ferred to Eton, and the effect of his sojourn | habitually given to waking dreams, from there. It probably arose from his detesta- which he was with great difficulty roused. tion of this miserable place-which seems When he did awake, "his eyes flashed, his to have been, in every possible point of lips quivered, his voice was tremulous with view, ill-chosen. emotion; a sort of ecstasy came over him, and he talked more like a spirit or an angel than a human being."-MEDWIN, vol. i., p. 34.

Shelley learned little at school-at least of school learning

-Nothing, that my tyrants knew or taught, Cared I to learn.'

From Brentford school Shelley went to Eton, where he passed two years. Of this period of his life there seems to be no authentic record.. His schoolfellows, with the exception of his reviewer in the Quarterly, appear to have preserved no recollections of him, and we are told that in after life he never mentioned them: that he had even forgotten their names. At Eton he appears to have acquired a taste for boating, which was one of his greatest enjoyments through life.

His school education ended in 1809, and We did not. The English lawyer's blue books are the numbers of the Law and in the winter of that year Medwin and he Equity Reports with which every term op- were a good deal together at the house of presses him, and which are becoming each Shelley's father. They wrote novels and day a more serious grievance. The states- poems, from which Medwin gives large exman's blue books are those desperate piles of tracts; among others, a poem called the lumber in which are contained the wisdom" Wandering Jew," which they sent to of Parliamentary committees and royal Campbell. He good-naturedly read it, commissioners, and of every person who and, with pardonable dishonesty, told them wishes to enlighten the nation on the thou- there were two good lines in it,— sand topics which are for ever investigated, and still remain as obscure as before. But the Brentford schoolboy's blue books are not the blue books of the statesman or the lawyer,

"Who does not," says our comic Plutarch, "know what blue books mean? But if there should be any one ignorant enough not to know what those dear dusky volumes, so designated from their covers, contain, be it known that they are or were to be bought for sixpence, and embodied stories of haunted castles, bandits, murderers, and other grim personages-a most exciting and interesting sort of food for boys' minds. Among those of a larger calibre was one which I have never seen since, but which I remember with a recouché delight. It was Peter Wilkins.' How much Shelley wished for a winged wife, and winged little cherubs of children!"-MEDWIN, vol. i., p. 29.

To these treasures were added the stores of the Brentford circulating library. Mrs. Radcliffe's romances and novels of the Rosa-Matilda school, among which Medwin mentions the name of one in which the devil was the hero-" Zofloya the Moor". were Shelley's great delight. Shelley believed in ghosts, and was known, once at least, to have walked in his sleep. He was

"It seemed as if an angel's sigh

Had breathed the plaintive symphony." These were the two lines which Campbell praised. If we sought to reverse his "Bad are the best," it is decision, and say, probable that the Captain might come down on us as he did on the Brentford schoolmaster, and prove that he had stolen them from Scott.

"He found a woman in the cave-
A solitary woman-

Who by the fire was spinning,
And singing as she span.
The thread the woman drew

Was finer than the silkworm's—

Was finer than the gossamer.

The song she sung was low and sweet;
And Thalaba knew not the words.
The thread she span it gleamed like gold
In the light of the odorous fire.

*

And round and round his right hand,
And round and round his left,
He wound the thread so fine."

to end made up. In one of Miss Edge-
worth's works the forgery of a deed is de-
tected by the over-zeal of a witness brought
up to prove the circumstances of its execu-
tion. He
says that he now is the only per-
son living who knows all that actually
passed at the time. His grey hairs tremble
with emotion as he seeks to confirm his tes-
timony by calling the attention of the court
to the fact, that under the seal was placed
a silver coin-that if the seal be broken,
the coin will be found. The seal is broken

the coin is found; but one of a later date than that of the supposed execution of the deed. Now, Mr. Medwin is as anxious as Miss Edgeworth's witness to prove these conversations. He takes especial care to tell you that he transcribes from his recollection; that he has never read the poem mis-spelling the witch's name, and Kehaor romance, as he calls it, since; and his ma's too, for that matter, prevents our entertaining the slightest doubt of the accuracy of his statement that he had never read the book, or could in this way have confused in his memory the incidents of one period with those of another. He has a thousand reasons to remember the thing; and yet what he has stated is not-cannot be the fact.

