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once sent for, and, after similar angry and ill-mannered questioning to that which had been pursued in Shelley's case, was sentenced to the same honorable expulsion already pronounced against his companion.

This unhappy event took place on Lady-Day, 1811. The friends quitted Oxford next morning for London.

So far as I can gather from some scanty records, I am inclined to think that, at this time, Shelley's father would have been satisfied with some very slight concessions on his son's part-in fact, with his promising a merely formal compliance with the ceremonies observed in most households. But, had he asked his native stream, the Arun, to run up to its source, he would have had as great a chance of obtaining his desire. Exasperated by his son's refusal to conform to the orthodox belief, he forbade him to appear at Field Place. On the sensitively affectionate feelings of the young controversialist and poet, this sentence of exclusion from his boyhood's home inflicted a bitter pang; yet he was determined to bear it, for the sake of what he believed to be right and true.

Conscious of high intellectual power, and of unsullied moral purity, he had been persecuted at Eton for the resistance he always offered to despotism. From Oxford he had been expelled, with great injustice, for a pamphlet which, if it had been given as a translation of the work of some old Greek, would have been regarded as a model of subtle metaphysical reasoning. He was excluded from his father's house for acting in accordance with the dictates of his conscience; and he

found himself separated from the society of his equals in rank by his shyness, his sensitiveness, and his ascetic habits. Among his few acquaintances at this time whose names are known, there was not one who had the slightest affinity with him; and it is not easy to conceive a greater loneliness of the heart than that which he now experienced. Feeling himself thus isolated, his .naturally high spirit rose higher still; and the young warrior for truth went forth into the world alone, but full of ardor. And it should be recollected that he made this sacrifice out of a purely abstract and intellectual love of truth; for to all sensual pleasures Shelley was a stranger. His usual food was bread, sometimes seasoned with a few raisins; his beverage was generally water; if he drank tea or coffee, he would take no sugar with it, because the produce of the cane was then obtained by slave labor; and the unanimous voice of those who knew him acquits him of any participation in the lax habits of life too common among young men. Yet, when less than nineteen, fragile in health and frame; of the purest habits in morals; full of devoted generosity and universal kindness; glowing with ardor to attain wisdom; resolved, at every personal sacrifice, to do right; burning with a desire for affection and sympathy, he was treated as a reprobate, cast forth as a criminal." *

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On the other hand, the conduct of his father is susceptible of some excuse. Let those who utterly condemn him ask themselves how they would like the presence in *Mrs. Shelley.

their houses of a disciple of Spinoza or of Calvin, whose enthusiasm never wanes, and whose voice is seldom silent; who, with the eloquence of conviction, obtrudes his doctrines at all times; who seeks the youngest daughter in the school-room, and the butler in his pantry, to make them converts, in the one case, to the moral excellence of materialism, in the other, to the æsthetic comforts of eternal punishment by election; and, if they can conscientiously say they would like it, they may condemn the elder Mr. Shelley; but not unless. Still, it is to be regretted that a milder course was not pursued towards one who was peculiarly open to the teachings of love.

In the present day, when a brighter morn seems breaking on the future; when another spirit is breathing over us; when vengeance is departing from our laws, and love is gradually creeping in; when freedom of inquiry is becoming at once a social and a legal right; when the fierce voices of hatred, which burst in Shelley's time on the man bold enough to question the received notions of Church and State orthodoxy, have ceased, or are faintly heard; when a protecting hand is extended. over the toil of women and children; when the claims of the uninstructed to their share of education are cordially admitted; when there is a growing conviction that all the inhabitants of the earth, whatever may be their creed, their color, or their clime, should enjoy a fair portion of the gifts of God, and that the chief duty of all is to gird themselves, as in one common brotherhood, for the struggle with the many moral and physical evils which are interwoven with our existence, it is not diffi

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cult to understand the throbbing interest with which, in the distant colony and in the crowded street at home, the many turn to the Memorials of the life of him who, selfinspired and self-impelled, from the earliest dawn of manhood to his day of death, shrank from no sacrifice in his devotion to the cause of human welfare.

CHAPTER III.

SHELLEY'S FIRST MARRIAGE.

Up to the present period of Shelley's life, there has been little to chronicle with respect to his progress as an author. While at Oxford, he had published, in conjunction with Mr. Hogg, a little volume of burlesque verses, and, at a yet earlier date, when still at home, he had written a great many wild romances in prose, some of which have been printed, though they have never taken any place in literature, and are, in fact, the crude productions of an enthusiastic boy. It was not, however, till he had been drawn into the conflict of existence that he began that expression of his inner nature in immortal verse which has since astonished the world. But we must yet for a while follow the course of his private life.

Discarded by his father, Shelley was now left in a state of considerable pecuniary embarrassment, though this did not prevent his performing acts of munificence whenever he had any money at command. At one time he pawned his favorite solar microscope in order to relieve an urgent case of distress. He took lodgings in Poland Street, but was often without the means of meeting the current expenses of the day. His sisters, who

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