its energies in seeking to avoid actions which are only crimes of convention. It is because there is so great a multitude of artificial vices, that there are so few real virtues. Those feelings alone which are benevolent or malevolent are essentially good or bad. The circumstance of which I speak was introduced, however, merely to accustom men to that charity and toleration, which the exhibition of a practice widely differing from their own has a tendency to promote.* Nothing, indeed, can be more mischievous than many actions innocent in themselves, which might bring down upon individuals the bigoted contempt and rage of the multitude."

The Publishers of the present edition of Mr. Shel-] universal of all feelings, and have endeavored to ley's Poetical Works think it necessary to state, that strengthen the moral sense, by forbidding it to waste the first Poem in the collection, "THE REVOLT OF ISLAM," did not originally bear that title: it appeared under the name of " LAON AND CYTHNA; or the Revolution of the Golden City: a Vision of the Nineteenth Century." But, with the exception of this change of name,-into the reasons that led to which it is now unnecessary to inquire—some inconsiderable verbal corrections, and the omission of the following paragraph and note in the preface, the poem is in all respects the same as when first given to the public. "In the personal conduct of my hero and heroine, there is one circumstance which was intended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. It was my object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions on which established institutions depend. I have appealed, therefore, to the most circumstance have no persona. reference to the writer.

⚫ The sentiments connected with and characteristic of this

240

Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

FIELD-PLACE, in the county of Sussex, was the spot in his second term, as he refused to retract any of where Percy Bysshe Shelley first saw the light. his opinions; and thereby incurred the markedHe was born on the 4th of August, 1792; and displeasure of his father. This expulsion arising was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart. as he believed conscientiously, from his avowal of of Castle-Goring. His family is an ancient one, what he thought to be true, did not deeply affect and a branch of it has become the representative him. His mind seems to have been wandering in of the house of the illustrious Sir Philip Sidney a maze of doubt at times between truth and error, of Penshurst. Despising honors which only rest ardently desirous of finding the truth, warm in upon the accidental circumstances of birth, Shel- its pursuit, but without a pole-star to guide him ley was proud of this connexion with an immortal in steering after it. In this state of things he met name. At the customary age, about thirteen, he with the Political Justice of Godwin, and read it was sent to Eton School, and before he had com- with eagerness and delight. What he had wanted pleted his fifteenth year, he published two novels, he had now found; he determined that justice the Rosicrucian and Zasterozzi. From Eton he should be his sole guide, and justice alone. He removed to University College, Oxford, to mature regarded not whether what he did was after the his studies, at the age of sixteen, an earlier period fashion of the world; he pursued the career he than is usual. At Oxford he was, according to had marked out with sincerity, and excited cen.. custom, imbued with the elements of logic; and sure for some of his actions and praise for others, he ventured, in contempt of the fiat of the Univer- bordering upon wonder, in proportion as they were sity, to apply them to the investigation of ques- singular, or as their motives could not be appretions which it is orthodox to take for granted. His ciated. His notions at the University tended to original and uncompromising spirit of inquiry atheism; and in a work which he published en could not reconcile the limited use of logical prin- titled "Queen Mab," it is evident that this doctrine ciples. He boldly tested, or attempted to test, had at one time a hold upon his mind. This was propositions which he imagined, the more they printed for private circulation only, and was pi were obscure, and the more claim they had upon rated by a knavish bookseller and given to the his credence, the greater was the necessity for ex- public, long after the writer had altered many of amining them. His spirit was an inquiring one, the opinions expressed in it, disclaimed it, and and he fearlessly sought after what he believed to lamented its having been printed. He spoke of be truth, before, it is probable, he had acquired all the commonly-received notions of God with conthe information necessary to guide him, from col- tempt; and hence the idea that he denied the belateral sources-a common error of headstrong ing of any superintending first cause. He was youth. This is the more likely to be the case, as not on this head sufficiently explicit. He seemed when tiine had matured his knowledge, he differed hopeless, in moments of low spirits, of there being. much on points upon which, in callow years and such a ruling power as he wished, yet he ever without an instructor, flung upon the world to clung to the idea of some "great spirit of intelform his own principles of action, guileless, and lectual beauty" being throughout all things. His vehement, he was wont to advocate strongly. Shel- life was inflexibly moral and benevolent. He acted ley possessed the bold quality of inquiring into up to the theory of his received doctrine of justhe reason of every thing, and of resisting what he tice; and, after all the censures that were cast could not reconcile to be right according to his upon him, who shall impugn the man who thus conscience. In some persons this has been de-acts and lives?

