Such a visionary being, however, unless | Spirit of the race of Ariel, and him who invery specially cared for, is apt to come into voked Sabrina in Milton's stately verse dismal contact with the harder entities and it is in this character that we will unthat fill the world. It requires, indeed, derstand him best. even on the part of father and mother, an This exceptional being was born in Auextreme clearness of vision to be able to gust 1792, on the very edge of the great perceive that it is a Faun they have to Revolution which did all but overturn the deal with. Even Love erects itself against world; of a family not at all remarkable such a theory-love which is not of its in any way, to which henceforward he nature tolerant but rather exacting, de- was a mystery and a trouble unceasing, manding excellence, or something which as any fairy child is likely to be in a humit can believe to be excellence, with a drum modern household. He had a sister voice which is often imperious in its pas- Elizabeth, who was very like him in apsion. And college dons and university pearance, and who in her early youth dabofficials are still less likely to perceive the bled in verse like himself; but probably peculiar mental constitution of an offend- she was no changeling, and the reseming undergraduate. Neither would it blance and natural attraction between seem that Shelley in his early days had them appears to have faded as life went any friend in the least capable of under- on. Of his childhood little or nothing is standing his character, or treating his pe- known. He went to school at ten, when, culiarities with wisdom. Therefore, while being a very delicate-looking and lovely he was but a boy, his life got astray child a curled darling fresh from the among all kinds of painful and misleading nursery - he had a hard time of it, as is currents, and the boat which was fit for not unusual. At fifteen he went to Eton, nothing greater than an encounter with where he became, according to all his biogthe water-lilies, was forced upon many a raphers, the victim of much cruelty, ruderock and down many a rapid. Nothing ness, and persecution on the part of his can be more sad than a premature blight comrades. The Eton of the present day upon a life scarcely yet emerged from the has become so peaceable, well-bred, and bud, or capable of understanding the gentlemanly, that the story of the tortures miseries which it is precociously capable inflicted upon young Shelley read, to those of inflicting upon itself. Shelley lived but who know the school, like one of the feverthirty years in this unkindly world. Be-ish dreams of his own over-excited imagfore twenty of them had passed he had ination. But times were ruder in the beruined himself in public estimation, es-ginning of the century; and though we do tranged himself from his relations, and cut not know by what rule we are to distinoff from before his own wayward feet guish between the grotesque adventures of all possibility of a worthy career. Sad after-days - in which he himself seems to throughout was the fate of the unfortunate have believed, but nobody else — and those poet. Had he not been a poet, men in stories which, there being no evidence general would have made small moan over either for or against them, his biographers the misfortunes of the young fool who take for granted—we are content to bewrecked himself thus wilfully and early.lieve that the strange spirit which already As it is, his life has been the subject of chafed at all the conditions and restrictions countless comments, attacks, and defences; of everyday humanity met with a certain and as a life, we doubt whether there is amount of trouble from the ordinary flesh much to be said for it one way or another. and blood which surrounded him. For We give up, accordingly, the vain idea to one thing, with that curious exaggeration treat Shelley seriously as a man. Poor of personal independence which is always wandering soul! he was, after all, little to be found in a certain number of boys, more than a boy when he came to a sud-he set his face against the fagging system, den conclusion in those blue Mediterra- which probably, like other things, was of nean waves which are salt and bitter to a ruder and more disagreeable character some as any Baltic. He was a Poet, al than at present. This, which is but an in significant incident in his career, is a most was peculiar to his wild and lawless spirit; . valuable indication of his character. Shel- but it is clear that this great yet inevitably ley was beyond the reach of those ordi- inferior ideal took possession of him. He nary motives which make the wholesome saw no beauty in that loftier and more mass of ordinary boys place their necks splendid faculty of submission which is the cheerfully and even with a certain pride theory of Christianity: a harmonious under this yoke, which is of the school's movement in concert with all the music of own making-prescribed and sanctioned the spheres, with the will of Heaven, and by that truest of republics, and supported the courtesies and primitive sympathies of by the public opinion of its members. To earth, was a thing at which his Faun-eyes such sentiments, which in their way are of glittered wildly, blank with incomprehenan elevated and elevating order, and con- sion. But those eyes glowed with terrible tain the germ of one of the highest of hu- and wonderful vision when the old fable of man principles voluntary subordination the resisting Titan, indomitable, unconto received law - the poet was absolutely querable, wakened their depths. This he impervious. He was apparently incapable understood and