CHAPTER VII.

BETWEEN ETON AND OXFORD.

Literary Interests and Enterprise--A.M. Oxon. Letter--Shelley's Hunger for Publisher's Money--Winter 1809-10--Nightmare--_The Wandering Jew_--Medwin in Lincoln's Inn Fields--The Fragment of Ahasuerus--Its Influence on Byron and Shelley--Matriculation at Oxford--Shelley at the Bodleian--John Ballantyne and Co.--Shelley in Pall Mall--Stockdale's Scandalous Budget--_Victor and Cazire_--Their Original Poetry--Who was Cazire?--Felicia Dorothea Browne--Illumination of Young Ladies--Harriett Grove--The Groves and Shelleys in London--Shelley's Interest in Harriett Grove.

Having written a large portion of his first publication (_Zastrozzi; a Romance_) by 7th May, 1809, Shelley had little leisure for 'scientific studies' between that date and the Christmas holidays of 1810-11. The literary aspirant during those twenty months worked successfully (in some of the cases, simultaneously) on (1) _Zastrozzi_; (2) _The Nightmare_; (3) _Original Poetry of Victor and Cazire_; (4) _St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian_, his second published romance; (5) _The Wandering Jew_; (6) The Verses to be regarded as the First Sketches for _Queen Mab_; (7) The _Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson_; (8) The very careful analysis of Hume's _Essays_ used in the composition of _The Necessity of Atheism_, that resulted in his expulsion from University College, Oxford; (9) A novel, described in the letter of 18th December, 1810, to Stockdale, as 'principally constructed to convey metaphysical and political opinions by way of conversation,' and (10) a novel (never finished) that was designed to give the death-blow to intolerance. With so many literary irons in the fire, he cannot have spent many half-hours in playing with the scientific instruments and apparatus that figured so conspicuously in his college rooms. During the same period, he found time for journeys to and fro between Field Place and Oxford; at least one stay of several weeks in London; a good deal of miscellaneous reading; much sentimental and sceptical correspondence, by letter, with Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne; much correspondence of the same nature with Miss Harriett Grove; long walks with Medwin in St. Leonard's Forest; long walks with Hogg in the neighbourhood of Oxford; and some participation in the field-sports, seldom altogether neglected by country gentlemen.

Whether _Zastrozzi_ (published on or a little before 5th June, 1810) was written to the last lines at Eton, is uncertain. Bearing in mind every young author's impatience to see himself in print, and having regard to the natural consequences of this impatience in the excitable Shelley, I am disposed to think the book would have appeared sooner, had it been ready for the printers before the unruly Etonian left the public school. Time, doubtless, was wasted in the futile negotiation with the Messrs. Longman & Co. But the delay from this cause would scarcely account for the long postponement of the publication, if the author finished the MS. under Mr. Bethell's roof, and on receiving it back from the Longmans, sent it straight to Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson.

Whilst the external evidence that Shelley wrote the letter is too light for the scales of criticism, the internal evidence is conclusive that he was not the contributor of the 'A.M. Oxon's' epistle, in behalf of Lord Grenville's candidature for the Chancellorship. Medwin's assertion is idle in respect to the composition, whose style shows it was not, could not have been, written by the author of the puerile letters to the Messrs. Longman, Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson, and Stockdale,--the puerile prose of _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_,--and the scarcely less puerile prose of the letters and addresses written by the poet in Ireland. A comparison of the 'A.M. Oxon' letter of November 1809, with the numerous examples of Shelley's English prose, will satisfy the critical reader that Shelley did not, because he could not, write the epistle in behalf of Lord Grenville. The question is one of those questions where the evidence of style is conclusive. It is conceivable the 'A.M. Oxon' letter was well spoken of at Field Place, that it was written at Mr. Timothy Shelley's instance, that Medwin was told Shelley wrote it, that Shelley claimed the authorship of the letter. Establish all these points, produce a copy of the letter in Shelley's hand-writing; and the evidence of style would be none the less conclusive, that Shelley did not write the letter.