Break the seal--the coin is of a later date. "Kehama " was not published for years after the supposed conversation!

The only possible object of recording Shelley's early life is that of tracing the unusually early development of his powers; and the value of any part of the record is destroyed by proofs, such as this accident furnishes, that Medwin has composed his book from obscure recollections, in which time, place, and person are confused. For our own part, we think there is almost decisive evidence in Shelley's writings of his not having, at this period, even seen "Thalaba," with "the metrical beauty of which" he is said to have already" drenched" himThat Medwin should have forgotten the self. The earliest works of a boy almost passage, and substituted some general re- necessarily exhibit close imitations of whatcollection for what he had heard Shelley ever he most admires. Shelley at this repeat, is not surprising; but it is surpris- period wrote two novels, both very dull; ing that any one can place the slightest re- but in one of them are several poems, in liance on the record of conversations pre- which the cadences of the verse, and the served by a memory so little retentive of forms of language, recall Beattie's Hermit, anything worth remembering. We have, Scott's Ballads, and Monk Lewis's, but in however, to make another remark on the which there is not a single line or thought passage that we have just cited, which that for a moment brings to the mind the makes us utterly discard, for any purpose, poem which Medwin says he was then peranything whatever that is stated on no bet-petually repeating, and which we know, in ter authority than the kind of gossip of a few years after, so possessed his imaginawhich this very poor book is from beginning tion as to have furnished the key-note to

the versification of Queen Mab. This fact we think absolutely decisive of the question, particularly if it be considered in connexion with Medwin's exceeding carelessness in such statements, as proved by the instance of Kehama.

telligence that I never met with in any other coun-
tenance. 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 pro-
found religious veneration that characterizes the
best works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into these
they infused their whole souls) of the great mas-
ters of Florence and of Rome. I recognised the
very peculiar expression in these wonderful pro-
mingled with much sorrow, for it was after the
ductions long afterwards, and with a satisfaction
decease of him in whose countenance I had first
observed it.
This is a fine fellow, said

according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently genalmost feminine-of the purest red and white; tle and graceful. His complexion was delicate, yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the In 1810 Shelley was removed to Oxford. sun, having passed, as he said, the autumn in He entered University College. Of his shooting. His features, his whole face and partishort course there his friend Mr. Hogg has cularly his head, were unusually small, yet the fortunately given us a distinct record. His last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair account was published about twenty years he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands or passed was long and bushy. In the agony of declamation after Shelley's death, in the New Monthly his fingers quickly through his locks unconsciousMagazine; and while his magazine papers ly, so that it was singularly wild and rough. His have some of the faults of that kind of features were not symmetrical, the mouth perhaps writing, we think that with some little con-excepted-yet was the effect of the whole extremedensation they would form a very interest-ly powerful. They breathed enthusiasm and ining supplement to any future edition that may be published of Shelley's works. The acquaintanceship of Mr. Hogg and the poet commenced at their college commons, where they dined at the same table. It was Shelley's first appearance in the hall. His figure was slight; his aspect, even among young men, was remarkably youthful. He was thoughtful and absent in manner, and seemed to have no acquaintance with any one. Some accident led him and Mr. Hogg into conversation. Shelley praised the originality of the German writers. Hogg as-I to myself (we continue to transcribe from Mr. serted their want of nature. "What Hogg's account), but I could never bear his sociemodern literature will you compare with ty. I shall never be able to endure his voice. It them?" said Shelley, with a discordant What a pity it is?" scream that excoriated the ears of his opThe voice of the stranger was excruciatponent. The Italian was named. Shelley ing. "It was intolerably shrill, harsh, and waxed angry and argumentative. The dia- discordant; of the most cruel intension; it logue had little interest for any but the was perpetual and without any remission; disputants, who soon found themselves alone it excoriated the ears." In the evening in the hall. The servants now came in to Shelley went to a lecture on mineralogy, clear the tables. Hogg invited the stranger and returned to tea. He burst into the to continue the discussion at his rooms. room, threw down his cap, and stood shiHe eagerly assented. The dialogue, how-vering and chafing his hand over the fire. ever, did not continue; for when the young He had come away before the lecture was men became better acquainted, they ac- concluded. knowledged that they knew nothing whatever of either German or Italian; and Shelley said that the study of languages, ancient or modern, was but waste of time-learning the names of things instead of things themselves. Physical science, and especially chemistry, should rather be the objects of pursuit. Hogg began to feel his new friend something of a bore, and took to looking at the features and figure of the stranger.