felt to the very depths of even of conceiving what is meant by esprit his ghostly nature. Resistance! it was his de corps, the pride of corporate and public ideal of all lofty character, and the princibeing, and the sway of tradition. The ple of his life. whole principle of his life was individual- We have not space to linger upon all the ity. Notwithstanding a most generous wild traditions of his school-boy life, opheart always ready to overflow in the posed as it was to everything that could wildest liberality of charity and almsgiv- be called authority. He was fond of Greek ing, the higher generosity of obedience and Latin, and would have gladly studied was altogether out of his reach. He is them by his own will; but the fact that it like a restive horse that kicks and flings at was the will of the masters that he should the very appearance of bit and bridle. To learn, set him astray at once. He "would give he is willing to submit is impossible not submit to the trammels of the gradus." to him. He is Ariel, but Ariel before" Shelley never would obey;" and in pure either Sycorax or Prospero - the fatal perverseness it would seem, because such witch or the potent magician — had bound learning was discouraged, he took to studyhim. The passion of his life, thus devel- ing chemistry and electricity instead. oped in its very earliest stage, is resistance. These scientific studies were prosecuted From that instinctive struggle against a under the care of a Dr. Lind in Windsor, school-boy's dearest authority, the law and who is reported to have amused himself custom of his school, which he maintained and the boy by engaging in bouts of cursat fifteen, until the time when -alas! not ing, the King and Shelley's father being another fifteen years full counted — he had the special objects of these extraordinary to succumb at last to an adversary no man anathemas. But this is the mythological can successfully resist, the whole scope period of the poet's life, and there seems both of his life and doctrine is vehement always to have been ground for hoping opposition resistance it does not much that such wild stories, when told only by matter to what, to God, to man, to law, himself, might be mere imaginations. to authority whatsoever and whosoever Perhaps the other eccentricities of the opposed him. Perhaps it is, more almost time - his sallying forth at midnight to than its fine poetry, the extraordinary life call up the devil, his burning of trees, and of this principle, the very essence of his similar cantrips were but imaginations being, which makes his crowning poem, too. Several years later, when he already "Prometheus," stand out a great and ter- called himself a man, he informed Godwin rible picture against the pale heavens and in a letter that he had been twice expelled the shuddering earth. This was the high- from Eton; but for this statement there est conception he could reach of human does not seem the slightest foundation. superiority. How far it might be the fault According to all likelihood, he left his of his age, we cannot tell or how far it school much as other boys do whose career -- there has not been brilliant. He had a lived chiefly on bread, taking his meals quantity of books given him on leaving by in the streets from the loaf which he his schoolfellows, which some of his biog- bought on his way, and tore to pieces raphers take as a mark of their attachment as he walked and talked. He took very to him a point as to which old Eton long walks with a pair of duelling pistols men, knowing the habit of the place, will in his pocket, stopping now and then to rebe less certain. He went to Oxford in the fresh himself by firing at some mark he year 1810, before which period he had had set up: he lingered hours over ponds composed and published two volumes of by the roadside, throwing stones into what we are assured were extremely fool- them, or floating paper-boats which he ish novels. In Oxford, however, he made by the score-an enthralling deemerges out of the mythological period in light, from which it was scarcely possible which we can be certain of nothing; to withdraw him. When in his rooms, and here a prophet and interpreter of and engaged in the most earnest conversaShelley appears to lend us his solid and tion, he would suddenly stop, stretch himconsequential aid. Mr. Jefferson Hogg, self" upon the rug before a large fire like who was the poet's chief and most intimate a cat," and go to sleep there for two hours, friend during his brief career at the Uni- with "his little round head exposed to versity, is as strange a biographer as such such a fierce heat that I used to wonder an eccentric and wayward soul could well how he was able to bear it." While the have. His jaunty patronage of his young Poet-Faun took this sudden refreshment, hero, his mingled sense of Shelley's supe- his mortal friend sat and read, sometimes riority to everybody and his own superi- trying to shelter the head of the sleeper ority to Shelley, and his delightful confi- from the fire, and no doubt many a time dence that in his own person he is equally pondering over him with that wondering interesting to the world, is full of the frank-consciousness of incongruity which everyest naïveté; but we believe his book has body who knew Shelley seems to have been accepted as in the main a true record founded upon personal knowledge. Shelley was eighteen at the time when he thus suddenly, as it were, bounds upon the scene, a slim lad with brilliant eyes, stooping shoulders, a voice like a peacock, and the most wonderful " ways that ever young collegian had. Mr. Hogg saw him first at dinner in the hall