free with your character, of which he knows nothing, with my

father.'

Moreover, on the 12th January, 1811, Hogg (who saw Stockdale about the

work during his stay in Lincoln's Inn Fields) had left London some six or

eight days. It is, therefore, certain that Shelley was believing in the

existence of God at a time when Mr. Garnett represents him as set on

teaching men that atheism was a necessity.

When did Shelley discard the reasons which had hitherto constrained him to

believe in the existence of God? Clearly at some time subsequent to 12th

January, 1811. Who caused him to discard them?--Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg.

To readers of Shelley's afore-mentioned letter of 12th January, 1811, it

is obvious, from the arguments with which he essays to demonstrate the

reasonableness of his belief in a Deity, that, though still clinging to

his belief in God, he was already troubled by, and battling with, his

doubts on the subject. His mind had been so troubled for several days. On

6th January, 1811, he had written from Field Place to Hogg, 'I will

consider your argument against the non-existence of a Deity.' In reply to

Hogg's arguments for _The Necessity of Atheism_, Shelley does his feeble

best (on 6th January, 1811) to demonstrate their unreasonableness. If

Shelley's arguments were sufficient for their purpose, Hogg had argued

with less than his usual ability. Shelley's arguments are puerile, and he

clearly felt their insufficiency, when he followed them up with these

words: 'But I will write again; my head is dizzy to-day, on account of not

taking rest, and a slight attack of typhus.' Hence it appears that from

6th to 12th January, Hogg was arguing against the existence of God, and

Shelley was more earnestly than strenuously arguing for the belief in

Deity. If he was dizzy on 6th January, after replying to Hogg, he was yet

more so on 12th January, 1811, after striving to prove the existence of

God.

The poor lad's head was dizzy, but not from want of sleep, or from typhus

fever: Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg had dizzied it with his ingenious

arguments against the existence of Deity. One can conceive how the clever,

hard-headed, humorous young gentleman from the neighbourhood of

Stockton-upon-Tees, smiled over his friend's letters, and exulted at the

signs of his plaything's perplexity. It mattered not a rush to Mr. Hogg,

of University College, Oxford, on which side of a question he argued.

Having done his best to dizzy his young friend out of his belief in God,

and convince him of the necessity of atheism, Mr. Hogg tacked about, and

five or six days later amused himself by constructing some equally

ingenious arguments to convince his young friend of the necessity of

Christianity. On the 12th of January, 1811, after fighting desperately for

the preservation of his belief in God, the poor boy with the dizzy brain

writes to his tormentor: 'But now, to your argument of the necessity of

Christianity, I am not sure that your argument does not tend to prove its

unreality,' All through this perilous game Hogg was at play, whilst

Shelley was in earnest,--far too much in earnest to be capable of

publishing a tract against God's existence, whilst he believed in it. What

was sport to Hogg was death to Shelley,--at least, to his happiness in

this world.

Towards the close of the Christmas vacation, Mr. Timothy Shelley seems to

have worked off his anger with his son, and taken him into affectionate

consideration--though, of course, neither into high favour nor perfect

confidence. Having thrown off his wrath in scolding with tongue and pen,

the Member of Parliament for New Shoreham relented to his scatterbrain

boy, so far as to talk with him sympathetically on the very questions that

had caused their disagreement. This change of feeling may have resulted in

some degree from the advice of judicious counsellors. The Duke of Norfolk,

whose opinion was weighty with Mr. Timothy Shelley in his private

concerns, no less than in his political affairs, may have been one of

these judicious counsellors; for his Grace had already displayed a kindly

interest in the future poet, and in later time was at great pains to

mediate between the father and son, and recover them from open war to an

appearance of mutual friendliness. The Horsham miser, whose word of

definite command was law to the son he hated, may also have used his

influence in favour of the grandson, for whom he cherished in his cold and

selfish breast a secret and curiously malicious tenderness. An atheist

himself, who, on the approach of death, spoke with equal confidence and

contentment of his own utter annihilation, the aged baronet was in no

degree shocked by the youngster's religious, opinions. On the contrary, he

contemplated them with self-complacence as the fruits of his own teaching

and example, and as indications that the lad would develop into a

creditable chief of the Castle Goring Shelleys. Approving his grandson's

heterodoxy, and liking him none the less for being a thorn in his father's

side, Sir Bysshe may be assumed to have given the Squire of Field Place a

significant hint that the boy was not to be rated and denounced out of his

grandsire's favour. In accounting, however, for the alteration of Mr.

