Though he had not yet seen the child who, in the following September, became his first wife, Shelley was enough interested in her on 11th January, 1811, to write to his publisher, Stockdale:—‘I would thank you to send a copy of St. Irvyne to Miss Harriet Westbrook, 10, Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square;’ an order he would scarcely have given, had not circumstances already caused him to think of her with peculiar friendliness. At their boarding-school on the north side of Clapham Common, near the ‘Old Town,’ Miss Mary Shelley (ætat. 13) and Miss Hellen Shelley (ætat. 11) had several schoolmates, of whose looks and doings they would naturally prattle to their elder brother during the Christmas holidays, as they sat about the Christmas fire. How was it that, of all the girls about whom his sisters may be assumed to have spoken in his hearing, Harriett Westbrook was the one he selected for a compliment that must have greatly pleased her? Mary and Hellen were the only persons (with the exception of their elder sister—possibly one of Harriett’s school friends in earlier time) who can be conceived to have gossiped with him about the loveliest of Mrs. Fenning’s pupils, in a way to inspire him with interest in her. The fair inference from the reasonable assumptions is that of all the school-girls, of whom his sisters spoke, Harriett Westbrook seemed the fairest and most fascinating to him and them.

Let it be assumed that, of all their friends at the Clapham boarding-school, Harriett was the only girl of whom the sisters spoke to their brother. In that case, the question arises, why the sisters, so uncommunicative about the others, were eloquent about the girl who soon became their brother’s wife?—eloquent about her in a way to make him desirous of knowing her? The question must be answered in a way more or less favourable to the notion that Harriett stood well in the opinion of the sisters.

There is another reason for thinking Harriett Westbrook was at this point of her career peculiarly acceptable to the young ladies of Field Place. Older than Miss Mary Shelley by two years at least, more than three years older than Miss Hellen Shelley, Harriett Westbrook, besides being one of the older girls of Mrs. Fenning’s seminary, was the acknowledged ‘beauty’ of the school; and beauty in a senior school-girl always disposes the juniors of the school to regard her favourably, when it is not associated with any irritating moral defect. Harriett’s temper was by no means faultless, but as she was the only serious sufferer from her propensity to imagine herself an ill-used damsel, it did not lessen the natural influence of her personal attractiveness.

Fretful towards herself, she was never peevish or wilfully unkind to others. Her prevailing mood was tranquil melancholy; and there were times when she played the rebel with a serene sullenness that made worthy Mrs. Fenning wonder what would be the end of so perplexing a young lady. When she was more than usually miserable about nothing at Clapham, this young lady (who eventually committed suicide) used to think she might as well destroy herself, would even tell the governesses she rather thought she should destroy herself. But the announcements of suicidal purpose were made in so placid and passionless a manner, that they caused little or no alarm. Even in her naughtiest humours she was gentle in speech and bearing to her classmates, and not devoid of frigid decorum to those who were in authority over her. In her brighter seasons she was childishly charming,—so winning and cooingly docile, that Mrs. Fenning and the subordinate teachers quickly relented to her smiles, and forgiving her in five minutes for all the trouble she had given throughout twice as many weeks, fell to kissing and petting her, as though she were the veriest darling. How could this darling, so irresistible to the governesses she harassed, be otherwise than popular with the girls whose tempers she never tried?

One of those beauties, who are seen oftener on the walls than the floors of drawing-rooms, less a thing of real life than a picture, this girl of curious and memorable loveliness lived in the recollections of her Clapham schoolmates, when forty years and more had passed over her grave. Rather below the average stature of womankind, shapely as a sculptured Venus, graceful in her movements, she would have possessed all the finer elements of womanly loveliness, had she not lacked the air and style of mental force and moral dignity. In 1856 Miss Hellen Shelley recalled Harriett[6] Westbrook, whom she saw for the last time in 1811, as ‘a very handsome girl, with a complexion quite unknown in these days—brilliant pink and white,—with hair quite like a poet’s dream, and Bysshe’s peculiar admiration.’ It lived also in Miss Hellen’s recollection that Mrs. Fenning, and her assistant-governesses, used to talk about Harriett’s beauty, and even spoke of her as qualified to ‘enact Venus’ at a fête champêtre. In colour her eyes resembled Shelley’s prominent blue eyes, and the profusion of hair, that was his ‘peculiar admiration,’ was light brown.

