any man, yet I cannot quite agree with Mr. Swinburne, who says: "His glorious courage, his excellent contempt for things contemptible, and hatred of hateful men, are enough in themselves to embalm and endear his memory in the eyes of all who are worthy to pass judgment on him.”

Goethe, perhaps, may resolve the discord for us. "Every extraordinary man," he says, "has a certain mission which he is called upon to accomplish. When he has fulfilled it, he is no longer needed upon earth in the same form, and Providence uses him for something else. . . . Mozart died in his thirty-sixth year, Raphael at the same age, Byron only a little older. But all of these had perfectly fulfilled their missions, and it was time for them to depart, that other people might have something to do."

CHAPTER X.

SHELLEY.

"I AM a lover of men, a democrat, and an atheist." Such is the translation of a Greek verse * inscribed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in the tourist's book at Chamounix beneath certain pious reflections by a former traveller on the impossibility of atheism amid the grandeur of Alpine scenery. It was one of those defiances that Shelley was for ever hurling at the idolatry of form.

We have considered ere this the question of form with regard to poetic and other artistic productions, and I then shrank from more than just touching on the subject in its connection with life—with our beliefs and actions. We now find ourselves again face to face with this veiled mystery.

I think we may safely allow that form, whether in art, religion, or in anything else, is in itself a nonentity: that, though form is necessary as a co-efficient of

* Εἰμὶ φιλάνθρωπος δημοκρατικός τ' ἄθεός τε.

material existence, being, as Dante profoundly intimates, to material things what the soul is to the body, it has no existence or reality in itself; that it is as incapable of development by itself in a true living shape (I do not say as a sham and a phantom) as the plant is incapable of development from the seed without that mysterious presence which we call-even in the vegetable world—life.

When our beliefs have developed a living form, that form is true and of inestimable use to us. Indeed, we could not live in our present state without such forms. But to expect others to develop exactly the same forms, even from similar germs of belief, is as ridiculous as to expect identical growths from similar seeds in different soils and under different skies and influences. These may seem platitudes, and are allowed as theories by most of us; but when it comes to applying them in our judgments of others, we are apt to be misled by innumerable prejudices, and to draw a line beyond which our charity may not pass.

I cannot but think that we should place no limits whatever to our charity in such matters, when merely form is in question; no, not if a man should, as Shelley, utterly cast aside all form in his religious belief, and prefer to call himself an atheist, rejecting at once the popular idea and the popular name of God. In us such an act might be a fearful crime, but how can we judge of it in him? And whatever

judgment may be passed on his rejection of formal belief, it cannot be denied that at the present day many of the noblest-minded and most Christian, even I may say the most orthodox, of Englishmen have learnt to understand and appreciate the character (I do not mean merely the poetic faculties) of Shelley, and to look back with shame and indignation on the time when that howl of rabid Pharisaical bigotry poured its anathemas on the head of one who -though he erred through excess of zeal, and though his life, like David's, was not without its social crime -was in the essential of Christian spirit greatly the superior of his persecutors.

I shall first very briefly touch on the main facts of his life; then on his personal character; and then consider his poems, especially one or two of the most important.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on August 4, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex. The family was of considerable antiquity and wealth, and the · elder branch had possessed a baronetcy as far back as 1611. The younger branch received a similar honour in 1806, when Shelley's grandfather was made a baronet. In 1815 his father, Sir Timothy, inherited the title, which never descended to the son, but passed on to the grandson, the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley. Of the poet's school-days at Sion House, Brentford, we know little. From what his cousin Medwin tells

us, and from what the poet himself says in his dedication to the "Revolt of Islam," it seems that he was at that time of a delicate and sensitive character both in mind and body, shrinking alike from the rude sports and rude companionship of his schoolfellows, and even then had that intense abhorrence from anything that approached coarseness in word or deed, which formed one of the chief traits of his after character. His face was, we are told, one of "exceeding sweetness and innocence"-qualities which we can recognize in his later portrait.

From Sion House Shelley went to Eton, where his mind seems to have first assumed that defiant attitude against constituted authority which brought about all the trials of his life. But though he neglected the ordinary course of studies, and resisted what he considered the tyranny of school discipline, he was far from idle. Wild and weird romances seem at this time to have had a special attraction for him, and (not to mention such laborious works as a translation of Pliny) he wrote a novel, "Zastrozzi," which had a certain sale. This, however, was a period of receptivity rather than of originality, and we must naturally judge the man by his more mature productions. He was, to use his own words, forging the arms and armour, which as yet he could not wear or wield. Speaking of these days, he says