"It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but yet he stooped so much that he seemed of low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made |

would kill me.

་

"What did the man talk about?" said Hogg. About stones! about stones!' he answered ; ' about stones, stones, stones! nothing but stones, and so drily! It was wonderfully tiresome; and stones are not interesting things in themselves." "

In the course of the evening Shelley dwelt on the advantages which the future generations of men may derive from the cultivation of science, and especially chemistry. He anticipated from the triumphs of science the

Leigh Hunt, speaking of Keats, says, "His head was a puzzle for the phrenologists, being remarkably small in the skull: a singularity which he had in common with Lord Byron and Mr. Shelley-none of whose hats I could get on."-HUNT'S Byron, &c. Vol. i., p. 406.

release of the labouring classes from the un-rious hues, proclaimed that the young ceasing toil now required to earn a mere chemist had been busy with his manipulasubsistence. We are now unable to deter- tions. Books lay open on a table-a bunmine in what part of the substances wedle of pens and a razor, that had been emconsume as food the nutritive property ex-ployed as a knife-soda-water, sugar, and ists; this Analysis may yet detect. The pieces of lemon were there, and, resting on cause which occasions the fertility of some a double pile of books, the tongs supported soils, and the hopeless sterility of others, a glass retort above an argand lamp. The is now unknown. The difference probably liquor boiled over-adding fresh stains to consists in something very slight. By chemi- the table, and rising in fumes with a most cal agency the philosopher may create a to- fiendish smell. Then followed some tricks tal change, and transmute an unfruitful with the galvanic battery. Hogg was made to region into one of exuberant plenty. Water work the machine till Shelley was filled with is, like air, composed of certain gases; why the fluid, and his long wild locks bristled not expect to be able, by some scientific and stood on end. process, to manufacture it, and then trans- Hogg passed the evening with him, and form the deserts of Africa into rich mea- during their short stay at Oxford they were dows? The generation of heat is unknown; very much together. Both were early but a time may come when we may commu- risers-both attended College Chapel in the nicate warmth to the coldest and most un- mornings; but they did not afterwards genial climate, with as much ease and cer- meet till about one o'clock in the aftertainty as we now vary the temperature of a noon, when Mr. Hogg generally went to sitting-room. What a mighty instrument Shelley's rooms. They dined in the Colwould electricity be!--what wonders has lege Hall, and passed their evenings together. not the galvanic-battery already effected! Hogg's studies were little interrupted by -and the balloon,-"why not despatch this arrangement. Shelley was fatigued aeronauts to cross Africa in every direction, with his morning's readings, and was geneand to survey the whole Peninsula in a few rally overcome with drowsiness. He used weeks? The shadow of the first balloon, to stretch on the rug before a large fire like which a vertical sun would project precisely a cat, exposing his little round head to such under it as it glided silently over that hitherto unhappy country, would virtually emancipate every slave, and would annihilate slavery for ever!"

They spoke of mathematics. Of mathematics, Shelley said he knew nothing. Of metaphysics" aye, metaphysics-the analysis of mind-not of mere matter ;" and he rose from his chair and declaimed with animation of a future state, and a former state. He heard of Plato's doctrine of preexistence and suspended consciousness. But the candles were now burned out-the fire had sunk into ashes-and he started to find how long into the night he and his companion had sat. They arranged to meet the next day at Shelley's rooms; and at parting Mr. Hogg, for the first time, heard the name of the stranger, who had interested him so much.