When she committed to paper (in her fifty-seventh year, or thereabouts) whatever she could remember of the beautiful girl, whom she never beheld after they became sisters-in-law, it lived in Miss Hellen Shelley’s recollection that her brother was said to have married her because her name was Harriett. It is in the way of lovers to delight in the names of those they idolize, even when their devotion is rewarded with coldness. To the last, Byron’s ear discovered music in ‘Mary,’ the name of the wee Scotch lassie whom he loved in his tenth year. One can readily imagine that the charm of her name was the first influence to make Shelley an attentive listener to his sisters’ gossip about ‘the beauty’ of their college friend. It is conceivable that their talk about this lovely Harriett of the Clapham boarding-school was accountable for the frame of mind in which Miss Harriett Grove’s discarded suitor wrote from Field Place to Hogg on 28th December, 1810: ‘At present, a thousand barriers oppose any more intimate connexion, any union with another;’ words that would scarcely have fallen from his pen within a fortnight of his final rejection by the Wiltshire ‘belle,’ had he not already recovered from the first and keenest misery of the misadventure, so far as to be capable of looking forward to a future time when his ‘union with another’ Harriett would be possible.

Is it not conceivable, also, that in their sympathy with his distress for the loss of Harriett Grove, and in their affectionate desire to restore him to his usual cheerfulness, the sisters at Field Place conspired to remind him that their cousin Harriett was not the only beautiful Harriett in the universe, and to lure him into consoling himself for Harriett Grove’s disdain with Harriett Westbrook’s devotion? No doubt Miss Hellen Shelley and Miss Mary Shelley were full young for match-makers. But girls sometimes take to match-making, no less than to flirtation, before their teens. Little Hellen (ætat. 11) may not have been taken fully, or even at all, into the confidence of her elder sisters on the romantic project. They may have encouraged her to prattle about Harriett Westbrook without letting her suspect their purpose.

The evidence of this conspiracy on the part of three, or two, of Shelley’s sisters for marrying him to Miss Harriett Westbrook, is fragmentary and flimsy; but few readers will question that divers facts point to the existence of an influence at Field Place that not only disposed, but determined, the poet to seek the young lady’s acquaintance. But for his sisters he would, probably, have never heard of Harriett Westbrook. Their speech about her must be held accountable for his desire to know her. On 11th January, 1811, he requested Stockdale to send her a copy of St. Irvyne. What but his sisters’ talk about her can have disposed Shelley to pay so considerable a compliment to the young lady, of whom he would probably never have heard, had it not been for them?

Just about the time when he paid her this remarkable attention, Miss Harriett Westbrook subscribed for a copy of the poems, on the point of being published, by Miss Janetta Phillips, a young lady in whom he was warmly interested; a young lady of whom she doubtless heard through him or his sisters, and whose name would probably have never come to her ear had it not been for him or them. It is suggested by Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy that Harriett Westbrook gave her name to the roll of Miss Janetta Phillips’s subscribers at the instance of Miss Hellen Shelley, and that the copy of St. Irvyne sent to Miss Harriett Westbrook was Shelley’s acknowledgment of her expression of concern in the enterprise of his literary protégée. Probably the affair should be taken the other way about. It is more likely that Miss Harriett’s subscription to Miss Janetta’s poems was consequent on Shelley’s gift of the copy of the novel. There is no evidence that subscribers for Miss Janetta’s poems were being sought so early as the Christmas holidays (1810-11), and there is good evidence that the list of those subscribers was not completed and made out for publication till after Lady-day, 1811. I am, therefore, more disposed to think Miss Harriett Westbrook subscribed for the poems at Shelley’s instance, and in acknowledgment of his civility in sending her the copy of St. Irvyne, than to regard the gift of the novel as the author’s acknowledgment of her complaisance in subscribing for the poems. But if Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy is right on this point, Miss Harriett Westbrook’s act in subscribing for the poems may be regarded as an act, done less for the gratification of one of Shelley’s sisters than for the gratification of Shelley himself, and must be regarded as an act done, more or less, for the gratification of the young man of whom she can have heard only through his sisters. Hence the young lady’s subscription for the poems becomes another indication of the existence of an influence at Field Place, disposing the poet to entertain feelings of friendliness for ‘the beauty’ of the Clapham boarding-school. Why, it has already been asked, was Miss Harriett Westbrook the only one of his sisters’ school-fellows to whom he sent a copy of his novel? Why, it must be also asked, was she the only one of their school-fellows to subscribe for the poems, for whose success he was so desirous? The questions can only be answered in a way, pointing to the existence at Field Place of an influence, to which the act of subscription was directly, or indirectly, referable.

