On Magdalen Bridge one day, Shelley met a work of an acquaintance of Shelley's, for whose woman with a child in her arms. He caught the opinion the manuscript had been sent, and who child; the mother not knowing whether the young made this strange use of it. It formed a curlmaniac-for such she thought him-might not ous contrast with the rest of the publication, in throw the child into the river, held it fast. "Will which was recommended in every mood and tense your baby tell us anything about preexistence, the plan of stabbing every one less enthusiastic in madam?" In spite of the strange screaming voice the cause of liberty than the supposed authoress. in which the question was asked-in spite of its The joke was successful-presentation copies being repeated with more torturing distinctness-were sent to poets and philosophers, and poets and the poor woman saw that the inquirer was very harmless, and she replied, "He cannot speak, sir." "Worse and worse," cried Shelley; "but surely the babe can speak if he will, for he is only a few weeks old. He may perhaps fancy that he cannot; but that is a silly whim. He cannot have entirely forgotten the use of speech in so short a time. The thing is impossible."

philosophers replied with letters of admiration. Prudence was however recommended by some sager spirits, as the country was not yet ripe for the doctrines inculcated; but better times were fast approaching. Among the younger students at Oxford, the book was decidedly popular.

Its success stimulated Shelley to a more dangerous adventure. He was, we have said, fond of practical jokes-jokes the entire humor of which consisted in imposing on grave and well-intentioned people. It seems, that some half-century ago it was not thought improper for a person engaged in any particular pursuit to write to men distinguished in kindred subjects of study, without any formal introduction. An old physician, from whom Shelley had before he came to Oxford taken lessons in chemistry, was in the habit of corresponding with strangers on scientific subjects. Shelley imitated this vile habit, and now and then received answers written in unsuspecting seriousness—some in down

Never was there a student who could have lived with more entire happiness in the seclusion of his college than Shelley; but to live at all in England, implies, in the case of the higher classes, living in the vapor of politics. Politics made their way to Shelley's quiet chambers in University College, almost as soon as he had found himself fixed there. Lord Grenville's election as chancellor took place just at the time. The unsuccessful candidate was unluckily a member of Shelley's college-and one whom the heads of the house supported by every means in their power. Shelley was enthusiastic for Lord Grenville. This was what might be ex-right anger; one gentleman, irritated by his tone, pected from him, as participating in the feeling of all the younger men in the university; but, in addition to this, liberal politics were in the shape of aristocratic whiggery-the line in which his father and his grandfather traded; so that there was in reality little cause of offence with the boy of sixteen, when he declaimed everywhere against the candidate whom the governors of University College sought to have elected. Shelley was, however, after this regarded with some dislike by the governing part of the body; and their power in the collegiate institutions of old foundation is all but unlimited. As to politics, in the ordinary meaning of the word, they were regarded by Shelley with utter antipathy; a newspaper never found its way to his rooms; and if he opened one accidentally in a coffee-house his reading was confined to murders and storms.

when he had entrapped him into a correspondence, and tormented him with rejoinder after rejoinder, said that he would write to his master, and get him well-flogged. It does not appear whether he thought his tormentor was an ill-conditioned schoolboy, or an impudent apothecary's apprentice. In either case, the suggestion was not unreasonable. At Eton, Shelley pursued this habit of correspon dence with strangers, to whom he did not commu nicate his name during his whole stay. At Oxford he resumed it, and it led to his expulsion.

He and Hogg had been speaking of mathematics. "The mathematicians," said Hogg, " are mere dogmatists, who, when tired of talking in their positive strain, end the discussion by putting down the magic letters, Q. E. D." This dullish joke delighted Shelley; he would put the letters to everything he wrote-say an invitation to dinner-to attain, as he said, to a mathematical cer tainty.