Timothy Shelley's demeanour to his heir, it is only fair and reasonable to

suppose that the change was in some degree due to the paternal

affectionateness and good sense of this gentleman, who could not shut his

eyes to the fact that he was his son's father. Anyhow, it is inconsistent

with much which has been written of the father's invariable harshness to

the youthful poet, that towards the middle of January, 1811, he could

invite his son to a friendly conference on the evidences of Christianity.

Ever in the humour for controversy, it is needless to say that Mr. Bysshe

Shelley (whose great grievance against the 'dons' of University College

was that they expelled him _without_ arguing with him) accepted this

invitation without requiring his father to repeat it. For a few minutes

the youngster's brain and heart kindled with a desire to enlighten his

father out of his Christian darkness, and the hope that by winning so

strange a convert he should make himself master of the religious position

at Field Place. For a few minutes the discussion was more than

satisfactory and encouraging to the beardless apostle of Free Thought.

Admitting it was absurd to believe in witches and ghosts, Mr. Timothy

Shelley allowed that the mediæval miracles were the mere offspring of

vulgar fancy and vulgar credulity. But on being pressed to take the same

view of the Scriptural miracles, the worthy gentleman faced about, and

held stoutly to his delusions, making it only too manifest that he could

not be argued and illuminated out of them.

By the considerations which determined him to ascertain his son's

religious opinions, the Squire of Field Place was also brought to see

that, instead of denouncing his son's familiar friend without knowing him,

even as he had denounced his religious views without apprehending

precisely what they were, it would be better for him to look Mr. Hogg

clearly in the face, make his acquaintance, talk to him in friendly wise,

and judge for himself how far the young gentleman from the neighbourhood

of Stockton-upon-Tees had been fairly described, and how far

misrepresented, by the Pall-Mall bookseller. Mr. Timothy Shelley was far

too robust and intelligent a gentleman to put implicit reliance in Mr.

Stockdale's judgment, and to have perfect confidence in the honesty of the

publisher, who, after giving a 'minor' pecuniary credit for conveniences

scarcely to be rated as 'necessaries' for an Oxford undergraduate, was now

looking to the minor's father for payment of 'the little account.' Quite

shrewd enough to see Mr. Stockdale's motive and game, Mr. Timothy Shelley,

whilst listening to him with abundant civility, and thanking him with all

the customary courtesies for his valuable information, saw the necessity

of checking the publisher's statements with intelligence, gained from

other, and possibly less equivocal, sources. Acting like a sensible man of

affairs and the world, the Member of Parliament made inquiries about Mr.

Stockdale, and also inquiries touching Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, and Mr.

Hogg's people in Durham Co. and Yorkshire; the result of the inquiries

being that he thought none too well of the bookseller, and a good deal

better of Mr. Hogg. Hence it was that, whilst adopting a conciliatory tone

to his son on the religious questions, Mr. Timothy Shelley ceased to speak

harshly, and began to speak civilly to his son, of Mr. Thomas Jefferson

Hogg, whom he now knew by good report, as well as by ill report, though

only by report.

At the same time, it became obvious to the Squire of Field Place that he

had better have the friendly regard of the young gentleman, who certainly

had considerable influence over his son. Hence it was that the Squire,

little imagining the conspiracy for marrying his eldest daughter to the

young gentleman he had never seen, told Shelley to invite his

college-friend to Field Place for the next Easter vacation:--a concession

that, attended with other indications of the Squire's change of feeling

for Hogg, caused Shelley to think his father must have received a

favourable account of the Durham Co. and Yorkshire Hoggs, from some of his

friends in the House of Commons.

The visit was never paid by Hogg; but to the date of the catastrophe,

which, driving them from Oxford, was quickly followed by incidents that

rendered Hogg no person to be welcome at Field Place, the friends looked

forward to the Easter recess as a time that would be fruitful of

opportunities for the accomplishment of their designs on the eldest

daughter of the house.