Whilst readily admitting that the facts of the case sustain and justify a strong opinion that Miss Hellen Shelley (ætat. 11), and Miss Mary Shelley (ætat. 13), talked about their school-fellow Harriett, so as to make their brother curious about and interested in her, readers may fairly object (in respect to Miss Elizabeth Shelley) that it is unusual for a young gentlewoman of the mature age of sixteen years to use her influence, or be in a position to exercise any influence, over her brother (ætat. 18) to make him fall in love with a young lady he has not seen. It may also be further objected that, as she is not known to have been personally acquainted with Miss Harriett Westbrook, it is especially difficult to imagine that Miss Elizabeth Shelley made any efforts to compass her brother’s marriage with her younger sisters’ school-fellow. There is force in both of these objections. It must, however, be remembered that, as she had been a pupil at the Clapham Common school, Miss Elizabeth Shelley (now in her seventeenth year) may have been at school with Miss Harriett Westbrook, still only in her sixteenth year. She may (in the absence of evidence to the contrary) be fairly assumed to have known Miss Harriett Westbrook by personal observation as well as by report—to have remembered, as a delightful little girl, the same Harriett who was an unutterably beautiful ‘great girl’ in the eyes of Mary and Hellen.

It is of more importance for readers to remember how unusual were the relations in which Elizabeth stood to her elder brother. It is on the record (so as to put the facts beyond dispute) that, throughout his suit to and correspondence with his cousin Harriett, Shelley made a confidante of his sister respecting his passion for that lovely girl; that he especially commissioned his eldest sister to plead for him to the object of his passion; and that in his disappointment at the failure of his suit to his cousin, he threw himself on his sister for sympathy, consolation, and counsel. It is no less clear on the record that, during those Christmas holidays of 1810-11, Miss Elizabeth Shelley, whilst sympathizing with his sorrow, was for some days in fear that in the agitations of his grief he would destroy himself. It matters not that Shelley never seriously thought of committing suicide; it is enough that his sister believed him to be meditating and capable of self-destruction. ‘My eldest sister,’ Miss Hellen Shelley wrote in 1855, or thereabouts, ‘has frequently told me how narrowly she used to watch him, and accompany him in his walks with his dog and gun.’ Moreover, whilst Shelley was in his trouble seeking consolation and counsel from his eldest sister, he was influencing her to fall in love with a young man she had never seen, and to that end was speaking to her of his friend Hogg in terms which made her fully aware of his purpose. Under these circumstances it would not be surprising, could it be shown that sister (whom for her happiness he was training and luring to love a man she had never seen) conceived a purpose of turning the tables upon him, and making him (for his happiness) fall in love with a girl on whom he had not set eyes. Under these circumstances, what more natural than for her to do him a service corresponding to the service he was set openly on doing her?

Anyhow, it is certain, that having conceived an interest in Miss Harriett Westbrook, when he can have known nothing of her except from his sisters, Shelley did not return to Oxford at the close of the Christmas vacation, without having seen the young lady, and made arrangements for corresponding with her.

In his article on Shelley in Pall Mall, Mr. Garnett is good enough to promise that, when it shall suit his convenience to do so, he will lay before the world ‘an interesting but unpublished document,’ in evidence that the poet first saw Harriett Westbrook in January 1811. It is very kind of Mr. Garnett to make this promise; but as it has been known for more than a quarter of a century to all the world (with the exception of Shelleyan specialists) that Shelley made Miss Harriett Westbrook’s acquaintance in that month, Mr. Garnett may as well keep his ‘interesting but unpublished document’ to himself, if it cannot afford any further information about the poet. In an extremely entertaining letter, to which reference has been made in a previous chapter of this work (a letter to be found in Hogg’s much-abused Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley), Mr. Charles Henry Grove, the poet’s cousin, says:—

It has been often represented that Shelley was indebted to ‘little Hellen’ for his first introduction to the girl who became, a few months later, his first wife. It has been no less often represented that Shelley made his first wife’s acquaintance only a few weeks before their marriage; that he made her acquaintance at Mrs. Fenning’s house; and that he was inveigled into the marriage without being allowed the usual opportunities for studying the girl’s character. Readers, therefore, will do well to observe that he saw her for the first time under her father’s roof; that he made her acquaintance there because he went there for the purpose of making it; that, on the occasion of this first visit to Mr. Westbrook’s house, he went there with a letter of introduction to the young lady from his sister Mary; that he, on the same occasion, brought the young lady a present from his sister Mary; that he made this call upon the young lady in the company of one of the gentlemen of his family; that this visit must be assumed to have been paid with the cognizance of Miss Elizabeth Shelley (his eldest sister); that, from the date of this visit, he and the young lady were in the habit of exchanging letters; that he did not marry her till he had corresponded with and otherwise known her intimately for eight full months; that he did not marry her till he had lured her from Christianity into atheism; that, instead of marrying her (a sixteen-years-old child) with her father’s consent, he stole her from her father’s keeping, even as (less than three years later) he lured another sixteen-years-old girl from the roof of her father, who was his intimate friend.