of University College, a freshman newly arrived - and, beginning to talk to him, became so absorbed that everybody was gone from the hall, and the college servants had come to clear the table, before the two young men came to themselves. Oddly enough, the discussion which so entranced them was upon the relative merits of German and Italian poetry a discussion which was characteristically and summarily concluded, when the young disputants had retired to Hogg's rooms, by the mutual admission that neither knew anything of the literature he had so hotly de vaguely felt, though it did not affect their love for him, or their interest in his fitful ways. Was there ever a more distinct embodiment of the sylvan half-human nature of pagan fancy, with all its wild freedom squeezed into the mere human mould which could not contain it? And a certain pain and disquiet, such as might well belong to a strange spirit wandered out of its sphere, and straying with “blank misgiving" among "worlds not realized," breathes through the whole story. The Faun of Mr. Hawthorn's weird romance is not half so true or striking as this real impersonation; for this strange being was gentle as well as wild-tender, affectionate, and caressing, as well as lawless and insubordinate; docile, and yet untamable; a confiding child and unbelieving rebel all in one. Amid the ordinary trite records of human proceedings, an apparition at once so touching and so bizarre comes like some gust of wailing wind through the serenity of the common The connection thus formed grew into day. He stirs strange depths of feeling in the most intense friendship, and never all across whose path he passes swift and was there wilder and stranger sprite out sudden. He opens up a new and weird of fairyland than the extraordinary being world, where nothing is known or definite, whom this shrewd Yorkshireman, as un- but all vague, shadowy, wistful. Admilike himself as possible, grew to adore and ration and pity and wonder surround patronize. Shelley had brought his scien- him; the outside world denounces and tific tools with him, and lived surrounded vituperates, taking him in its ignorance by batteries and crucibles, with holes for a man like others; but the inner cirburnt in his carpet, and diabolical odours cle of spectators, who know him, do not breathing through his apartments. He know what to say or think. To them it fended! is impossible to blame; they are baffled,! "Had he written to ten different individuals the history of some proceeding in which he was himself a party and an eyewitness, each of the ten reports would have varied from the rest in essential and important circumstances. The re "All this is purely imaginary; he never published anything controversial at Eton; he was never expelled — not twice, not once His poetic temperament was overcome by the grandeur and awfulness of the occasion, when he took up his pen to address the author of Caleb Williams,' so that the auspicious Apollo, to relieve and support his favourite son, shed over his head a benign vision. He saw himself at his Dame's, with Political Justice,' which he had lately borrowed from Dr. Lind, open before him. He had read a few pages, and had formed his principles in a moment; he was thrown into a rapture by the truisms, mares' nests, and parodoxes which he had met with. "He sees himself in the printing-loft of J. Pote, bibliopola et typographus,' amongst Eton grammars and Eton schoolbooks, republishing with the rapidity of a dream, and without the slightest caution,' Godwin's heavy and unDons, convened and expelled; and lastly, he beholds the honourable member for Shoreham, weeping on his knees, like Priam at the feet of Achilles, and imploring the less inexorable Dr. Keate. saleable volumes. He sees himself before the "All this, being poetically true, he firmly and loyally believes, and communicates, as being true in act, fact, and deed, to his venerable correspondent." The student life which these two most dissimilar friends shared lasted only for about eighteen months. During this time they were inseparable, their vacations only bringing about a new kind of intercourse in the shape of letters. Shelley seems to have taken a fancy more like the fancy of a girl than a young man - to bring together his friend and his favourite sister Elizabeth-a project which, however, came to nothing. His letters are full of plans to invite Hogg to Field Place; full of confidences regarding Shelley's owu brief and hot boy-love for his cousin Harriet, and full of the excellences and graces of Elizabeth. These letters contain many expressions of melancholy; but it seems very unlikely that these meant more than youth's fantastic plaints over its own unhappiness-deepened in this case by a wildly visionary nature, never at home on earth generally do. This period, however, was very summarily and painfully brought to an end. Shelley, who had all the tricks of his spiritual prototypes, and was never happier than in setting trains of visionary mischief, had acquired, as early as his Eton days, a habit of writing to "At the period to which I allude, I was at people whom he knew only by name, on Eton. No sooner had I formed the principles pretence of asking information, but really which I now profess, than I was anxious to dis- to lead his unconscious correspondents seminate their benefits. This was done with-into argument, and confute them with eldout the slightest caution. I was twice expelled, ritch skill and cleverness. One infuriated but recalled by the interference of my father.' chemist. treated in this way, threatened, it lation given on the,morrow would be unlike that of the day, as