Medwin remembers him as a shy, sensitive, lonely boy, walking up and down in the sun, aloof from the boisterous sports of his schoolmates.

At the age of thirteen he was sent to Eton. He remained there three years, and, during that time, gave signs of that love of freedom which always characterized him, by forming a conspiracy against the fagging system. According to Leigh Hunt, this was so far successful as to procure immunity for himself, at least, from oppression. He alludes to it, and to the earliest promptings of his literary ambition, in the dedication to "The Revolt of Islam." That he even now dreamed of achieving fame as an author is evident from his having already written two romances, "St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian," and "Zastrozzi." He also gave an early proof of a certain rashness and eagerness of temperament which he never wholly conquered, by publishing these immaturities. Nothing is remembered of them now, but that they were prodigal of melodramatic blue-fire. He was in his fifteenth year when they were written. This was in 1809, and in the same year he became acquainted with his first love, his cousin, Miss Harriet Grove, who contributed some chapters to "Zastrozzi."

At Sion House, his favorite books were Mrs. Radcliffe's novels and some others of the Minerva Press School, especially one called "Zofloya the Moor." At Eton he became a good Latin scholar,

and a tolerable Greek one. Here began his love of Plato and of boating, the one destined to influence his whole life as an author and a man, and the other to cause his untimely death.

From Eton, he was removed, at the age of sixteen, (in October, 1810,) to University College, Oxford. Here his radical opinions on politics, society, and religion seem to have become more firmly rooted. He could not reconcile for himself the discordance between theory and practice, and somewhat too impatiently rejected as false whatever was necessarily inadequate from the imperfect nature of man. But in all the intellectual vagaries of Shelley's youth, we cannot but recognize a rare sincerity and disinterestedness. If he insisted that other men should reconcile the theoretic with the practical, he did not shrink from it himself. This is illustrated by an anecdote told of him by Hunt. No date is given, but it may be referred probably enough to the latter part of his Oxford life.

"Shelley was present at a ball where he was a person of some importance. Numerous village ladies were there, old and young; and none of the passions were absent that are accustomed to glance in the eyes, and gossip in the tongues, of similar gatherings together of talk and dress. In the front were seated the rank and fashion of the place. The virtues diminished as the seats went backward; and at the back of all, unspoken to,

but not unheeded, sat blushing a damsel who had been seduced. It is not stated by whom, probably by some well-dressed gentleman in the room, who thought himself entitled, nevertheless, to the conversation of the most flourishing ladies present, and who naturally thought so because he had it. That sort of thing happens every day. It was expected that the young squire would take out one of these ladies to dance. What is the consternation when they see him making his way to the back benches, and handing forth, with an air of consolation and tenderness, the object of all the virtuous scorn of the room! the person whom that other gentleman, wrong as he had been to her, and "wicked" as the ladies might have allowed him to be toward the fair sex in general, would have shrunk from touching!

While at Oxford he seems to have had some dreams of combining a life of politics with that of literature, as would appear by the following letter to Leigh Hunt, then editor of the "Examiner."

แ

"UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD, March 2, 1811. SIR,-Permit me, although a stranger, to offer my sincerest congratulations on the occasion of that triumph so highly to be prized by men of liberality; permit me also to submit to your consideration, as to one of the most fearless enlighteners of the public mind at the present time, a scheme of mutual safety and mutual indemnification for men of public spirit and principle, which, if carried into effect, would evidently be

productive of incalculable advantages; of the scheme the inclosed is an address to the public, the proposal for a meeting, and which shall be modified according to your judgment, if you will do me the honour to consider the point. The ultimate intention of my aim is to induce a meeting of such enlightened unprejudiced members of the community, whose independent principles expose them to evils which might thus become alleviated, and to form a methodical society which should be organized so as to resist that coalition of the enemies of liberty which at present renders any expression of opinion on matters of policy dangerous to individuals. It has been for the want of societies of this nature that corruption has attained the height at which we now behold it, nor can any of us bear in mind the very great influence which some years since was gained by ( ? ), without considering that a society of equal extent might establish rational liberty on as firm a basis as that which would have supported the visionary schemes of a completely equalized community. Although perfectly unacquainted (privately) with you, I address you as a common friend of Liberty, thinking that in cases of this urgency and importance, that etiquette ought not to stand in the way of usefulMy father is in Parliament, and on attaining 21, I shall, in all probability, fill his vacant seat. account of the responsibility to which my residence at this University subjects me, I of course dare not publicly to avow all that I think, but the time will come when I hope that my every endeavour, inefficient as they may be, will be directed to the advancement of liberty.

ness.

"I remain, Sir, your most

"P. B. SHELLEY."

On

During his University life, his favourite amusements were chemistry, microscopic investigations, and boating. He also went through the usual drill in logic, but with some rather unusual and uncomfortable results. To a youth of Shelley's impetuous temperament, resolved to subject every custom, prejudice, or idea, which he found concreted in practice, to the ideal tests of abstract truth and justice, the syllogism was a weapon which he was quite as likely to seize by the blade as the handle. Taking for his premises all the vulgar notions of God's attributes that he could lay hold of, he wrote and published in conjunction with a college friend, Mr. Hogg, an anonymous pamphlet to demonstrate the non-existence of any deity at all. He had already rendered himself somewhat obnoxious by printing a volume of verses under the title of "The Posthumous Works of Mrs. Margaret Nicholson," who, it will be remembered, was the poor insane woman that attempted the life of George III. The name of his new indiscretion was the "Necessity of Atheism." The government of his college were not slow in constructing a syllogism quite as unanswerable as his own, to this effect. The society of an avowed atheist cannot but be injurious to the morals of the young gentlemen of this college: but P. B. Shelley has avowed himself an atheist : then it is fit that he be expelled. And expelled he accordingly was. Perhaps a milder mode of