All these statements are matters of fact, and yet Mr. Garnett says the time will come, when ‘it will for the first time be clearly understood how slight was the acquaintance of Shelley and Harriet, previous to their marriage; what advantage was taken of his chivalry of sentiment, and her compliant disposition, and the inexperience of both.’

Returning to Oxford for the Lent term, after making Miss Harriett Westbrook’s acquaintance, Shelley returned to the same kind of life, in which he found various excitements and congenial diversions in the eight weeks preceding the Christmas holidays. There was no diminution in his familiarity with and affection for Hogg. Again, the young men took long walks in the neighbourhood of Oxford, and committed boyish extravagances of costume and demeanour that made the gownsmen titter over their wine in the common rooms. They still hoped to be brothers-in-law, and looked forward to the Easter Vacation as a time for winning Miss Elizabeth Shelley’s acquiescence in their project for the union of their respective families. They wrote letters, and got through a good deal of desultory reading, in company with one another. They resumed their old practice of talking with much volubility and vehemence on subjects of which they knew little, from ten p.m. till two hours past midnight. Whilst Hogg persisted in reading for honours, Shelley turned over a good many books for amusement. Instead of writing to Miss Harriett Grove, he wrote letters to Miss Harriett Westbrook. At the same time he was making efforts to lengthen the list of subscribers for Miss Janetta Phillips’s poems.

Having in the Christmas holidays scolded off his reasonable displeasure with his heir, and taken him once again into his favour, Mr. Timothy Shelley wrote the youngster letters of good advice, begging him to read hard and distinguish himself at the University; letters which the son and his friend turned to excellent fun. Whilst the Squire of Field Place thus evinced a disposition to live on better terms with his boy, there were signs of a corresponding disposition on Shelley’s part, to live on better terms with his father. Anyhow, it was partly to please the Member of Parliament for New Shoreham, that the undergraduate promised to compete for the next Prize Poem,—a promise that vastly delighted the elder Mr. Shelley, who honoured letters without being qualified to excel in them, and desired very much to speak of his son as an Oxford Prizeman. The subject for ‘the Newdigate,’ was Parthenon, and as soon as Shelley had consented to his father’s desire, so far as to say he would go in for the Prize (eventually awarded to Mr. R. Burdon, of Oriel College), the jubilant Squire of Field Place went off to his particular friend, the Reverend Edward Dallaway, Vicar of Leatherhead, and historian of Sussex, and begged the sound scholar and famous antiquary, to put his erudition at the service of the poetical undergraduate. The result of this kindly busy-bodyism on the part of an honest gentleman, who certainly sometimes did his best to be a good father to a worse than indifferent son, was that Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley, of University College, received a long letter from Mr. Dallaway, together with charts, sketches, and documents, which might have been useful to the young poet, had he remained long enough at the University to complete the poem (which he began), and send it in to the judges.

In one respect, the present writer may have described Shelley’s academic life too favourably. Too much may have been said of the purity of the poet’s personal tastes, and of his aversion to pleasures that are fascinating only to the sensual. If he has erred in this particular, the writer has not failed through ignorance of matters, making for another and less agreeable view of the undergraduate’s ways of amusing himself at Oxford, but through a determination to say nothing on insufficient evidence to the discredit of a remarkable man, whose life affords too many occasions for necessary censure.

When anything is needlessly blurted to Shelley’s shame, the injurious statement is usually made by one of his idolaters, acting the proverbial part of a ‘candid friend.’ It is so in the case of what has been urged against the prevailing testimony to the purity and refinement of the Oxonian Shelley’s personal habits and tastes.