"The

Hogg was one day surprised by finding his friend correcting for the press the proof-sheets of some poems. He looked at them, and dissuaded He drew up a syllabus of Hume's doctrines, him from publication. "They will not do as seri- with some inferences of his own, adding these ous poems," said Hogg archly; "but try them as potent characters. He printed it and circulated it burlesque," and he read a few lines out with in every direction, chiefly for the purpose of assist some comic effect. Shelley was not without some ing him in his strange correspondences. fun in him, though it in general lay too deep for a syllabus," says Hogg, "was a small pill, but it hearty laugh. The forgeries of Chatterton and worked powerfully." The mode of operation was Ireland had amused him; and after some discus- this: Shelley enclosed a copy, with a letter, saysion it was arranged to print the poems as the ing that he had met this little tract accidentally— work of Mrs. Margaret Nicholson, a lunatic, who that it unhappily seemed to him quite unanswerahad attempted to stab George the Third. A book-ble. If an answer was returned, Shelley would, seller undertook to publish it at his own expense, in a fierce reply, fall on the poor disputant unmerand in a few days a cream-colored quarto appeared. cifully. Shelley loved truth, but he loved dispuIt opened with a serious poem against war-the tation for its own sake; and it is hard to state the

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above facts, so as to leave him wholly free from | lege, to the pamphlet. The heads of colleges felt the charge of disingenuousness. This syllabus a disagreeable summons to an extra meeting. was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism.” There are in Oxford five-and-twenty colleges, say nothing of halls. They met the greater part were for mercy. The pamphlet was not addressed to them. They were not bound officially to have any knowledge of it; and they determined not to proceed at all in the matter. Shelley, on this, determined to force the matter on them, and sent his pamphlet with five-and-twenty separate letters to the five-and-twenty heads of the Oxford hydra. The many-headed monster waxed wroth, and the philosopher was expelled." The sentence was, according to this account, extorted from very reluctant judges by Shelley's own act.

Hogg went to Shelley's rooms on Lady-Day 1811, a fine spring morning," at an earlier hour than was his custom: Shelley was absent, but soon rushed into the rooms. He was greatly agitated ;I am expelled!" he said; "I was sent for a few minutes ago to the common room; there I found our master and two or three of the fellows. The master produced a copy of the syllabus, and asked me if I were the author."Shelley refused to answer. The question was repeated. Shelley insisted on the unfairness of such interrogation, and asked to have witnesses produced, to prove any charge against him. The In whatever way the proceeding took place, we question was repeated; and an answer again think it was scarce possible to avoid some public refused. The master then said, "You are ex- notice and censure of such a work as this syllabus pelled; and I desire that you will quit the college is stated to have been. Dr. Medwin tells us that early to-morrow morning, at latest."-"One of it is preserved in the notes to Queen Mab; but we the fellows," added Shelley," took up two papers, have not ourselves read it. The college authorities and handed one of them to me-here it is." He produced a regular sentence of expulsion, drawn up and under the seal of the college. The indignation and compassion of a friend of Shelley's (we presume Mr. Hogg himself) were excited by what he felt to be a dreadful injustice. He wrote a note to the master and fellows, asking them to reconsider their decision. He was instantly summoned to attend the board, which was still sitting. The master produced the note which had been just sent: "Did you write this?", And then putting the syllabus into the hand of the astonished advoeate "Did you write this?" It was in vain urged that the question was an unfair one-that it was one which, after Shelley's case, no gentleman in the college or in the university but must refuse to answer. "Then," said the master, " you are expelled," and a formal sentence of expulsion was put into his hand. This must have been antecedently prepared, and Shelley's advocate must have been regarded as an accomplice in his crime before he sent his note to the master. He looked over the sentence, and found that the alleged offence was a contumacious refusal to disavow the imputed publication. On the following morning, Shelley and his friend proceeded to London.