The knavish publisher of 41 Pall Mall, had small reason to congratulate

himself on the success of his machinations for separating Bysshe Shelley

from his friend; for rendering Hogg the object of Mr. Timothy Shelley's

strongest aversion; and for inducing the Squire of Field Place to pay the

costs and charges of the publication of _St. Irvyne_. Instead of

separating the two undergraduates, the schemer had the pleasure of knowing

they were even closer friends at the beginning of February than they had

been in the earlier weeks of December. Instead of rendering Hogg

especially distasteful to Mr. Timothy Shelley, the schemer had only

stimulated the Member for New Shoreham to make inquiries, which disposed

him to think favourably of his son's friend. Instead of making Mr. Timothy

Shelley mistake him for a worthy man, who was entitled to handsome reward

for important service, the schemer got never a shilling for his pains. For

breach of confidence and slanderous tattle, Hogg whipt the dirty fellow

with a scorching letter. For the same offence the paltry creature was

punished in the same manner by Shelley. Having heard the tale-bearer out

to the end of his cunning talk, Mr. Timothy Shelley saw no reason why he

should pay a sixpence of the bill which he had declared no affair of his,

on the first hint that he would act gracefully and generously by settling

the claim. Having exhausted his store of pleasant words for such a

creature, Mr. Timothy Shelley turned from the man with a sufficiently

frank avowal of contempt.

Mr. John Joseph Stockdale was no person to smart acutely from disdainful

words. He was, of course, uneasy to think he had provoked the enmity of

the two young men, who a short while hence might be able to injure him in

his business; but, had it not been for this consideration, he would read

their angry letters with more amusement than annoyance. Mr. Timothy

Shelley's scorn would have passed over his thick skin without causing him

aught more than transient uneasiness, had it been accompanied with a

cheque for the required sum. But it galled Mr. John Joseph Stockdale to

miss the trick for which he had played so meanly,--galled him all the more

because he was conscious of having played his poor cards badly. It must be

confessed that the cards were no less weak than dirty. A cleverer rogue

than Mr. Stockdale would have failed to win with them. Had he, in 1811,

been the rich man he became in later times, Mr. Timothy Shelley might well

have declined to pay the publisher's demand, and thereby encourage other

literary speculators to produce his son's works in the expectation of

being paid by his father. But till Sir Bysshe passed from the world, the

Squire of Field Place, far from being wealthy for his station, was in no

position to spend a hundred guineas lightly. Under these circumstances,

the gentleman with several children and a pecuniary prospect that might

even yet be darkened by the caprice of his eccentric father, was more than

barely justified in saying that his son's publisher must look to his

client, not to his client's father, for remuneration. It was not in Mr.

Stockdale to take this obvious and reasonable view of a simple question.

The money Mr. Timothy Shelley refused to give him was regarded by Mr.

Stockdale as money basely and fraudulently withheld. To the publisher's

imagination the sum he failed to extort became a sum of which he had been

robbed; the injury done him being the more outrageous and exasperating

because he had rendered the doer of the wrong an important service.

In 1827, when the poet had been dead between four and five years, the

publisher took his revenge on the perpetrator of so monstrous an

injustice. By that time the embittered knave had dropt from the ways of

decent trade, and was falling to the deeper disrepute in which he soon

passed from view. A fabricator of scandalous literature as well as a

publisher of it, he had already produced the _Memoirs of Harriet Wilson_,

when he started the _Budget_, that bears his name, as a vehicle for airing

a vanity, which had in some degree deranged a mind long fretted by

imaginary grievances, and as an instrument for venting his spite on those

who had provoked his displeasure, no less than as means of drawing relief

to his indigence from the lovers of personal gossip. In this sordid

serial, the broken and utterly discredited libeller produced a mendacious

narrative of his transactions with Shelley and Shelley's father. As he

could get nothing in 1827 by abusing Shelley, it is not surprising that he

spoke well of him at the instigation of self-interest, vanity, and spite.

The man knew enough of the literary coteries to know the tide of social

feeling had so far turned in Shelley's favour that, whilst disparagement

of the poet would not fail to offend, praise of him would not fail to

conciliate the readers, most capable of commending the _Budget_ to public

favour. For the same reason vanity prompted the fellow to represent

himself as the original discoverer and earliest fosterer of the poet's

genius. In praising the poet he was also actuated by spite against the

poet's father, whose treatment of his son would appear harsh and hateful,

in proportion to the strength of the reader's conviction that the poet

deserved different usage. On the other hand, though chiefly actuated by

malice, the libeller was also animated by vanity and self-interest in what

he wrote to Sir Timothy Shelley's discredit; for whilst it afforded him a

pleasant sense of his own importance to speak authoritatively of a

baronet's misdemeanour, the slanderer knew the growing appetite for words

to the poet's credit was attended with an even keener appetite for

evidence to his father's discredit. Hence, whether he spoke of the poet or

the poet's father, he spoke at the instance of self-interest, vanity, and

malice.