It is needless to specify the pleasures to which Mr. Thornton Hunt points. The pleasures which may be bought, and often attract young men in their hours of idleness, and sometimes result in consequences permanently injurious to their health, are not so numerous as to make the reader doubtful as to the nature of the pleasures thus boldly indicated. But Mr. Thornton Hunt’s statement has features which will dispose readers to question the sufficiency of his information. As Shelley never passed ‘through the usual curriculum of a college life,’ he can scarcely have passed through it ‘in all its paths’ (whatever that may mean):—but let that pass. It is enough that Mr. Thornton Hunt is unambiguous as to the class of the pleasures. It is not, however, so clear how those pleasures, which can only injure the mind through the body, should in Shelley’s case have been so much less baneful to the body than the mind. As Mr. Thornton Hunt seems to have gained his facts from a loose talker or writer, it is only fair and charitable to the poet to suppose that his ‘frank friend’ got his facts from an altogether unreliable reporter. It may, of course, be that in a transient fit of rakishness Shelley was so unfortunate as to encounter mischance, which habitual rakes may be so lucky as to escape. But the abundant evidences to the point satisfy me that ‘rakishness’ was foreign to Shelley’s general way of living at the University,—that, in respect to common kinds of dissipation, his habits accorded with the manners of Victorian much more closely than with the manners of Georgian Oxford.

To pass from a matter about which Mr. Thornton Hunt might as well have been silent, to an affair of several incidents, which, though notorious, must be recorded precisely and fully, because they have never been narrated correctly;—the incidents that closed with Shelley’s expulsion from University College, Oxford.

Whilst rejecting, with his usual good sense, Hogg’s apologetic and untruthful account of Shelley’s motives and purpose in writing and publishing (for he did both) The Necessity of Atheism, Mr. William Rossetti remarks:—

Had Mr. Rossetti been educated at Oxford or Cambridge in his boyhood, he would not have put these words in print. Like the Archbishop of Canterbury, or any other man, Shelley had, of course, a natural right to hold and declare what he believed to be the truth on questions of religion. In civilized communities, however, natural rights are in some cases necessarily put under limitations, or altogether taken from individuals,—are partially or wholly relinquished by individuals,—for the welfare and good order of the societies of which they are members. Archbishop Manners Sutton had, no doubt, like every other man, a natural right to his own opinions on matters pertaining to religion, and to proclaim those opinions. But this right was limited in his case not only by obligations put upon him as a citizen, but also by official obligations put upon him as Primate of the Anglican Church. So long as he remained in his sacerdotal office he was bound in conscience to hold no opinions at variance with the doctrines of the Church of England, and bound even more stringently in conscience, and by social law, to refrain from publishing opinions calculated to discredit those doctrines. Had he relinquished his sacred office and orders, he would have recovered that much of his natural right to think and say anything he believed to be true, which was not denied to him by mere obligations of citizenship. On returning as far as possible to the position and quality of a layman, he would have recovered the right of a layman to limited freedom of speech on matters of religion,—i.e. so much of the natural right to free thought and utterance as in his time was allowed by the law of the land to every person of his nation. But, so long as he remained Archbishop, his natural right to be heterodox, and to teach heterodoxy, was wholly dormant.

In like manner, as a member of the University of Oxford (a society he had joined of his own free will; a society from which he did not wish to be withdrawn when, in December, 1810, his father threatened to withdraw him from it), Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley was bound to act as though he were a sincere son of the National Church, and to do nothing that was likely to put his orthodoxy in suspicion. Far from being under ‘no obligation to agree with all or any’ of the doctrines of the Church of England (as Mr. Rossetti avers), he was under clear, strong, and stringent obligations to agree with every one of those doctrines. It may have always been, and recent legislation has declared that it was (if not in Shelley’s time, at least in later time) unjust and impolitic in the law of the land to confine the Universities within limits, and hold them under restrictions, that rendered them at most nothing more than superb seminaries for the larger part of the nation, instead of seats of learning for the whole nation. In the present work, however, there is no need to ask whether those limits and restrictions were ever needful, or whether they were salutary after ceasing to be needful, or whether they should have been removed sooner than the recent year (1871) that saw the abolition of the University Religious Tests. It is enough for Shelley’s biographers to know that, when the poet matriculated at Oxford, no one was allowed to enter the University without solemnly declaring himself a member of the National Church, and subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles in demonstration of the truth of his declaration. Conformity to the doctrines and uses, of the Church was the condition of admittance to the University. It was also the condition under which every matriculated student continued to enjoy the privileges and partake of the benefits of the University. Every member of the University, besides being a member of the Church, was required to be a communicant of the Church,—taking the Sacrament at appointed times in the chapel of his college.