a heat, that his friend wondered how he could bear it. Hogg tried often to interpose some shelter, but in vain; for he would turn round in his sleep, and roll himself to the warmest place. In the midst of the most earnest conversation he would suddenly take to his rug, sleep for several hours then, towards ten o'clock, start up, rub his eyes with violence, and passing his fingers through the tangles of his long wild hair, enter into argument, recite verses, his own or others', with an energy that was quite painful. Hogg read, while Shelley was thus hid in his vacant interlunar cave, and even when he was quite awake the studies of the friends were often separately pursued. They, however, read many books together, and their walks in the open air were frequent. Shelley's preparation for a walk was often ominous. He would take Hogg returned the visit the next day. out with him a pair of duelling-pistols, and The same contradictions that Shelley's amuse himself with firing at marks. dress exhibited struck him in the appear- friend contrived to disappoint this dangerance of his rooms and furniture. Every-ous pastime, by often taking care that powthing new and of an expensive kind, but der or flints should be left behind. When thrown about in indescribable confusion. they came to a stream or pond, Shelley Books, boots, philosophical instruments, loved to linger, making paper boats, and pistols, money, clothes, were scattered here watching their course upon the water. and there. The carpet, with stains of va- of his admirers tells of his having hazarded,

His

One

in the absence of any less valuable scrap of peony, but his botanical knowledge was more paper, a fifty-pound-note in this amuse-limited than that of the least skilful and common ment, but Hogg treats this as a mythic le- observers-for he was neglectful of flowers. He gend. Fable, however, soon passes into was incapable of apprehending the delicate dishistory, and Medwin tells us of a ten-pound-beautiful classification of modern botanists."** note thus ventured-reducing the amount of the note to increase, we suppose, the probability of the incident.

tinctions of structure which form the basis of the " I

are divided."

Shelley must have known something more of these things a few years after, for Mrs. Shelley tells us

never was able," adds Mr. Hogg, "to impart even a glimpse of the merits of Ray or Linnæus, or to encourage a hope that he would ever be able to Hogg gives an account of one of their see the visible analogies that constitute the marked, evenings, in which the conversation turned yet mutually approaching genera, into which the on the advantages to society of the Univer-productions of nature, and especially vegetables, sities, and the old foundations for education. Even in the very lowest estimate of these advantages, they secured to the student an exemption from the interruption of secular cares. The regularity of academical hours cut off that dissipation of time and thought which prevails when the daily course is pre-arranged. We gather, too, that they agreed in thinking that the salutary attendance in chapel imposed duties conducive to habits of industry :

"It was requisite not merely to rise, but to leave our rooms, to appear in public, and to remain long enough to destroy the disposition to indolence, which might still linger, if we were permitted to remain by the fireside."

This was no doubt a low view of a very important subject; but there must have been great faults in the actual government of the College to which these young men belonged, to have rendered it necessary to deprive them of advantages which they were disposed to view in such a favourable aspect. "It would be a cruel thing," said Shelley; "to be compelled to quit our calm and agreeable retreat ;" and he then expressed regret that the period of college residence was limited to four years, and those years interrupted and broken by frequent vacations. The seclusion of college life was felt by him as its great charm: "and then," said he, "the OAK-the OAK is such a blessing!" The oak, in the dialect of Oxford, is the outer door, against which the bore may knock and kick, and call in vain.

"Who invented the oak?”—“ Who but the monks, the inventors of the science of living in chambers?" It is a sad thing to think that poor Shelley's quiet was so soon interrupted; but before we record this, we must first state, from Mr. Hogg's account, something of their country excursions. Shelley was entirely unobservant of flow.

ers:

"He was able, like the many, to distinguish a violet from a sunflower, and a cauliflower from a

"That he was unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural objects; he with the history and the habits of every producknew every plant by its name, and was familiar tion of the earth.”

Hogg's record of Shelley's college life, and their studious evenings, brings back to us Cowley's lines

"Say, for ye saw us, ye immortal lights,

How oft, unwearied, have we spent the nights,
Till the Ledæan stars, so famed for love,
Wonder'd at us from above!

We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poetry-
Arts which I loved-for they, my friend, were
thine."t

Shelley was a singularly pure-hearted, with intense affection; and it was not withsingle-minded man. Of home he thought letter from his mother or his sisters. Still, out manifest delight that he received a we can easily learn that at home there was some feeling of disappointment about the student. His removal from Eton young his conduct there did not satisfy either the was earlier than usual; and it is plain that whose dreams for him were of political adauthorities of the place or his fatherdent, read at all times-at table, in bed, vancement. Shelley, while an Oxford stuand while walking. He read not only in crowded thoroughfares of London. Out of the streets of Oxford, but in the most the twenty-four hours he frequently read

sixteen.