character, though he allowed himself to be entertained by his new friend's extravagances of manner and statement. He has left us in his Life of Shelley a detailed and picturesque account of the poet as he knew him during their six months' comradeship at college. He describes Shelley's figure as "slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. . . . His features, his whole face and particularly his head, were, in fact, unusually small; yet the last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence and in the agonies (if I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his locks unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough.1 . His features were not symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the intellectual; for there was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air of profound religious veneration that characterizes the best works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls) of the great masters of Florence and of Rome." Only his voice did Hogg find displeasing, which seemed to him at first "intolerably shrill, harsh and discordant." Other friends and contemporaries speak also of this defect, but generally agree that it was observable only in moments of high excitement, and that Shelley's normal tones were winsome enough. The two friends not only read and talked together, but 1 Cf. "his scattered hair."- Alastor, 1. 248. Hogg would incredulously watch Shelley performing his always miraculous chemical experiments, or they would tramp about the countryside-Shelley seemed rather to float and meet with adventures more or less exciting. Shelley cared little for the studies imposed upon him, and pursued his intellectual investigations with a free mind and in an entirely free manner within the privacy of his chambers, reading Plutarch, Plato, Hume, Locke, the Greek tragedies, Shakespeare, and Landor. He continued also to write, publishing at his own expense another Etonian romance, and failure, — St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian; some political verse; and a volume of miscellaneous poetry containing burlesques that pleased undergraduate taste, printed together with some more serious work produced spasmodically. That Shelley could have been willing at this date to publish, though anonymously, his crude and overstrained tale, and to push its fortunes with enthusiasm, attests perhaps better than any other single fact the condition of his critical judgment during the Oxford days. The poet in him must surely have been protestant the while! "I am aware," he wrote to Stockdale the publisher, after reaction began to be felt, "of the imprudence of publishing a book so ill-digested as St. Irvyne." Stockdale, for his part, from whatever motive, stirred up trouble for Shelley at home by calling his father's attention to the unsoundness of his views and attributing this to his continued association with Hogg. Parental-chiefly paternal intervention followed, only to confirm Shelley in what candour must designate as the heroic of the misunderstood. He vowed excitedly to defend his principles to the last, and to remain loyal to his friend at all hazards. His elders did not treat him with the wisdom born of humour and sympathy; they did not know the way to his heart, and had they known it they would have found that heart at the moment out of tune and harsh. Harriet Grove's affection was not proof against her alarm at Shelley's reputed heresies and his own exaggerated declarations of belief and unbelief. She both loved and dreaded the strange youth; prudence prevailed, and in 1811 she married "a clod of earth," as Shelley described him, a Mr. Helyar. The boy felt the blow keenly, philosophized at length concerning it, and in a letter to Hogg written from Field Place during the Christmas vacation anathematized Intolerance, the cause of all his woes. He now planned that Hogg should marry Elizabeth, his eldest sister, who was affectionately consoling him at home. At least his friend should be happy. Most, perhaps all, of this coil had been avoided if the prime actor therein had been less intense in behaviour, and his friends more willing to rely on his personal goodness and root docility. It is far from the mark to allow that Shelley was at any time a deliberate atheist. No man, it is safe to say, has felt more directly and continually than did he the existence of a beneficent Spirit. As an undergraduate, it is true, he was affected in his thought by the dogmas of materialism, but at no time ceased to postulate the being of an ultimate Intelligence and Love. It would be difficult to find in pure literature a more eager hunger and thirst for holiness and the Source of holiness than appears in Shelley's Adonais, The Cenci, Hellas, The Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Unbound, not to speak of his just and reverent Essay on Christianity. With what he conceived to be the inherent taint of ecclesiasticism, indeed, he was constantly at war, like Chaucer, Milton, Ruskin, Carlyle, and Browning, in their diverse ways; though, unlike them, he attacked not merely the taint, but also, and with fierce energy, the entire churchly system. In this regard he betrayed unusual zest, as witness the implications of character in cardinal and pope. in The Cenci, and the vivid pictures of the Prometheus, when compared with Chaucer's good-humoured revelations in The Canterbury Tales, and Browning's half-friendly condemnations of Blougram and his kind. Shelley unfortunately tended to identify always priesthood with tradition, the church with uncompromising and persecuting conservatism. There is in his work no 66 povre Persoun of a toun," no Innocent XII. He did not habitually see both sides, though in one of his more pensive moods he actually expressed a desire to become himself a minister. "Of the moral doctrines of Christianity I am a more decided disciple than many of its more ostentatious professors. And consider for a moment how much good a good clergyman may do." 1 But for a moment only was this considered. Shelley wished characteristically to dispense for good and all with the "law" idea, and to bring the sorely suffering world out into the light of knowledge, virtue, love, and freedom. He knew what prayer meant; he was deeply moved by awe and wonder in the contemplation of the eternal mysteries. In brief, he was not the enemy of religion that he thought he was; he everywhere proclaimed the efficacy of the spirit of Love in healing and redeeming humanity. In later years Dante and Petrarch, in some respects, modified his aversion to historical Christianity, for through their works he came to feel keenly its spiritual beauty and power. His own religious instinct and attitude as a youth are suggested for us in two stanzas of Wordsworth's Ode to Duty:· "There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth Upon the genial sense of youth: Oh! if through confidence misplaced They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast. "Serene will be our days and bright And happy will our nature be When love is an unerring light, And they a blissful course may hold Ev'n now, who, not unwisely bold, 1 From a conversation with Thomas Love Peacock, reported by him. Live in the spirit of this creed ; Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need." The freshman of University College, however, with a passion for negations and for reform, was in no mood to consider his ways and be wise. He was but too "unwisely bold." Almost immediately after his return to Oxford, he arranged, with Hogg's connivance, if not collaboration, for the anonymous publication of a little pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism. His motive in doing so was a mixed one, partly sincere; partly, no doubt, dramatic. The argument, what there is of it, follows the beaten materialistic track, assuming throughout that sense-knowledge is all of knowledge, but the author seems to lament the " deficiency of proof" and to court sympathy and help. Not a few sedate dignitaries, to whom Shelley addressed copies of the pamphlet, with a specific request from "Jeremiah Stukeley" for counsel concerning it, fell into the trap and furnished their correspondent with much-desired controversial openings. Shelley had sent a copy to the ViceChancellor and to each of the Masters, and by his own Master he was interrogated and condemned. Upon 66 contumaciously refusing" either to acknowledge or to disavow the authorship of the paper, he was summarily expelled. From the stern conclave of Master and Fellows he rushed nervously to Hogg with the fateful news; Hogg instantly entered the breach, and drew upon himself a like examination, with a like result. If the judges hoped that submission might finally be made, they were disappointed, and the sentence had to stand. The anger of the authorities rapidly cooled, but that of Shelley and Hogg flamed and mounted. The next day, March 26, 1811, they left Oxford together for London. She who might have become more and more truly Shelley's Alma Mater had behaved in a moment of natural impatience as his Dura Noverca. After visiting friends and skirmishing about London in |