In respect to this last particular, it was usual for the academic ‘dons’ to have regard for the religious scruples of undergraduates, whose consciousness of evil living made them feel they would be guilty of presumption in coming to the Lord’s Table. On going to the Dean of his college, or his tutor, and making confession of his unfitness to communicate, the undergraduate of light manners and tender conscience received permission to be absent from the approaching celebration, on the understanding that he made a suitable contribution to the alms, gathered on the occasion for charitable uses. In most colleges it was understood that the undergraduate who thus avoided the communion should give a guinea to the offertory; a requirement to which the applicant for the dispensation could not object on conscientious grounds. Hence the usage which in course of time gave occasion for the statement that the dispensation was bought for a guinea, and the still more perverse statement that undergraduates took the Sacrament at the Universities in order to escape the exaction of twenty-one shillings. In her remarks on the defective discipline and morality of our national seminaries, in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft says, ‘What good can be expected from the youth who receives the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to avoid forfeiting a guinea, which he probably afterwards spends in some sensual manner?’ The offering, which Mary Wollstonecraft regarded as a guinea forfeit, was in its origin nothing else than the voluntary donation of the conscientious student who said to his tutor, ‘Though I am not worthy to be a partaker of the Holy Communion, I may be permitted to give to the poor.’

Of Shelley, indeed, it is not unfair to say that he was quite capable of taking the Sacrament in order to have a guinea the more for his pleasure. It is certain that, whilst openly deriding Christianity, and denying the existence of God, he could take the Sacrament, from a lighter motive than a desire to husband his pocket-money. The levity with which he could take the Sacrament, and afterwards allude to the act as a pretty piece of drollery, is (to use no stronger language) startlingly offensive. Whilst lodging in Poland Street, Oxford Street, immediately after his expulsion from University College, Oxford, he wrote to Hogg (24th April, 1811) of Harriett Westbrook and her elder sister:—

With the same levity, he took the Sacrament, seven or eight weeks later, in Sussex, after returning to Field Place. Writing to Hogg from Horsham on 16th June, 1811, he says, ‘I am going to take the sacrament. In spite of my melancholy reflections, the idea rather amuses and soothes me!!!’ This from the youthful zealot and martyr for Free Thought, who, according to some of his idolaters, was driven from Oxford because his singular earnestness and sincerity would not permit him to acquiesce hypocritically in a faith he disbelieved, or in usages he deemed superstitious!

Whilst the University was held within these religious limits, it was one of the prime duties of the academic authorities to take due care for the maintenance of the religious uniformity required by the law of the land. For the wisdom or impolicy of the law they were no more accountable than any judge is accountable for the justice or impolicy of the law he is appointed to administer. It was not for them to make reply or reason why, but to see that the law for uniformity of religious sentiment was duly respected by the gownsmen of every academic grade. Had the Master and Fellows of any college winked at any irregularities tending to defeat the law within their house, they would have been guilty of a heinous breach of trust. It is needful to insist on this obvious fact, because, through the influence of books and articles, written for the most part by gentlemen who were not educated at either Oxford or Cambridge, the notion has arisen that the Master and Fellows of Shelley’s college might with propriety have forborne to call him to account for publishing a work at Oxford to demonstrate the necessity of atheism; that they are chargeable with mischievous indiscretion, and a flagrant excess of duty, in taking notice of the tract he wrote and offered for sale at Oxford. Mr. Garnett is of opinion that by merely leaving Shelley alone ‘the Oxford authorities ... might have preserved an illustrious modern ornament of their University.’ To think with Mr. Garnett on this point is to forget that to preserve to the University a young gentleman who might one day write excellent poetry was not the first duty of those authorities. It is to forget that they were bound to have due care for the religious order and discipline demanded by the law of the land.

