diction, and resided first with a Mr. Hexton as his tutor and mentor, and thereafter with George Bethell, renowned in the history of Eton for his dulness and his good-nature. But neither Keate's severity nor Bethell's absurdity moved Shelley much. He still lived aloof, for the most part, from the ordinary associations and requirements of school citizenship. So indifferent was he to the excitements of his five hundred fellows, and so fiercely resentful, not of physical hurt, but of injustice and the spirit of cruelty, that he came to be known as "Mad Shelley," and was baited time after time for their amusement by a crew of thoughtless tormentors. When pushed to the limit of his patience, says one, his eyes would “flash like a tiger's, his cheeks grow pale as death, his limbs quiver." Such boys as he did attract, however, though few but one Halliday appear to have had an instinctive understanding of him, loved him for his unswerving honour, his kindness, and his generosity. With Halliday, Shelley took many a pleasant ramble in the fields and woods about Eton, pouring out his young soul in fits and starts of hope and enthusiasm. "He certainly was not happy at Eton," wrote his friend in later years, "for his was a disposition that needed especial personal superintendence, to watch and cherish and direct all his noble aspirations, and the remarkable tenderness of his heart. He had great moral courage, and feared nothing but what was base and false and low." From the same source we learn that his lessons "were child's play to him." He moved through the formal curriculum with ease, and chose to add to his school work the outside reading of such classical authors as Lucretius and Pliny, with Franklin, Condorcet, and particularly Godwin - his future father-in-law-in his Political Justice. His fascinated interest in science, too, increased, and he ran not a few risks both physical and magisterial in his ardour for experiment. One likes to think of Shelley's spiritual kinship with Shakespeare's Ariel, creature of air and fire. Certainly, the young Etonian could have - found no better image of his own restless adventurings than the balloons1 of fire he so often gave to the darkness, cleaving the gloom of night and steering their uncertain course into the company of moon and stars. Shelley's science was a matter of lore and wonder rather than of knowledge and precision. This attitude, already characteristic, was encouraged and strengthened by the boy's contact with Dr. Lind, a retired physician living close at hand in Windsor, whose memory Shelley always regarded with a lively gratitude, and who is immortalized in The Revolt of Islam as the friendly hermit, and in Prince Athanase as Zonoras, "An old, old man, with hair of silver white, And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend Professor Dowden, in his admirably full and discriminating biography, speaks of two "shining moments " in Shelley's youth, which were to the boy as moments of revolution. His experiences at Sion House led him to take careful thought concerning individual and popular unhappiness, its causes and conditions, and finally to vow in youthful yet serious fashion that he would never oppress another nor himself submit to tyranny. In the dedication of The Revolt of Islam-originally Laon and Cythna-to Mary Shelley he writes: "I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was, The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. "And then I clasped my hands and looked around; 1 Shelley was fond, too, of sailing miniature paper boats. Cf. Rosalind and Helen, 11. 181-187. Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground. So, without shame, I spake: 'I will be wise, The selfish and the strong still tyrannize My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold." If in the first moment Shelley felt his conscience quickened and dedicated to the cause of liberty, so in the second his imagination sought deliverance from the bondage of the merely horrible and sinister, and began instead to seek pure beauty and pursue it. This moment, too, he has fixed for us in his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty: "While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed. When, musing deeply on the lot Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing News of birds and blossoming, Sudden thy shadow fell on me : — I shrieked and clasped my hands in ecstasy! "I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine; have I not kept the vow? They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free That thou, O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express." These passages were conceived by a saner mind and written with a steadier hand than were the rather prolific effusions of Shelley's earlier youth, productions which began first at Eton to court pen and paper. Several fragmentary poems belong to this time, as also the extravagant romance, Zastrozzi, written probably in collaboration with Harriet Grove, Shelley's cousin and sweetheart. Indeed, collaboration was something of a habit with the boy, not, it would seem, through any lack of confidence in his own creative powers, for young Shelley was much less disturbed than his riper self by doubts concerning his own works, but rather as the co-operative impulse of a spirit willing to share its enthusiasms with kindred spirits. He formed literary partnerships with his sisters Elizabeth and Hellen, with Medwin, and possibly also with Edward Graham, a friend of 1810-11. Graham may have been associated with the "Victor and Cazire" project, the appearance of a volume of poems that were wild and whirling indeed, but of which all the copies-save one, since reprintedwere apparently destroyed or suppressed. More probably, however, Elizabeth was the "Cazire' of the partnership. Medwin helped to shape the beginnings of a romantic Nightmare, and a poem about that persevering pilgrim, the Wandering Jew. Apart from their biographical interest hardly one of these works is worth naming. Complacent Mr. Timothy Shelley had no manner of doubt that his son peculiar in some respects though he seemed would do about as well at Oxford as he himself had done, and the two travelled up thither amicably to arrange for Bysshe's entrance upon residence in University College at the beginning of the Michaelmas term of 1810. Mr. Timothy was graciously paternal, and even went so far as to introduce his son to a local printer named Slatter, with the suggestion that this man should indulge the youth "in his printing freaks." Rooms were secured, money matters adjusted, advice freely given, and the Polonius of Field Place departed in high good-humour with himself and all the world. He would have been interested, perhaps, to know what was passing in Bysshe's mind as he looked about him. at Oxford, deciding what he liked and what he did not like. He liked the seclusion, the libraries, the natural beauty of the place; he did not like its sleepiness, its conservatism, its orderly academic routine. One is strikingly reminded of Bacon's indictment of the Cambridge of his day: "In the universities, all things are found opposite to the advancement of the sciences; for the readings and exercises are here so managed that it cannot easily come into any one's mind to think of things out of the common road. For the studies of men in such places are confined, and pinned down to the writings of certain authors; from which, if any man happens to differ, he is presently represented as a disturber and innovator." Shelley's mind-alert, original, though always in certain respects untrained thought of many things out of the common road. His prime Oxford "innovation," it is true, was not carefully conceived or tactfully presented. It was a piece of folly for which he paid. dear, but it was not dishonourable, nor was it even gerous in any vital sense. Soon after his arrival he made the acquaintance casually of a fellow-freshman, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a well-born and worldly-wise young man of considerable cultivation, easy opinions, and a half-cynical, half-amused, interest in the people he met and in the problems he heard them discuss and on occasion discussed with them. Ten years later Shelley thus described him, in his Letter to Maria Gisborne : "I cannot express His virtues, though I know that they are great, And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. "dan Hogg was strongly attracted by Shelley's looks, sincerity, and enthusiasms. The two met night after night in each other's rooms, and debated questions of literature, science, and history, on Shelley's side with fervour, on Hogg's with growing interest in this rara avis, an interest almost wonder. Hogg deeply respected Shelley's power of imagination and purity of |