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rubbed it fiercely with his hands or passed his fingers quickly through his locks unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. . . . 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 characterises the best works and chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls) of the great masters of Florence and Rome."

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The appearance of his room was not less striking. Books, boots, papers, shoes, philosophical instruments, clothes, pistols, linen, crockery, ammunition, and phials innumerable, with money, stockings, prints, crucibles, bags, and boxes were scattered on the floor and in every place; as if the young chemist, in order to analyse the mystery of creation, had endeavored first to reconstruct the primeval chaos. The tables, and especially the carpet, were already stained with large spots of various hues, which frequently proclaimed the agency of fire. An electrical machine, an air-pump, the galvanic trough, a solar microscope, and large glass jars and receivers were conspicuous amidst the mass of matter. Upon the table by his side were some books lying open, several letters, a bundle of new pens, and a bottle of Japan ink that served as an inkstand; a piece of deal, lately part of the lid of a box, with many chips, and a handsome razor that had been used as a knife. There were bottles of sodawater, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage. Two piles of books supported the tongs, and these upheld a small glass retort above an argand lamp. I had not been seated many minutes before the liquor in the

vessel boiled over, adding fresh stains to the table and rising in fumes with a disagreeable odor. Shelley snatched the glass quickly, and, dashing it in pieces among the ashes of the grate, increased the unpleasant and penetrating effluvium."

The two friends had interminable talks about all sorts of subjects over the fire or during the long walks which they were accustomed to take every afternoon. The intellectual stimulus of Oxford in those days was not great; the university as a whole was sunk in indolence and pleasure-seeking. In the regular studies of the place Shelley took but little interest; but, as at Eton, he carried on his own development by reading those authors who commended themselves to his taste and by the discussion of those questions which he deemed most important. "The examination," says Hogg, "of a chapter of Locke's Essay Concerning the Human Understanding would induce him at any moment to quit every other pursuit. We read together Hume's Essays and some productions of Scotch metaphysicians of inferior ability. . . . We read also certain popular French works that treat of man, for the most part in a mixed method, metaphysically, morally, and politically. Hume's Essays were a favorite book with Shelley, and he was always ready to put forward in argument the doctrines they uphold." He was never weary of reading Plato (in translation in these earlier days), especially the Phaedo. "I never beheld eyes," continues Hogg, "that devoured the pages more voraciously than his; I am convinced that two-thirds of the period of day and night were often employed in reading. It is no exaggeration to affirm that out of the twenty-four hours he frequently read sixteen. At Oxford his diligence in this respect was exemplary, but it greatly increased afterwards." As to the impression which Shelley's moral character made upon Hogg, a few extracts will suffice. "As his love of

intellectual pursuits was vehement and the vigor of his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life most conspicuous." "His speculations were as wild as the experience of twenty-one years has shown them to be; but the zealous earnestness for the augmentation of knowledge and the glowing philanthropy and boundless benevolence that marked them and beamed forth in the whole deportment of that extraordinary boy are not less astonishing than they would have been if the whole of his glorious anticipations had been prophetic; for these high qualities, at least, I have never found a parallel." "I have had the happiness to associate with some of the best specimens of gentlemen; but, with all due deference for those admirable persons (may my candor and my preference be pardoned), I can affirm that Shelley was almost the only example I have yet found that was never wanting, even in the most minute particular, of the infinite and various. observances of pure, entire, and perfect gentility." "Shelley was actually offended, and indeed more indignant than would appear to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature, at a coarse and awkward jest, especially if it were immodest or uncleanly; in the latter case his anger was unbounded and his uneasiness preeminent." "I never could discern in him more than two fixed principles. The first was a strong, irrepressible love of liberty, of liberty in the abstract, and somewhat after the manner of ancient republics, without reference to the English constitution, respecting which he knew little and cared nothing, heeding it not at all. The second was an equally ardent love of toleration of all opinions, but more especially of religious opinions; of toleration complete, entire, universal, unlimited; and, as a deduction and corollary from which latter principle, he felt an intense abhorrence of persecution of every kind, public or private."

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At Oxford Shelley's literary activity was continued. November, 1810, a volume of poems by Shelley, The Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, Edited by John Fitzvictor, was published. These poems were written originally in a serious vein, but, on Hogg's suggestion, a burlesque atmosphere was thrown about them by their ascription to the above-mentioned female, a mad washerwoman who had attempted to stab the king. Early in the following year appeared a second romance of the same general character as Zastrozzi, written probably at Eton, and entitled St. Irvyne.

About the date of the publication of St. Irvyne, when Shelley was at home spending his Christmas vacation, he became involved in various troubles. The latitude of his religious opinions came to the notice of his father, who suspected Hogg of corrupting Percy. In consequence Mr. Shelley, who was in London at the time, addressed a letter to his son which made the latter imagine himself, with boyish exaggeration, a victim of intolerance and a martyr for the truth. He writes to Hogg:

My father wrote to me, and I am now surrounded, environed by dangers to which compared the devils who besieged St. Anthony were all inefficient. They attack me for my detestable principles. I am reckoned an outcast; yet I defy them and laugh at their ineffectual efforts. . . . My father wished to withdraw me from college; I would not consent to it. There lowers a terrific tempest; but I stand, as it were, on a pharos, and smile exultingly at the beating of the billows below.

In a subsequent letter he tells how he attempted to enlighten his father, who admitted his son's principles, but when they were applied, silenced the young reasoner "with an equine argument, in effect with these words: I believe because I believe.' "My mother imagines me to be in the highroad to Pandemonium; she fancies I want to make

a deistical coterie of all my little sisters. How laughable!" His cousin, Harriet Grove, to whom he had been engaged, also turned against him. Happiness, it seemed to the young enthusiast, had vanished forever — and all from the hateful spirit of intolerance.

Here I swear [he writes to Hogg on January 2], and as I break my oaths may Infinity, Eternity blast me, here I swear that I never will forgive intolerance. It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge; every moment shall be devoted to my object which I can spare; and let me hope that it will not be a blow which spends itself, and leaves the wretch at rest - but lasting, long revenge! I am convinced, too, that it is of great disservice to society that it encourages prejudices which strike at the root of the dearest, the tenderest of its ties. Oh how I wish I were the avenger! that it were mine to crush the demon, to hurl him to his native hell, never to rise again, and thus to establish forever perfect and universal toleration. I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in poetry. You shall see, you shall hear, how it has injured me. She is no longer mine! She abhors me as a skeptic, as what she was before. Oh, bigotry! When I pardon this last, this severest of thy persecutions, may heaven (if there be wrath in heaven) blast me !

Shelley's zeal for toleration showed itself also in matters beyond his own personal concerns. After his return to college, he gave practical testimony to his sympathy with the cause of free speech. He was one of the first subscribers to a fund in behalf of an Irish journalist whose attacks on the government had led to imprisonment. In connection with this matter he addressed a letter to Leigh Hunt, editor of The Examiner, the mouthpiece of English radicalism, suggesting the formation of an organization of the friends of liberty.

But Shelley's disposition towards revolutionary views had its most important immediate outcome in a matter which

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