It is easier to discover laxity and indifference than the vexatious indiscretions of an excessive zeal in the measures employed by those authorities for the maintenance and preservation of religious uniformity. Acting too much rather than too little like men of the world, too little rather than too much like cloistered enthusiasts, they allowed their undergraduates as far as possible to go their own way, reading whatever they pleased, saying whatever they liked amongst themselves. When he remarked approvingly of the authorities of his college, ‘They are very civil to us here: they never interfere with us,’ Shelley described precisely the method of academic government, that, according to Mr. Garnett, would have preserved Shelley to the University. In respect to affairs of religion no less than other matters, the undergraduates were treated civilly; put as gentlemen upon their honour, taken as gentlemen at their word, allowed the largest possible liberty, interfered with as little as possible. At matriculation the undergraduate was subjected to no searching examination, for the discovery of the weak points of his orthodoxy. It was enough that he made the usual declaration and subscription with the simple honesty and good faith to be looked for in young Englishmen. After matriculation he was allowed an almost perilous freedom. He did not live, like the students of some religious seminaries, under constant surveillance and espionage. He had no fear that, during his absence from his rooms, strange eyes would inspect his private books and search his private papers. He was not harassed with divinity lectures, attended with questions nicely devised for entrapping him into revelations of theological unsoundness. Heterodoxy was not sniffed, scented, hunted down and punished in him and his companions, as heresy was detected and denounced in the colleges of the sixteenth century by spies and eavesdroppers. It was enough for the ‘dons’ of his particular college and the other authorities of the University, that he attended chapel with sufficient frequency, and took the Sacrament in accordance with the rules of ‘the house.’ Just as he was credited with sincerity at matriculation, when he subscribed the Articles, it was assumed that he attended chapel as a sincere member of the Church of England. If he asked for exemption from attendance at the next celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the request was not regarded as an indication of heterodoxy. Throughout his terms, in the absence of clear and unlooked-for evidence to the contrary, it was inferred from his fair observance of religious forms, that he was an honest Churchman. To what further point could laisser-faire indulgence be carried with safety? In this manner Shelley was treated in respect to matters of religion by the rulers of his college, who are said to have worried him with vexatious interference and insulting requirements. The boy of eighteen years was dealt with in this fashion. Yet we are told that all would have gone well with him at Oxford, had the Master and Fellows of the University only left him alone.

Because religious uniformity was maintained with the least possible interference with the liberty of individuals, it would be a mistake to imagine it was not maintained effectually. Of late the fashion has arisen to speak of the religious forms, that were used for the preservation of this uniformity, as vain and idle forms. A moment’s consideration will satisfy the fair and judicial reader that this fashion is an unjust one. Surely the forms were not vain and idle, that excluded from the Universities the young men of our non-conforming families; that yearly drove to other and inferior seminaries some three or four hundred young men of our fairly prosperous families, who, but for those forms, would have sought their higher education at Oxford and Cambridge. To assume that those forms were less influential within the Universities than in families having no connection with the Established Church, is to assume that English Dissenters surpassed English Churchmen greatly in truthfulness.

Doubtless the Oxonians of Georgian England comprised a small percentage of undergraduates who were extreme free-thinkers, and a more considerable percentage of young men, who, after subscribing the Articles in levity, and with an imperfect knowledge of their contents, passed their academic terms in frivolity and dissoluteness. But it cannot be doubted that the religious requirements and observances of the University operated as an efficacious discipline on the majority of the students. The same requirements and observances were also influential on every undergraduate, whatever his secret sentiments and his manner of living, in reminding him that the University was a school for members of the Church of England and for no other persons, that as a member of the University he was bound to live in apparent conformity to the National Church, and that he would forfeit his right to remain in the University by repudiating the doctrines of the Church. In Shelley’s academic time, every undergraduate knew that by publishing a work to discredit the fundamental doctrines of Christianity he would render himself liable to banishment from the University, and that the authorities of his college would be constrained by their official obligations to take prompt action for his punishment, and in case he persisted in his flagrant heterodoxy to expel him. It is certain that Shelley’s view of his academic obligations and responsibilities differed widely from Mr. Rossetti’s erroneous view of them. That he published The Necessity of Atheism anonymously, that he made a secret of his authorship of the work, that he declined to answer ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to the inquiry whether he wrote the tract, are sufficient testimony that he was alive to the nature and consequences of the offence of which he had been guilty. Evidence under Shelley’s own hand has already been produced that, instead of imagining himself at liberty to hold and expound any opinions he pleased, he was well aware that, as a member of the University, he was precluded from publishing certain opinions. On 2nd March, 1811, at the very moment of publishing The Necessity of Atheism, he wrote from University College, to Leigh Hunt: ‘On account of the responsibility to which my residence in this University subjects me, I, of course, dare not publicly avow all that I think.’ The writer of these words was better informed than most of his biographers respecting the obligations of an Oxford undergraduate.