Towards the close of 1809, and throughout the earlier months of 1810, Shelley was 'at home,' writing briskly for fame, and with a keen appetite for 'publisher's money,' which Byron, at the outset of his literary career, was of opinion no nobleman or other gentleman of high degree could accept, without sullying his honour. In his nonage, the author of _Zastrozzi_ asked publishers for their money with a steadiness, that would probably have been less unwavering, had it been old Sir Bysshe's practice to tip his grandson bountifully. Not that the desire for payment was wholly due to the need of it. In taking wages for the work of his pen, he would have regarded them as no less honourable than convenient. The Etonian, whose friends seem to have thought, that he entertained them with his literary earnings, was no youth to feel shame in taking publisher's money, or to miss it for want of asking for it. On the contrary, at the outset of a literary career (that from the commercial point of view, was worse than absolutely profitless) he liked to be credited with winning what he never won, and could ask for payment, though he had only the faintest hope of getting it.

Throughout his time at Eton, Shelley saw much of Tom Medwin during vacations. During the winter of 1809-10, the cousin, who would soon go to Oxford, and the cousin, who would soon leave it for the army, were inseparable companions. During their long walks through the leafless glades of St. Leonard's Forest--in the clear frosty air and under the bright skies, that had a most exhilarating effect on their spirits--these two young men of common blood and kindred tastes discoursed with more enjoyment than discretion on the principles of poetry and romantic prose, of ancient science and modern culture. This was the winter, when they set to work on the production of a wild story (with a hideous witch for its principal character), that seems to have justified its title of _Nightmare_, before they ceased writing alternate chapters of the morbid tale, and threw themselves with greater enthusiasm into the much higher and more arduous enterprise of a grand 'metrical romance on the subject of the _Wandering Jew_,'--an enterprise in which the two cousins were encouraged and influenced (though not actuated from the commencement) by one of those accidents, which so often influence, and sometimes determine, the course of human genius.

On his way through Lincoln's Inn Fields, Tom Medwin picked up at a bookstall the following passage, from a free English rendering and adaptation (with variations from the original) of Christian D. F. Schubart's rhapsodical poem _Der Ewige Jude_.

'Ahasuerus the Jew crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel. Near two thousand years have elapsed since he was first goaded by never-ending restlessness to rove the globe from pole to pole. When our Lord was wearied with the burden of his ponderous cross, and wanted to rest before the door of Ahasuerus, the unfeeling wretch drove him away with brutality. The Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under the heavy load, but uttered no complaint. An angel of death appeared before Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indignantly, "Barbarian! thou hast denied rest to the Son of Man; be it denied thee also, until He comes to judge the world!"

'A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, goads him now from country to country; he is denied the consolation which death affords, and precluded from the rest of the peaceful grave.

'Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel--he shook the dust from his beard--and taking up one of the sculls heaped there, hurled it down the eminence; it rebounded from the earth in shivered atoms. This was my father! roared Ahasuerus. Seven more sculls rolled down from rock to rock; while the infuriate Jew, following them with ghastly looks, exclaimed--And these were my wives! He still continued to hurl down scull after scull, roaring in dreadful accents--And these, and these, and these were my children! They _could die_; but I! reprobate wretch, alas! I cannot die! Dreadful beyond conception is the judgment that hangs over me. Jerusalem fell--I crushed the sucking babe, and precipitated myself into the destructive flames. I cursed the Romans--but alas! alas! the restless curse held me by the hair,--and I could not die!