Such was the man, such were the motives of the man, in whose malignant and

nauseous gossip about the poet and his father, Mr. Garnett discovers

'traces of sincere affection' for the author of _Laon and Cythna_. Not

content with gushing over Stockdale's 'sincere affection for the young

author whose acquaintance was certainly anything but advantageous to him

in a pecuniary point of view,' Mr. Garnett deals with the words of this

professional slanderer as good evidence, that in their bitter differences

the poet was guiltless of serious offence, and that the poet's father was

greatly to blame.

'Stockdale,' says Mr. Garnett, of this creditable witness to character

and want of character, 'had frequent opportunities of observing the

uneasy terms on which the two stood towards each other, and

unhesitatingly throws the entire blame upon the father, whom he

represents as narrow-minded and wrong-headed, behaving with extreme

niggardliness in money matters, and at the same time continually

fretting Shelley by harsh and unnecessary interference with his most

indifferent actions.'

What a use to make of the words of a slanderer-by-trade, a libeller

surcharged with rancorous enmity against the poet's father! To insult

Shelley by making his character depend in any degree on the words of such

a rascal as Stockdale, it is necessary that a man of letters should be a

'Shelleyan enthusiast.'

It is not a fact that 'Stockdale had frequent opportunities of observing

the uneasy terms on which the two stood to each other.' With the exception

of the two or three occasions when the father and son came together to the

Pall-Mall shop, Stockdale never saw them together. Doubtless there was

uneasiness between them on those occasions, for they met on matters of

disagreement, and in the presence of the man who, for his own advantage,

was doing his best to render the father more than usually distrustful of,

and anxious about, his son. The whole period of Stockdale's acquaintance

with Mr. Timothy Shelley was covered by the few weeks, during which time

they exchanged letters and had two or three conferences touching the

poet's affairs,--the few weeks during which the unscrupulous tradesman

was vainly endeavouring to wheedle the Member of Parliament into paying

the minor's bill for the publication of _St. Irvyne_. What opportunities

can so brief and slight an intercourse have offered the publisher for

using influence to dispose Mr. Shelley to be a better father? To believe

the fellow's impudent statements, one must believe that during those few

weeks he assumed an almost parental authority over the gentleman on whose

pocket he had designs. In 1827 sixteen years had elapsed since this slight

intercourse of less than two months. How strange that after so many years,

Stockdale should have had so clear a memory of the incidents of this

slight intercourse,--so distinct a recollection of the peculiarities of

the gentleman with whom he spoke on three or four occasions, and exchanged

perhaps as many letters! How strange that 'the Shelleyan enthusiasts'--so

suspicious and distrustful of the accuracy of Hogg's recollections of his

most familiar friend whom he knew thoroughly--should accept so readily the

publisher's recollections of the gentleman, of whom he knew scarcely

anything!

The same reflections are applicable to Stockdale's vivid recollections of

the Oxonian Shelley, and to Mr. Garnett's reliance on the accuracy of

those recollections. Though they exchanged letters in January, 1811, and

had some disagreeable correspondence in later months of the same year, it

does not appear that Shelley ever set eyes on the Pall-Mall publisher

after December, 1810. The whole period of their personal intercourse

cannot have exceeded four months:--months spent chiefly by Shelley at

Oxford or in Sussex, whilst the publisher was attending to his affairs in

London? To assume that during these four months they had a dozen meetings

is to assume too much. It is more probable that they talked with one

another on seven or eight several occasions. What opportunities could such

an acquaintanceship afford the publisher for knowing his young client in

such a way, that sixteen years later he could recall him clearly? Is it

reasonable to suppose that the publisher during these interviews (and from

several letters in no degree calculated to fill their receiver's breast

with tender emotion) conceived a strong affection--or any affection

whatever--for the boy out of whom, or rather out of whose father, he meant

to 'make a bill?'