the latter would contradict the tale of yesterday. Take some examples. He writes: "I was informed at Oxford that in case I denied the publication, no more would be said. I refused, and was expelled.' "This is incorrect; no such offer was made, no such information was given; but, musing on the affair as he was wont, he dreamed that this proposal had been declined by him; and thus he had the gratification of believing that he was more of a martyr than he really was. Again he writes thus: is said, to write to his elfish opponent's what appalling assertion, especially for tutor, and have him whipped: a style of those unlucky wights who are charged with argument which has always been accept- the care of heroes of nineteen: but perhaps able to the losing side. The same curious if the Archbishop of Canterbury took to system of mischief occupied the young stu- expounding his theology in the shape of dent at Oxford. Instead, however, of the anonymous pamphlets, we might be better innocent and stupid hoax which gives a able to judge of his rights in the comparipleasure of which he is soon deeply son. Mr. Hogg tells us that his young ashamed, to many a youth of eighteen, friend argued "through the love of arguthere was a certain diabolical fun in the ment, and because he found a noble joy in pranks of this wild Ariel in cap and gown. the fierce shocks of contending minds." His new mode of proceeding was as fol- But the authorities about him did not symlows:pathize in this noble joy; and on Ladyday, "When he came to Oxford, he retained and in the year 1811, Shelley being then about extended his former practice without quitting eighteen and a half, he was suddenly sumthe convenient disguise of an assumed name. moned before the master of his college. His object in printing the short abstract of There he was asked abruptly whether he some of the doctrines of Hume was to facili- was the author of the pamphlet, a copy of tate his epistolary disquisitions. It was a small which was shown to him; and on his repill, but it worked powerfully the mode of fusal to reply, was immediately expelled. operation was this: He enclosed a copy in His friend Hogg, who ventured to remona letter, and sent it by the post, stating, with strate, had the same summary sentence of modesty and simplicity, that he had met acci- banishment pronounced upon him; and dentally with that little tract, which appeared next morning both lads, in such a state of unhappily to be quite unanswerable. Unless excitement, and with such a sense of wrong, the fish was too sluggish to take the bait, an answer of refutation was forwarded to an ap- all its bitterness, left the University. Hogg as must have been delightful to them amid pointed address in London, and then in a vigor-intimates, in the calmness of after-reflecous reply he would fall upon the unwary dis putant, and break his bones. The strenuous tion, that he thinks they might have been attack sometimes provoked a rejoinder more allowed delay had they condescended to carefully prepared, and an animated and pro- ask it; and that the reputation of the coltracted debate ensued. The party cited, hav-lege having been saved by such an appearing put in his answer, was fairly in court, and he might get out of it as he could. The chief difficulty seemed to be to induce the party addressed to acknowledge the jurisdiction and to plead; and this, Shelley supposed, would be removed by sending, in the first instance, a printed syllabus instead of written arguments.” This pamphlet was inscribed with the mystic letters Q. E. D., and was sent about the world right and left, raising "rich crops of controversy." It is not intended, Mr. Hogg tells us, for the general reader, but only for the metaphysician; and "as it was shorter, so was it plainer, and perhaps, in order to provoke discussion, a little bolder, than Hume's Essays," Its title perhaps was still bolder than its scope. It was called "The Necessity of Atheism." Mr. Rossetti, the last and perhaps most entirely enthusiastic of all Shelley's biographers, thinks it for the dignity of his hero to give this proceeding the gravest character, and to accept it as a real and absolute profession of the poet's faith. "We shall do well to understand once for all," says this champion, with curious grandiloquence, "that Percy Shelley had as good a right to form and expound his opinions on theology as the Archbishop of Canterbury had to his." This is a some ance of sharp action, they might have been tacitly allowed to remain the ordinary time. But the young blood was up, even of the steadier student, and they rushed up to London together, blazing with their consciousness of wrong. This was the origin of Shelley's quarrels with his family. Perhaps his college was to blame for the precipitate and arbitrary manner in which this violent step was taken; but it is difficult to see how the authorities could have winked at such a production as the "Necessity of Atheism," or the anonymous combats of its compiler. One of Shelley's biographers tells us that Hogg's father never forgave, and went to his grave without ever again seeing, his son; but Mr. Shelley, much-abused man, was not so hard upon the greater culprit. He did see his prodigal, and some vague negotiations arose between them which it is difficult to make out, at least from Shelley's account, though the father is very simple and very precise in his demands, according to a letter in his odd and complicated style, which is given in Mr. Hogg's book; where all he asks is that his son would return home, give up communication with his friend Hogg, and place him self under the care of a tutor selected bf |