failed in its duty had it waived such altogether; and here most unbiassed persons will agree, whether, intellectually, their sympathies be with Shelley or with his judges.

On both sides there was great heat; otherwise the issue would have been different. Had the undergraduates been given a week, or even a few days, to consider their position, some compromise would indubitably have been arrived at. That the council regretted having dispensed such summary justice is evident from the fact that at the last moment the delinquents were informed they need not actually leave on the morrow of their sentence-information which fell on cars stubborn through scornful wrath. Probably, even, if an appeal had been made, the council's decision would have been negatived so far as concerned the sentence of expulsion. It is useless to speculate on what did not happen, yet one cannot but wonder how very different Shelley's life might have been had he remained at Oxford for the usual period. He would almost certainly not have married Harriet Westbrook, an event which was the beginning of much sorrow and suffering, transitory happiness, and intransient pain-one which also ushered in years of splendid, and in some ways of unparalleled, achievement in literature.

On the morning of March 26th, after a gloomy breakfast, relieved in part, no doubt, by Hogg's unflagging good spirits, the two "martyrs" (as it was a consolation to them to consider themselves) departed by coach for London. That evening they put up for the night at a coffee-house near Piccadilly, and ultimately slept the

divine sleep of youth whereof no council could defraud them.

With this incident the record of Shelley's boyhood and youth terminates: henceforth he is to be considered as having entered upon the troublous state of manhood. I have dwelt at some length upon these early years of the great poet, for they are full of interest and significance for all students of his life and work. In the case of many men of letters the biographer could dismiss the years of adolescence in a chapter, and would even do well sometimes to content himself with a few introductory passages; but there are certain authors whose lives require to be considered from childhood, whose early formative experiences it would be unwise. not to recount with as ample detail as practicable.

It was a great sorrow to Shelley to leave Oxford. Although not in sympathy with its institutions, nor, as already stated, appreciative of certain aspects of its mental and spiritual life, he loved it for its beauty, its 'natural environment, its facilities for culture, its easy possibilities of seclusion. The brief period he spent in the ancient city was one of the happiest seasons in a life that was ever too emotional and high-strung to withstand the discords and perpetual jars which beset even mortals whom the stars of fortune have marked out as children of eternity.

CHAPTER III.

HE age of eighteen and a half years is an early

TH

period at which to withstand assaults against both one's dignity and one's heart. In his expulsion from Oxford, Shelley's pride was sorely wounded, though there was something soothing to him in the thought that he had endured disgrace in a righteous cause. What was a more keenly felt blow was the final upbreak of the definite or understood engagement between himself and his pretty cousin, Harriet Grove. In his desire to emancipate her (Shelley was always desirous of emancipating somebody, and would probably prove an into!erable nuisance among either the saints or the damned of the "Paradiso" or the "Inferno" of the orthodox) from the fetters of conventionality and an obsolete faith, the young enthusiast not only alarmed Miss Grove herself, but also her worthy parents. The result was the conclusion of the hopes which both or either entertained of the closer union of marriage. Shelley was greatly affected by this blow to his intentions, but his sufferings were transient. Some of his admirers would have it that he endured a lifelong hurt from this early mischance, but without the slightest basis for their senti

mental belief. Nine out of ten lads fall in love ere they emerge from their teens, some much more passionately than Shelley did at any time of his life. When Shelley loved, his affections centred on two individuals—the person whom he regarded with the bodily eye, and the glorified or idealized "double" who dominated his imagination-and as a rule the passion of his nature expended itself upon the "double." Unlike Keats, he had no cause to dread the approach of Love: he had no premonition of consuming fires which would waste and destroy if they were not quenched. He would gladly have married his cousin, but when the union was tabooed he sorrowed, sulked, pulled himself together had one or two slight relapses, and then thought about it seriously no more. It was not long after "the crush ing blow" that he was taken by the pretty face of another Harriet, in the autumn succeeding his marriage with whom Miss Grove was happily joined in matrimony to a wealthy squire, who, if not so young and handsome as "Bysshe," was "a very tolerable gentleman," and held no obnoxious Radical opinions.

The reader will remember that Shelley and Hogg spent the night of their arrival in London at a coffeehouse near Piccadilly. Before they went to bed they made a call on the Groves, and spent a very dull evening; thereafter, about two in the morning, they called upon the naturally astonished Medwin. Next morning the search for lodgings was commenced, and rooms were at last found in Poland Street. Here the two friends worked, read, slept, and were moderately happy. But Bysshe suddenly discovered that parental was no more

to be dared with impunity than collegiate authority. To his proposal to return to Field Place, and bring with him his companion in misfortune, he was informed by his father that his reception into the family circle again depended entirely on his agreeing to dissociate himself from Hogg, and even cease all correspondence with him. Hogg at this time came in for the greater blame, with some reason perhaps, owing to his superiority in age. Percy indignantly declined to agree to what he considered would be an act of gross ingratitude and disloyalty, and the consequence was that his irate father told him to provide for himself. Shelley therefore found himself on his. own resources, and if it had not been for the kindness of friends, including his unselfish young sisters and their schoolmate, Harriet Westbrook, he would have fared ill indeed for a time.

A great deal of abuse has been lavished upon Mr. Timothy Shelley, afterwards Sir Timothy, for his socalled rigour to his son. From all accounts it is easy to gather that Shelley's father was a kindly-natured, choleric English gentleman, a country squire, and with his full share of the prejudices and narrow views which country gentry are commonly supposed to display. If fate had dealt somewhat unkindly with Percy Bysshe Shelley in making him the child of an unsympathising. father, it was no less disagreeable to Mr. Timothy in giving him a poet and an enthusiast for his son and heir. The worthy squire did not understand or care anything about humanity and its rights. What was the use of a private individual making himself miserable and a nuisance to quiet folk when there were the Board