One might as reasonably imagine a money-lender overflowing with love for

any young gentleman 'in his teens,' to whom he lends 50_l._ on the usual

terms. Are London publishers so very different from other men of business,

that they do business with youthful poets and novelists from impulses of

affection, altogether pure of self-interest? I know something of London

publishers: few men have better reason to think and speak well of them; to

my last hour of consciousness I shall never recall a particular London

publisher, without remembering him as one of the trustiest and dearest of

the many friends who have contributed to my happiness; but still my

impression is, and my experience has been, that a publisher's regard for a

young author has a tendency to rise and fall with the sale of the young

author's works. _St. Irvyne_ having fallen dead from the press, even as

Mr. Stockdale expected it to do, I have no doubt that Mr. Stockdale merely

regarded his young author as a simpleton, whom he would not trust on any

future occasion (during his minority) to pay the printer's bill. To do

Stockdale justice (and even to such a worm I would not be less than just)

it should be remarked that he is no such preposterous 'humbug' as Mr.

Garnett's words imply. Though he whines hypocritically about 'his too

conscientious friendship' for Mr. Bysshe Shelley, of University College,

Oxford, the professional libeller does not profess to have loved the

youth, with whom he was doing 'risky business.' In 1827, the disposition

to think tenderly of Shelley had not gone so far as to produce a crop of

'Shelleyan enthusiasts' capable of believing that the publisher loved the

author of _St. Irvyne_. Had Stockdale claimed credit for loving the dear

boy, who came to his shop about the _Original Poetry_ that was not

original, the original readers of the _Budget_ would have derided him, and

denounced his _Budget_. Though he says civil things of Shelley, to

heighten the effect of the uncivil things said of Shelley's father,

Stockdale forbears to descant on his affection for the future poet. It is

enough for him to say, 'Even from these boyish trifles' (_i.e._ _St.

Irvyne_, and the _Victor-and-Cazire Book_), 'assisted by my personal

intercourse with the author, I at once formed an opinion that he was not

an everyday author.' In saying this (as he meant the ambiguous words to be

construed in the way most complimentary to the poet) the budgeteer told a

lie,--but a lie not too outrageous to be believed. Further (to insult Sir

Timothy Shelley, who in the scribbler's opinion had refused to discharge

'every honest claim upon him'), the libeller spoke highly of the poet's

'honour and rectitude,' declaring him a man to 'vegetate, rather than

live, to effect the discharge of every honest claim upon him.' But to

speak of a man in this style is not to show signs of loving him. I know an

author who certainly is no 'everyday author,' and would (I am sure) be at

great pains to pay his creditors twenty shillings in the pound; but far

from loving him, I would any day rather go without my dinner than eat it

in his company.

Truth to tell, the 'traces of a sincere affection for the young author,'

which Mr. Garnett has discovered in Stockdale's words about Shelley, are

so far from being distinctly apparent, that I have vainly sought for them

in the pages, where they are so manifest to the author of _Shelley in Pall

Mall_. I think Mr. Garnett goes a little too far in saying--

'Percy Shelley captivated all hearts: the roughest were subdued by his

sweetness, the most reserved won by his affectionate candour.... In

spite of his disappointment, Stockdale really appears to have been

captivated by Shelley, and to have been not more forcibly impressed by

the energy of his intellect than by the loveliness of his character.'

Gentlemen given to gushing often say more than they mean. I cannot

conceive Mr. Garnett means all he says in his perplexing article. I have

vainly worked through Stockdale's _Budget_ in search for the proofs, that

Stockdale was forcibly impressed by the intellectual energy and moral

loveliness of the author of _St. Irvyne_. But the 'Shelleyan enthusiasts'

are so apt to weaken their case by exaggeration; they are so excessive in

their statements. The notion that Stockdale the Libeller was a man to be

captivated by moral beauty is comical.

CHAPTER XII.

MR. MACCARTHY'S DISCOVERIES TOUCHING THE OXONIAN SHELLEY.

_A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things_--Evidence that the

Poem was Published--Reasons for Thinking it may never have been

Published--Reasons for Thinking that, if the Poem was Published, it

was promptly Suppressed--Did Shelley contribute Prose and Poetry to

the _Oxford Herald_?--Spurious Letter to the Editor of the

_Statesman_--Shelley's First Letter to Leigh Hunt--His way of

Introducing himself to Strangers--Did he at the Same Moment Think Well

and Ill of his Father?--Miss Janetta Phillips's Poems--E. & W.