nominated a virtue, in others a sin-just as it Shelley married at an early age a Miss Harriet might happen to chime in with worldly custom or Westbrooke, a very beautiful girl, much younger received opinion. At school he formed a conspi- than himself, daughter of a coffee-house-keeper, racy for resistance to that most odious and de- retired from business. By this marriage he so ir testable custom of English seminaries, fagging, ritated his father, that he was entirely abandoned which pedagogues are bold enough to defend open- by him; but the lady's father allowed them 2001. ly at the present hour. per annum, and they resided some time in Edin. At Oxford he imprudently printed a dissertation burgh and then in Ireland. The match was a on the being of a God, which caused his expulsion Gretna-green one, and did not turn out happily,

By this connexion he had two children, the young. In short, seduction, which term could have no est of whom, born in 1815, is since dead. Con- meaning in a rational society, has now a most sistent with his own views of marriage and its tremendous one; the fictitious merit attached to institution, Shelley paid his addresses to another chastity has made that a forerunner to the most lady, Miss Godwin, with whom, in July, 1814, he terrible ruins, which in Malabar would be a pledge fled, accompanied by Miss Jane Claremont, her of honor and homage. If there is any enormous sister-in-law, to Uri, in Switzerland, from whence, and desolating crime of which I should shudder after a few days' residence, they suddenly quitted, to be accused, it is seduction. I need not say how suspecting they were watched by another lodger; I admire "Love," and little as a British public they departed for Paris on foot, and there found seems to appreciate its merit, in not permitting it that the person to whom they had confided a large to emerge from a first edition, it is with satisfac trunk of clothes, had absconded with them: this tion I find, that justice had conceded abroad what hastened their return to England. A child was bigotry has denied at home. I shall take the libthe fruit of this expedition. Shortly after they erty of sending you any little publication I may again quitted England, and went to Geneva, Como give to the world. Mrs. S. joins with myself in and Venice. In a few months they revisited Eng- hoping, if we come to London this winter, we may land, and took up their abode in Bath, from whence be favored with the personal friendship of one Shelley was suddenly called by the unexpected whose writings we have learnt to esteem. suicide of his wife, who destroyed herself on the 10th November, 1816. Her fate hung heavy on the mind of her husband, who felt deep self-re- A circumstance arose out of his first marriage proach that he had not selected a female of a higher which attracted a good deal of notice from the order of intellect, who could appreciate better the public. As we have already mentioned, there were feelings of one constituted as he was. Both were two children left, whom the Lord Chancellor Elentitled to compassion, and both were sufferers by don took away from their father by one of his own this unfortunate alliance. Shortly after the death arbitrary decrees, because the religious sentiments of his first wife, Shelley, at the solicitation of her of Shelley were avowedly heterodox. No immorfather, married Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin, ality of life, no breach of parental duty was at daughter of the celebrated authoress of the Rights tempted to be proved; it was sufficient that the of Woman; and went to reside at Great Marlow father did not give credit to religion as established in Buckinghamshire. That this second hymen by act of parliament, to cause the closest ties of was diametrically opposed to his own sentiments nature to be rent asunder, and the connexion of will be apparent from the following letter, address-father and child to be for ever broken. This desed to Sir James Lawrence, on the perusal of one potism of a law-officer has since been displayed in of that gentleman's works:

"Yours, very truly, PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY."

another case, where immorality of the parent was the alleged cause. Had the same law-officer, unhappily for England, continued to preside, no doubt the political sentiments of the parent would by and by furnish an excuse for such a monstrous tyranny over the rights of nature.

"Lymouth, Barnstaple, Devon, August 17, 1812. "SIR,-I feel peculiar satisfaction in seizing the opportunity which your politeness places in my power, of expressing to you personally (as I may say) a high acknowledgment of my sense of your Shelley for ever sought to make mankind and talents and principles, which, before I conceived things around him in harmony with a better state it possible that I should ever know you, I sincerely of moral existence. He was too young and inexentertained. Your "Empire of the Nairs," which perienced when he first acted upon this principle I read this spring, succeeded in making me a to perceive the obstacles which opposed the properfect convert to its doctrines. I then retained gress of his views, arising out of the usages and no doubts of the evils of marriage; Mrs. Wolstonecraft reasons too well for that; but I had been dull enough not to perceive the greatest argument against it, until developed in the "Nairs," viz. prostitution both legal and illegal.

customs which rule mankind, and which, from the nature of things, it takes a long time to overcome. Ardent in the pursuit of the good he sought, he was always ready to meet the consequences of his actions; and if any condemn them for their mis"I am a young man, not of age, and have been taken views, they ought to feel that charity should married a year to a woman younger than myself. forbid their arraigning motives, when such proofs Love seems inclined to stay in the prison, and my of sincerity were before them. The vermin who, only reason for putting him in chains, whilst con- under the specious title of "reviewers," seek in vinced of the unholiness of the act, was a know- England to crush every bud of genius that appears ledge, that in the present state of society, if love out of the pale of their own party, fell mercilessly is not thus villanously treated, she, who is most upon the works of Shelley. The beauty and proloved, will be treated worse by a misjudging world. fundity which none but the furious zealots of a