This account, which we have abridged from Mr. Hogg's own narrative, cannot be otherwise than substantially accurate, though, being written twenty years after the events, it may contain some unimportant mistakes. Mr. De Quincey gives a different account of the matter; and the two can only be reconciled by the improbable supposition of his heing expelled not alone from his own college, but also from the University of Oxford, and by a proeding entirely distinct from that which we have described. De Quincey says, "I believe, from the uniformity of such accounts as have reached myself, the following brief of the matter may be relied on ;" and he then proceeds with a narrative which we shall seek to sum up in a sentence. "Shelley," he says, (but in this he certainly misakes,)" put his name, and the name of his col

for we think it probable that there is some mistake in the fact of there having been any university proceedings-might perhaps, considering Shelley's extreme youth, have been satisfied with a less severe course; and, under any circumstances, the fact of having the formal sentence of expulsion engrossed and sealed before the accused was given any opportunity of repelling the charge-though we have no doubt of the perfect legality of the proceedings, the relation of students to the governing authorities of a college being considered—was one of those, which, like all the forms of procedure regulated by ecclesiastical law, seems more calculated to silence than to convince the culprit.

We think it not improbable, from Shelley's character, that gentleness and sympathy would have been likely to have dispelled much that was erroneous in his views, and, at all events, would at once have conquered whatever proceeded from mere obstinacy-for, even from his own accounts, there was much of self-will in the course which he adopted. As it was, never did reformer in the proudest days of the church retire from a discussion with the champions of Rome in a state of mind more entirely satisfied that victory was on his side, than Shelley when he found himself expelled from his college, and regarded as an alien by all his father's house. He was a martyr, or burning for the crown of martyrdom, and the truths which Oxford was unwilling or unworthy to hear, he was prepared, as he best could, to communicate to other recipients. He wrote, it is said, to Rowland Hill, offering to preach in his chapel.

Shelley's expulsion from Oxford is said to have spoiled a dream of true love for some fair cousin, who would hear no more of him, and who after married somebody else. Was it revenge for his slight set Shelley a marrying? or did he marry, as they say in Ireland, to displease his father, thinking that they are thus suggesting a reasonable motive for a very rash act? The elder Shelleys seem to have had but an indifferent taste in schools for either sons or daughters. A sister

aphorisms. His voice was, as described by Mr. Hogg, a dissonant scream. In Dr. Drummond's life of Hamilton Rowan, we are told, in language which he quotes as Shelley's, that the poet "selected Ireland as a theatre the widest and fairest for the operations of the determined friends of religious and political freedom."-"In pursuance of this design," adds Dr. Drummond, "he published a pamphlet, entitled, 'An Address to the Irish People,' with an advertisement on the titlepage, declaring it to be the author's intention to A awaken in the minds of the Irish poor a knowledge of their real state, summarily pointing out the evils of that state, and suggesting rational means of remedy." He sent Hamilton Rowan some copies of the pamphlet, with a letter, from which we quote a few words :

and I have left the country in which the accident "Although an Englishman, I feel for Ireland; of birth placed me, for the sole purpose of adding my little stock of usefulness to the fund which I hope Ireland possesses, to aid her in the unequal yet sacred combat in which she is engaged. In the course of a few days more I shall print another small pamphlet, which shall be sent to you. 1 have intentionally vulgarized the language of the enclosed. I have printed 1500 copies, and am now distributing them throughout Dublin.”

In a letter written a month or two after, he speaks of being engaged in writing a history of Ireland, in conjunction with some friend, and says, that "two hundred and fifty pages of it were printed." Who could his friend have been? we think it not improbable that it may have been