Phillips, the Worthing Printers.

Before returning from Field Place to Oxford at the close of the Christmas

Vacation (1810-11), readers who, in addition to a perfect view of

Shelley's life at the University, wish to have a knowledge of all that has

been written about that part of his career, will do well to consider

certain matters with which Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy may be said to

have cumbered the highway of the poet's academic story. Considerations of

prudence for himself, and of care for the interests of his readers, forbid

the present writer to pass over these matters in silence, as though he

were not cognizant of their existence. At the same time, he is disinclined

to notice them in a chapter, where they would interrupt the narrative of

the undergraduate's second term of residence at University College. He

therefore decides to deal with them in a separate chapter, that may be

lightly 'skimmed' or altogether skipt by the busy peruser of these

volumes, whose curiosity respecting the poet's life is unattended by a

keen appetite for details of Shelleyan controversy.

* * * * *

I. With magniloquence, that may seem comical to persons deficient in Mr.

Forman's ability to venerate every scrap of paper blotted by the poet's

pen, Mr. MacCarthy declares himself to 'have discovered the surrounding

light that indicates the presence of a star,' without being so fortunate

as to have 'detected its nucleus.' This is only Mr. MacCarthy's figurative

and beautiful way of saying that, without coming upon a copy of the work,

he has come upon evidence that Shelley, towards the close of his second

term of residence at Oxford, published _A Poetical Essay on the Existing

State of Things_, for the benefit of Mr. Peter Finerty, then undergoing

imprisonment in Lincoln Gaol for libel on Lord Castlereagh,--that this

poem was a very beautiful poem,--and that it differed from all the poet's

earlier and all his later writings, in having a quick and large sale.

Readers, who take Mr. MacCarthy's view and estimate of the evidence, have

no doubt that the sale of this remarkable poem, after paying the costs of

its production, yielded nearly one hundred pounds to the fund that was

raised for Mr. Finerty's sustenance and comfort in captivity. To persons

who remember the wretched quality of the Oxonian Shelley's prose and

verse, it can scarcely be obvious why a lost poem by his still feeble pen

should be likened to a star, and why the shadowy evidence that he wrote

the poem should be comparable with the surrounding light of the heavenly

body. Let that pass, however; and let it be conceded that evidence of so

successful a poem, by the youthful and hitherto unfortunate aspirant to

literary fame, would be a matter of some interest, even to persons in no

degree touched with Shelleyan madness. What is the evidence that Shelley

produced this successful poem, no copy of which has ever come under the

notice of living man? The evidence consists of,--

(_a_) This advertisement in the 9th March, 1811, number of the _Oxford

Herald_:--

'Literature. Just published, Price Two Shillings, _A Poetical Essay On

The Existing State of Things_.

"And Famine At Her Bidding Wasted Wide

The Wretched Land. Till In The Public Way,

Promiscuous Where The Dead And Dying Lay,

Dogs Fed On Human Bones In The Open Light Of Day."

By A Gentleman Of The University Of Oxford. For assisting to Maintain

In Prison Mr. Peter Finerty, Imprisoned For A Libel. London: Sold by

B. Crosby and Co., And All Other Booksellers. 1811.'

(_b_) Four advertisements of the same poem in London newspapers; two of

them being in the _Morning Chronicle_ for 15th and 21st March, 1811,

whilst the other two may be found in the _Times_ for 10th and 11th April,

1811.

(_c_) These words by an anonymous writer in the _Dublin Weekly Messenger_

of 7th March, 1812:--

'We have but one more word to add. Mr. Shelley, commiserating the

sufferings of our distinguished countryman, Mr. Finerty, whose

exertions in the cause of political freedom he much admired, wrote a

very beautiful poem, the profits of the sale of which, we understand,

from undoubted authority, Mr. Shelley remitted to Mr. Finerty. We have

heard they amounted to nearly an hundred pounds. This fact speaks a

volume in favour of our new friend.'

(_d_) The fact that Shelley sent from Dublin a copy of the paper

containing these words, and particularly called Godwin's attention to the

article in which they appeared.

(_e_) The fact that during his imprisonment Mr. Finerty had the sympathy

of the _Dublin Weekly Messenger_.