'Rome, the giantess, fell--I placed myself before the falling statue--she fell, and did not crush me. Nations sprung up and disappeared before me;--but I remained and did not die. From cloud-encircled cliffs did I precipitate myself into the ocean; but the foaming billows cast me upon the shore, and the burning arrow of existence pierced my cold heart again. I leaped into Etna's flaming abyss, and roared with the giants for ten long months, polluting with my groans the Mount's sulphureous mouth--ah! ten long months. The volcano fermented, and in a fiery stream of lava cast me up. I lay torn by the torture-snakes of hell amid the glowing cinders, and yet continued to exist.--A forest was on fire: I darted on wings of fury and despair into the crackling wood. Fire dropped upon me from the trees, but the flames only singed my limbs; alas! it could not consume them.--I now mixed with the butchers of mankind, and plunged into the tempest of the raging battle. I roared defiance to the infuriate Gaul, defiance to the victorious German; but arrows and spears rebounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen's flaming sword broke upon my scull: balls in vain hissed upon me; the lightnings of battle glared harmless around my loins; in vain did the elephant trample on me, in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed! The mine, big with destructive power, burst upon me, and hurled me high in the air--I fell on heaps of smoking limbs, but was only singed. The giant's steel club rebounded from my body; the executioner's hand could not strangle me, the tiger's tooth could not pierce me, nor would the hungry lion in the circus devour me. I cohabited with poisonous snakes, and pinched the red crest of the dragon. The serpent stung, but could not destroy me. The dragon tormented, but dared not to devour me.--I now provoked the fury of tyrants: I said to Nero, Thou art a bloodhound! I said to Christiern, Thou art a bloodhound! I said to Muley Ismail, Thou art a bloodhound!--The tyrants invented cruel torments, but did not kill me.--Ha! not to be able to die--not to be able to die--not to be permitted to rest after the toils of life--to be doomed to be imprisoned for ever in the clay-formed dungeon--to be for ever clogged with this worthless body, its load of diseases and infirmities--to be condemned to hold for millenniums that yawning monster Sameness, and Time, that hungry hyæna, ever bearing children, and ever devouring again her offspring!--Ha! not to be permitted to die! Awful avenger in heaven, hast thou in thine armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful? then let it thunder upon me, command a hurricane to sweep me down to the foot of Carmel, that I there may lie extended; may pant, and writhe, and die!'

What consequences ensued from young Medwin's accidental discovery of this fragment amongst the litter of the London bookstall! The finder of the scrap carried it to Shelley, Shelley carried it to Byron; and both poets were powerfully affected, permanently influenced by it. It gave Byron the thought of the lines in _Manfred_.

'I have affronted death--but in the war Of elements the water shrunk from me, And fatal things pass'd harmless--the cold hand Of an all-pitiless demon held me back, Back by a single hair, which would not break. In fantasy, imagination, all The affluence of my soul--which one day was A Croesus in creation--I plunged deep, But, like an ebbing wave, it dash'd me back Into the gulf of my unfathom'd thought. I plunged amidst mankind--Forgetfulness I sought in all, save where 'tis to be found, And that I have to learn--my sciences, My long pursued and super-human art, Is mortal here--I dwell in my despair-- And live--and live for ever.'

So strongly held to his last hour was Shelley by the thought which came to him, through the scrap of dirty paper taken with worthless stuff from a bookstall, that whilst Ahasuerus appears once and again in his own character and personality in the poet's works, the reader of those works comes no less often on cursory references to the undying wanderer, and on lines that would never have been penned, had it not been for Shelley's deep and frequent ponderings of the hideous doom of deathlessness, accorded to the supreme sinner of Christian romance. Ahasuerus the Jew figures in _Queen Mab_ (1812-13) and _Hellas_ (1821); he was in the poet's mind when he meditated the lines of _Alastor_ (1815)--

'O, that God, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice Which but one living man has drained, who now, Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels No proud exemption in the blighting curse He bears, over the world wanders for ever, Lone as incarnate death!'

Shelley's subsequent misconception of the way in which the tragic fragment came into his possession, may be regarded as one of the trivial consequences, though by no means the least curious consequence, of the degree in which the fragment possessed his fancy. As there is no evidence that the author of _Queen Mab_ was in London shortly before the time when the fragment first came under his eyes, and much evidence that he was away from London throughout the certain period, covering the uncertain day on which the fragment was picked up at the bookstall, there is no reason on the score of Medwin's peculiar mental infirmity to question the accuracy of his precise statement that he was the finder of the transcript, which he describes as 'not a separate publication,' but a thing that 'mixed up with the works of some German poet' seemed to have been 'copied ... from a magazine of the day.' The words of Medwin's precise averment touching this matter are--

'Mrs. Shelley is misinformed as to the history of the fragment from the German, which I, not Shelley, picked up in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields (as mentioned in my preface to Ahasuerus), and which was not found till some of the cantos had been written.'