of Shelley's was at school in the neighborhood of the whole speech having the effect of unconnected London, and Shelley, while walking with her in the garden of the seminary, was attracted by a fair face of sixteen. The Shelleys, had they been consulted, would have been little pleased with their son's marrying, at the age of nineteen, a girl, very young, and whom he scarcely knew; and there is little reason to think, that with all the English veneration for rank and family, that the young lady's father would have consented to the union. However this be, the young people do not seem to have asked any questions. In August, 1811, they were married at Gretna-Green. maternal uncle of Shelley's supplied them with some money, and they went-thinking it a cheap place to Keswick. There they were favorably received by the principal people of the neighborhood, the Duke of Norfolk having expressed some interest about them. Among others, the Southeys did what they could to render the place agreeable, and a friendship with Southey seemed to be almost the certain consequence of the intercourse that then existed between the families. We grieve to think on the worthless causes that in after life disturbed the feeling. Shelley too lightly believed that the reviews of his own and Keats' poems in the Quarterly Review were written by Southey. The solitude in which they both lived increased the echoes of the gossip which brought to Keswick the nonsense spoken at Geneva, and to Geneva the idle whispers of Keswick: each believed that the other maligned him-and there seems to have been nothing like a foundation for the belief on either side. As to the reviewals, Southey had nothing to say to them. This is perhaps the most annoying circumstance connected with periodical litera- Lawless-at that time, we believe, an active memture, that mistakes as to the authorship of articles ber of the political associations in Dublin. Captain in periodical publications have been often the cause Medwin quotes from Shelley language which, in of life-long jealousies and dislikes. Shelley re- 1812, he was more likely to have taught O'Connell mained, however, at the lakes of Cumberland for than to have learned from him. Like the "Hetoo short a time to form any intimacies there. reditary Bondsmen," and the First Flower of the The place was far from cheap; and Shelley, in a Earth, O'Connell made it his own by adoption. letter dated November, 1811, says, that after paying" My principles incite me to take all the good I some debts, he had to expend nearly his last can get in politics-forever aspiring to something guinea on a visit to the Duke of Norfolk, through more. I am one of those whom nothing will fully whom some negotiation with his father was going satisfy, but who are ready to be partially satisfied Shelley left Keswick for Ireland. He sailed with whatever is practicable.” for Cork, and after visiting the Lakes of Killarney Shelley's pamphlet is before us. —which, says Medwin, he thought more beautiful seems, searched in vain for a copy. than those of Switzerland or Italy-went to Dub- obtained through an Irish friend of Shelley's, whose lin. While in Dublin he attended some political acquaintance with the poet originated accidentally. meetings at which he spoke. Medwin says "he A poor man offered the pamphlet for a few pence displayed great eloquence, for which he was—its price, stated on the title-page, was fivepence. remarkable." We have conversed with an Irish On being asked how he got it, he said a parcel of gentleman himself a man of great eloquence, the them were given him by a young gentleman, who late Chief Baron Woulfe-who remembered Shel- told him to get what he could for them at all ley's going to a meeting of the Catholic Board, events to distribute them. Inquiry was made at and making a speech there. Of the details of the Shelley's lodgings to ascertain the truth of the speech, at an interval of more than twenty years vendor's story. He was not at home; but when after it was delivered, our friend remembered noth- he heard of it he went to return the visit, and ing. He did, however, remember one strange kindly acquaintanceship thus arose. The Shelleys peculiarity of manner. The speaker would utter-husband and wife-were then Pythagoreans. a sentence; then pause, as if he were taking time Shelley spoke as a man believing in the metemp to frame another, which was slowly enunciated, sychosis-and they did not eat animal food. They

on.

Medwin, it

Ours was

Take care, then, of smooth-faced impostors, who talk indeed of freedom, but would cheat you into slavery. Can there be worse slavery than the depending for the safety of your soul on the will of another man? * Oh! Ireland, thou eme

seem however to have tolerated it; for on one occasion a fowl was murdered for our friend's dinner. Of the first Mrs. Shelley, the recollection of our friend is very faint, but is of an amiable and unaffected person-very young and very pleasing and she and Shelley seemed much attached. This rald of the ocean, whose sons are generous and affection seems to have preserved a doubtful life brave, whose daughters are honorable, and frank for some little while after they left Ireland, for we and fair, thou art the isle in whose green shores 1 find a letter dated August, 1812, in which he says have desired to see the standard of liberty erected -"I am a young man, not of age, and have been -a flag of fire, a beacon at which the world shall married for a year to a woman younger than my-light the torch of freedom!"

tants.