These are all the facts Mr. MacCarthy produces in evidence that Shelley

wrote a poem no living man ever saw, no single person of any time is known

to have seen. Of course the gentleman, who is so severe on Hogg's

inaccuracies, blunders and contradicts himself in marshalling so slender

an array of facts. For instance, after stating (p. 100) precisely and

correctly that the earliest of the five advertisements of the poem

appeared in the _Oxford Herald_ of 9th March, 1811, he avers a few pages

later (p. 105) that this same earliest advertisement appeared in the paper

of 2nd March, 1811.

How does this curiously inaccurate gentleman reason from his facts? To Mr.

MacCarthy it appears indisputable that the poem must have been written and

published, as the five advertisements declare it 'Just Published.' But it

is no uncommon thing now, it was no rare thing eighty years since, for

publishers to announce books as 'just published,' before their actual day

of publication. Books have been printed and so announced, and yet at the

last moment have been withheld from publication. Moreover, it would be no

new thing for a literary adventurer to advertise that a work by his pen

would shortly appear, without having any intention or power to fulfil the

promise of the announcement. The books of the British Museum Library would

be more numerous by several thousands, had authors invariably acted up to

their advertisements.

Underscoring the words 'undoubted authority,' Mr. MacCarthy intimates that

Shelley himself must have been the 'undoubted authority.' The assumption

is reasonable, but it is only an assumption. Could he be proved to have

been the sure authority, it would still be noticeable that, though he

declared the poem had been published for Mr. Finerty's benefit, some other

person may have been the journalist's authority for saying the profits

amounted to nearly 100_l._ For, whilst declaring 'from _undoubted

authority_,' that Shelley sent the profits to Mr. Finerty, the

article-writer is curiously silent as to the quality of his authority for

writing, '_We have heard_ they amounted to nearly an hundred pounds.' In

fact, his language implies that, whilst having the best authority for the

first, he had not the best authority for the second, statement.

Again, arguing from Shelley's veracity, Mr. MacCarthy insists that by

sending the article to Godwin without disclaiming any of the grounds on

which he is commended in it, Shelley endorsed the whole statement, and

pledged his honour to its truth.

'This statement, too, it should be remembered, is authenticated by

Shelley himself, for he sends the paper containing it to Godwin, and

pointedly refers to the article in which it is given.'

Was Shelley so precisely accurate in all his statements, that we should be

bound to believe the words, if he could be shown to have written them

himself? To readers who have given due consideration to a certain letter

referred to in the last chapter, it must be comical to hear the author of

_Shelley's Early Life_ arguing that the words of the _Dublin Weekly

Messenger_ must be true, because in sending the paper to Godwin, the poet

did not warn him of their inaccuracy. Readers will have stronger reason

for smiling at Mr. MacCarthy's simplicity, when they know more about the

earlier of Shelley's letters to Godwin,--letters overflowing with the most

staggering misrepresentations.

Yet further, it is argued by Mr. MacCarthy that, having the friendliest

relations with the _Dublin Weekly Messenger_, Mr. Finerty was doubtless a

regular and attentive reader of the paper, must therefore have seen the

words relating to the profits of the poem, and would of course have

contradicted them had they been untrue. As Mr. Finerty did not contradict

the words, his silence must be regarded as tantamount to direct testimony

from his pen, that the poem was published for his benefit, and yielded a

sum of nearly one hundred pounds to the fund raised for his benefit.

'Nothing,' says Mr. MacCarthy, 'published in the _Weekly Messenger_

could possibly have escaped his notice. It is incredible that he would

not have contradicted this statement of the presentation to him of the

profits of a poem if it were not true.'