Had he been so remarkably out-spoken and truth-loving, as Lady Shelley declares him to have been, Shelley would not have entered Oxford with a falsehood on his lips, by a solemn declaration that he believed what he disbelieved. Though he believed in the existence of God till the later part of the Christmas vacation (1810-11), he had ceased to believe in the divinity of Christ before he went to Oxford. At the time of his matriculation he was not a Christian; yet he went before the authorities of University College and of the University, and declared himself a believer in Christianity, and an honest member of the Church of England. How are we to account for the conduct of this singularly out-spoken and truth-loving Shelley in stating thus deliberately and solemnly what he knew was untrue?

It may be said that other young men in 1810 told the same untruths for their convenience and advantage. Doubtless, a few other young men were guilty of the same untruths. But no one has ventured to extol them for singular candour, veracity, and moral courage. How came the singularly out-spoken and truth-loving Shelley to utter the solemn falsehoods? Had he been so out-spoken and truth-loving, surely he would have said, ‘I will not go to Oxford, because I can only enter the University by means of enormous untruths.’ In the year of his matriculation every English county had young men, every considerable English town had young men, who would gladly have gone to Oxford and Cambridge for the advantages of University education, could they have done so without falsehood;—young men who entered on the battle of life with inferior culture and at serious disadvantages, because to get admittance to the Universities it would be necessary for them to be untruthful. No one has ever thought of commending these young men for any peculiar elevation of character, because they refrained from telling a lie and entering on a course of hypocrisy, that would in some considerable respects have been beneficial to them. They deserved no such commendation; for their conduct merely proved they were not wanting in the ordinary truthfulness and honesty, which parliament assumed ordinary Englishmen to possess, as a matter of course, when it was determined to exclude Non-conformists from the Universities. How came the singularly out-spoken and truth-loving Shelley to be so much less than ordinarily truthful in this business?

It cannot be pleaded in his excuse, as it can be pleaded in behalf of the many youngsters who subscribed the Articles with commonplace carelessness, that he had not given much consideration to the Articles and Christian evidences; that he took it for granted they were all right; that, though he may have been wrong to trust in so serious a business to vague and general impressions, he did not know the Articles comprised tenets from which he differed. It cannot be urged in palliation of his falseness that by declining to go to one of the Universities he would have thrown away his only or his best chance of rising to a position of dignity and comfort. Nor can it be suggested that, knowing his father wished him to go to the University, and to distinguish himself there, so dutiful and loving a son did not like to disappoint his sire’s paternal ambition. Shelley went to Oxford merely to please himself; and, in order to have the pleasure of living at Oxford with congenial companions, he entered the University under cover of falsehood, declaring he was a Christian when he knew he was not a Christian. He entered Oxford under cover of this falsehood, well knowing that to a man of his opinions the usual residence at Oxford would be a course of hypocrisy. Other young men (though, unless I err, not many young men) have done likewise. But it would be absurd to commend them for being especially out-spoken and truth-loving.

During the Michaelmas term of 1810, Shelley amused himself by luring persons, whom he knew only by name and reputation, into corresponding with him on religious questions, just as in former time he had drawn strangers into controversy on questions of natural science. Addressing these people under a false name and address, he caused them to imagine they were replying to the letters of a person, troubled with doubts and honestly desirous of information and guidance for the solution of the difficulties. To account for the secresy and misrepresentations, with which Shelley approached the individuals he thus lured into religious controversy, it is recorded in Hogg’s Life that, whilst at Eton, the youthful disputant about gases was threatened by an angry chemist with exposure to Dr. Keate, who would not fail to whip him into a healthier state of mind. On being thus reminded how unfavourable the discipline of his school was to equally frank and free inquiry, the schoolboy adopted a course that, without affecting the freedom of his inquiries, would guard him from some of the consequences of perilous frankness. An anonymous letter-writer at Eton to save his skin, Shelley was an anonymous letter-writer at Oxford to save his credit for religious conformity with the ‘dons.’ Instead of using only one nom-de-plume in these affairs of deceitful correspondence, Shelley employed several aliases for his more effectual concealment; and whilst using different names he misdescribed himself in various ways to the persons with whom he held intercourse through the post.

Whilst some of his correspondents were given to understand that he was a sceptical layman, others were led to imagine him a sceptic in holy orders. The prelates and other learned divines who answered his letters answered them under misconceptions, arising chiefly or altogether from his misstatements. At least on one occasion he signed with a woman’s name, that of course accorded with the tenor, tone, and handwriting of the epistle to which it was appended. The bishop, whom the poet thus lured in controversy (vide Medwin’s Life, I. p. 119), was under the impression that his correspondent was a gentlewoman. Referring to the day he passed with his cousin at Oxford in Lent term, 1811, Medwin remarks:—