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it is a crime to be intolerant;" "An act passed in the British parliament to take away the rights of Catholics to act in that assembly does not really take them away: it prevents them from doing it by force;"" Oh, Irishmen, I am interested in your cause, and it is not because you are Irishmen or Roman Catholics that I feel with you or feel

Were Ireland at this moment peopled with brahmins, this very same address would have been suggested by the very same state of mind. You have suffered not merely for your religion, but some other causes which I am equally desirous of remedying. The union of England with Ireland has withdrawn the Protestant aristocracy and gentry from their native country, and with them their

from this country, though they are dissipated in another. The very poor people are most nefariously oppressed by the weight of the burden which the superior classes lay upon their shoulders. I am no less desirous for the reform of these evils (with many others) than for the Catholic emanci

self. Love seems inclined to stay in the prison, The question of toleration is then discussed. and my only reason for putting him in chains, whilst Belief he regards as involuntary :-" We cannot convinced of the unholiness of the act, was a knowl-believe just what we like, but only what we think edge that in the present state of society, if love is to be truc;" "It is not a merit to tolerate, but not thus villanously treated, she who is most loved will be treated worst by a misjudging world." His theoretical objections to marriage existed even before he had contracted that engagement with his first wife. It had been preached by him in Queen Mab. He had learned the doctrine, he says, before, but it was confirmed by a work of Sir James Lawrence, entitled "The Empire of the Nairs." | for you—but because you are men and sufferers. Shelley's Irish pamphlet was not very likely to be popular among the Irish. He said to them that their religion-the Roman Catholic-had been a bad thing in long ago times. The Inquisition, he writes, was set up, and in the course of one year thirty thousand people were burnt in Italy and Spain, for entertaining different opinions from those of the pope and the priests. The bigoted monks of France in one night massacred 80,000 Protes-friends and connections. Their resources are taken This was done under the authority of the pope. The vices of the monks and the nuns in their convents were in those times shameful; people thought that they might commit any sin, however monstrous, if they had money enough to prevail on the priests to absolve them." Such was the opening of Shelley's pacific discourse-pation." to a people not likely to admit any of his facts. He assumes that those whom he addresses are The Irish are a credulous and yet an unbelieving agreed with him on the general object, but that he people. Like better educated people, and in a and they may differ as to the means of effecting it. more advanced state of society, they believe just "If you are convinced of the truth of your cause, what they like; and it is not to be expected that trust wholly to its truth; if you are not convinced, they should give any assent whatever to Shelley's give it up: in no case employ violence." He tells propositions. Your true Irishman will not even them" to think and talk and discuss." "Be free believe that a murder has been committed till some and be happy, but first be wise and good." person is executed, and then it is the man who is tells them of the failure of the French Revolution, hanged that he regards as murdered. "Some because violence was employed by the people. teach you that others are heretics, that you alone"The cause which they vindicated was that of are right. * Beware, my friends, how you truth, but they gave it the appearance of a lie." truз those who speak in this way; they will, I He tells them that "rebellion can never, under any doubt not, attempt to rescue you from your present circumstances, be good for their cause. It will miserable state-but they will prepare a worse. It bind you more closely to the work of the oppressor, will be out of the frying-pan into the fire.' Your and your children's children, whilst they talk of present oppressors, it is true, will then oppress you your exploits, will feel that you have done them no longer, but you will feel the lash of a master a injury instead of benefit." He advises sobriety, thousand times more bloodthirsty and cruel. Evil, diligence in their respective callings, the education designing men will spring up who will prevent you of themselves and their children, the avoidance of from thinking as you please—will burn you, if you meeting in mobs :-" Before the restraints of govdo not think as they do." He then prophesies ernment are lessened, it is fit that we should lessen Catholic Emancipation, but tells them to take the necessity for them. Before government is done 66 great care that whilst one tyranny is destroyed away with, we must reform ourselves." **“In another more fierce and terrible does not spring up. order to benefit yourselves and your country to

He

any extent, habits of sobriety, regularity, and thought, are previously so necessary, that without these preliminaries all you have done falls to the ground. You have built on sand. Secure a good foundation, and you may erect a fabric to stand forever as the glory and the envy of the world."