Against this series of assumptions and the argument founded upon them,

several considerations may be urged. (1) Because the _Dublin Weekly

Messenger_ favoured his cause, it does not follow that a copy of the paper

was sent to Mr. Finerty every week during his imprisonment in Lincoln

Gaol. (2) There is no evidence that the paper was usually sent to him

every week (in times when the rates of postage were heavy), or even that

it was sent on any single occasion to him during that term. (3) As he was

treated with extraordinary severity during his imprisonment, it is by no

means so certain as the author of _Shelley's Early Life_ imagines, that

the prisoner was allowed to see newspapers containing expressions of

sympathy with and admiration of him. (4) On the contrary, though he may

have seen the copies of the _Dublin Weekly Messenger_ that contained no

reference to his case, it is highly improbable that during his

imprisonment he was allowed to see the copies of the journal which spoke

of him eulogistically. (5) It is conceivable that, if he saw the words of

the Dublin newspaper during his imprisonment, he knew them to be

inaccurate, and yet refrained from contradicting them. He may have read

the words in prison without knowing whether they were true or false, as

the business of collecting the money for his benefit was in the hands of a

committee. He may have known that Shelley published a poem for his

advantage, and known also that the publication yielded no profits: in

which case he would not have been so ungracious as to contradict the

statement of the amount of the profits, and thereby call attention to the

literary miscarriage of a well-wisher who, besides subscribing a guinea to

the Finerty Fund, had also recommended the fund to public favour in the

unsuccessful work. If he saw the words of the Dublin newspaper, and knew

them to be untrue, the inaccuracy was no reason why he should call

attention to a misstatement that could do him no harm, was on the contrary

calculated to stimulate the feeling in his favour, and could not be

corrected without risk of giving annoyance to the young gentleman who

anyhow had subscribed a guinea to the Finerty Fund.

Whilst the evidence of the publication of a poem is far from conclusive,

the evidence is very strong that, if a poem was published, its sale must

have fallen far short of the number indicated by the _not_ authoritative

words (the statement made on mere hearsay talk) of the anonymous writer of

the _Dublin Weekly Messenger_. _If_ the poem was published at all, it

appears from the advertisements to have been offered for sale at the price

of two shillings a copy. If a poem was published, it was probably not a

poem of many thousands, or even many hundreds, of lines. Let us suppose

that a poem was published, and the costs of printing, producing,

publishing, and advertising the work were 50_l._--a moderate sum at which

to put the expenses, if the poem contained from five hundred to a thousand

lines. Allowances to the trade being taken into account, there must have

been a sale of at least two thousand copies at the rate of two shillings a

copy, for the sale to bring in 50_l._ for expenses of publication, and

100_l._ for the Finerty Fund. The sum accruing to that fund from the sale

is put by the anonymous writer of the _Dublin Weekly Messenger_ at

something less than 100_l._ On the other hand, account must be taken of

copies sent to reviewers and copies _given_ by the author to his

friends;--copies that, without being paid for, passed into circulation.

These copies may be computed as equal to the number by which the actual

sale of the work fell short of 2000 copies,--_i.e._ the sale that would

have yielded a clear 100_l._ (over the 50_l._ for costs) to the Finerty

Fund. What is the evidence that so large a number of copies of the poem

cannot have been put in circulation?

'"It is," says Mr. MacCarthy, in the preface to _Shelley's Early

Life_, "needless to say that this interesting volume is not to be

found in any of our public libraries. To the courteous librarians of

the Bodleian at Oxford, and of University College" (_sic_) "at

Cambridge, I have specially to return my thanks for the search they

had kindly made for it. A printed circular sent by myself to almost

every second-hand bookseller in the three kingdoms was equally

unsuccessful. To advertisements in the public journals, and special

inquiries instituted by Mr. Quaritch, Piccadilly; Mr. Stibbs, Museum

Street; Messrs. Longmans, Paternoster Row, and others, no reply has

been received."'

Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy seizes every occasion for inaccuracy, and now

and then makes an occasion, in the absence of a decent opportunity, for

blundering. What does Mr. MacCarthy mean 'by University College at

Cambridge?' Oxford has a college styled University College; there is a

college so called in London; but Cambridge has no University College. By

the charitable writer of the present page, it is assumed that by

'University College _at_ Cambridge,' Mr. MacCarthy (who is so merciless

and malignant to Hogg for his occasional inaccuracies) means The Cambridge

University Library. Let it be so assumed by the reader.

It follows, that some years since Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy sought by

printed circular for a copy of this Shelleyan poem (which possibly was

never published) in the shop of nearly every second-hand bookseller in

Great Britain and Ireland; that he caused the Librarians of the Bodleian

Library, and the Cambridge University Library, to search for a copy of the

poem in their libraries; that he induced Mr. Quaritch of Piccadilly, Mr.

Stibbs of Museum Street, and the Messrs. Longmans of Paternoster Row, 'and

others,' to make search by advertisements and special inquiries, for a

copy of the poem,--without coming upon a copy after all the trouble.