66

In his pamphlet, a distinct plan is proposed to aid in carrying out the projects of emancipation and the repeal of the union. That these and all other desirable changes are to arise as the natural consequences of the cultivation of wisdom and virtue in each family of the nation, he assumes and imagines that he proves. The pamphlet, he tells us, was written in England before his visit to Ireland, but he adds in a postscript the amusing information that "he has now been a week in Dublin," that he has made himself acquainted with the state of the public mind, and is prepared to recommend an association for the purpose of restoring Ireland to the prosperity which she possessed before the union ;" and he promises another pamphlet, in which he shall reveal the plan and structure of the proposed association. Whether he printed that pamphlet we have not been able to learn. It does not take long to learn all about Ireland! Shelley-a boy of nineteen-learned all about it in a week! Mr. Nicholls, when devising a system of poor-laws, destined to vary all the relations of property in that country, was able to accomplish his inquiry and prepare his report in about six !

coinage of the poet's own fevered brain. He had
come from Ireland, where such an incident would
have been too probable. It is curious that Med-
win's language, in narrating the circumstance,
seems almost borrowed from a scene in Thalaba—
a poem which at that time haunted Shelley's im
agination, and Medwin's account must have been
given by Shelley.

"Sinewy and strong of limb, Mohareb was
Broad-shouldered, and his joints
Knit firm, and in the strife
Of danger practised well.

Time had not yet matured young Thalaba ;-
But now the enthusiast mind,
The inspiration of his soul,
Pour'd vigor like the strength
Of madness through his frame.
Mohareb reels before him! he right on
With knee, with breast, with arm,
Presses the staggering foe."

Thalaba, Book v.

We think it certain that the confused recollection of this, or some such passage, and of some frightful scene enacted in the country which he had just left, at a time when he was living in strange solitude, oppressed his imagination. He was at this time, be it remembered, at war with his family and with society-and this is a state of existence in which a man is likely enough to fancy society at war with him, and to fall into that first stage of madness, which dreams of conspiracies, and mixes up actual events with unrealities. We state this, because we think, if it does not actually solve, it yet aids in the solution of some of the problems which Shelley's life suggests.

His first marriage was unhappy—it could scarce have been otherwise, though the recollections of those who have met the first Mrs. Shelley are exceedingly favorable to her. Shelley had neither house nor home, and a woman's heart is in her home. A boy of nineteen-disowned by his family-often without a shilling-flying from one spot to another-sometimes because of debt-sometimes because regarded by the police as mixed up with political objects of doubtful legality can it be surprising that there was little opportunity for the feeling which he mistook for love, to ripen into anything of real affection? If there be one impulse stronger than another in a woman's mind, it is that which seeks, in a higher nature than her own, an object in which her thoughts may find all repose. What happiness could be anticipated when this hope was torn from her on earth by Shelley's indifference or alienation, and when it is probable that the refuge which she might have had

Shelley left Dublin for the Isle of Man-and after some time we find him seeking to take a place in Radnorshire. He afterwards rented a cottage in Caernarvonshire, from a gentleman whom Medwin knew intimately, and with whom long afterwards he had many conversations about a strange incident in Shelley's life while in Wales: Shelley stated that at midnight, while in his study on the ground-floor, he heard a noise at the windows, saw one of the shutters gradually unclosed, and a head advanced into the room armed with a pistol. The muzzle was directed towards him, the aim taken, the weapon cocked, and the trigger drawn. The pistol snapped fire, Shelley rushed out to seize the assassin, and soon found himself face to face with the ruffian, who again raised his pistol, and it again snapped fire. Shelley seized his opponent, whom he described as a short, stout, strong man. "Shelley, though slightly built, was tall, and though incapable of supporting much fatigue, had the faculty at certain moments of evoking extraordinary powers, and concentrating all his energies to a given point. This singular phenomenon, which has been noticed in others, he displayed on this occasion, and it made the aggressor and Shelley in religion was also destroyed by his insane specno unequal match." After long wrestling his antagonist extricated himself from his grasp and disappeared. Shelley the next day made a deposition of these facts before a magistrate. We cannot but think that the conclusion to which it would appear that Captain Medwin and his friend, when conversing on the incident, came, must have been the true one, and that the whole scene was the

ulations? This unhappy union did not last many years. In spring, 1813, a separation took place between him and his wife, and she went to reside with her father and sister at Bath. Her death occurred about two years after the separation.

When Shelley had separated from his wife, he seems to have wandered for a year or two over the continent. On her death he went to Bath to re