Mrs. Shelley certainly could produce in support of her statement an authority she was bound to regard as respectable. For at the foot of the _Queen Mab_ note (1812-13), from which I have just transcribed the fragment, Shelley says--

'This fragment is the translation of part of some German work, whose title I have vainly endeavoured to discover. I picked it up, dirty and torn, some years ago, in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields.'

Thus in the course of something less than three years (a period scarcely to be described by so comprehensive a term as 'some years ago') Shelley, whilst remembering the scene of the discovery, had come to imagine himself the discoverer, a misapprehension not to be omitted from the schedule of facts, to the credit of those of the poet's nearest and dearest friends, who have spoken of the little reliance to be placed on his statements respecting himself and his affairs.

The first glimpse of Shelley at Oxford is obtained immediately after his matriculation on 10th of April, 1810, when the tall, slight, long-necked youth, with a square cap on his minute head, and a new gown hanging from his rather round shoulders, entered the Bodleian Library, in the hope of seeing the book from which the fragment had been taken. Had the German book been given him, the freshman would have learnt nothing from it, for he knew nothing of the German tongue at this point of his career. Ignorant alike of the title of the book he wished to see, and of the name of its author, the undergraduate asked for _The Wandering Jew_,--a request that probably caused the librarian no less amusement than surprise. The librarian had never heard of a book so entitled, but was not wholly ignorant of a periodical (edited by one of the wits of the Great Frederick's court) which bore the name of interest. Having come to the famous library, under an impression that it contained every book of every language, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley, of University College, was not a little disappointed at failing to get a view of the only book he for the moment had a strong desire to look at. The incident points to the time when the youngster was full of the marvellous Jew, and wanted the book for aid in his poetical enterprise.

Enough is known of the poem, that was perused by Campbell and offered to the Ballantynes of Edinburgh, to warrant a strong opinion that originality of thought was not one of its characteristics. One of the cousins (Medwin) lived to think it 'a sort of thing such as boys usually write, a cento from different favourite authors;' and probably the other author would have described the puerile performance even more unfavourably, had he written about it in his later time. The vision in the third canto was taken from Lewis's _Monk_, one of the bad novels in which Shelley delighted. The crucifixion scene seems to have been lifted bodily into the manuscript from a published work; it was (to use Medwin's words) 'altogether a plagiarism from a volume of Cambridge Prize Poems.' Bold play was doubtless made with 'the fragment' by the joint authors, who differed on one important particular,--Shelley wishing to leave the Jew at large, whilst Medwin wished to put a period to the wretch's sufferings by killing him at the end of the last canto. When seven or eight cantos had been made up in this fashion, the patchwork of shameless plagiarisms was copied fair from the first to the last line by Shelley, and sent off to the Edinburgh publishers who, after keeping the authors a long while in suspense, declined their proposal (without returning the MS.) in the following terms:--

'_Edinburgh, September 24th, 1810._

'SIR,

'The delay which occurred in our reply to you respecting the poem you have obligingly offered us for publication, has arisen from our literary friends and advisers (at least such as we have confidence in) being in the country at this season, as is usual, and the time they have bestowed on its perusal.

'We are extremely sorry, at length, after the most mature deliberation, to be under the necessity of declining the honour of being the publishers of the present poem;--not that we doubt its success, but that it is, perhaps, better suited to the character and liberal feelings of the English, than the bigoted spirit which yet pervades many cultivated minds in this country. Even Walter Scott is assailed on all hands at present by our Scotch spiritual, and Evangelical magazines, and instructors, for having promulgated atheistical doctrines in the _Lady of the Lake_.

'We beg you will have the goodness to advise us how it should be returned, and we think its being consigned to the care of some person in London would be more likely to ensure its safety than addressing it to Horsham.

'We are, Sir, your most obedient humble servants, 'JOHN BALLANTYNE & Co.'

The religious sentiments, which the publishers thought less likely to offend English than Scotch readers, were probably the same 'opinions on religion, whose inconsequence' Medwin declares to be a sufficient indication that the poem was the composition of two different writers. That the publishers had reason to think these sentiments little adapted to the feelings of their fellow-countrymen of North Britain will appear probable to readers who recall the part played by Ahasuerus in _Queen Mab_,--a poem that resembled the poem of _The Wandering Jew_ in containing passages that were the direct offspring of the memorable fragment.

Medwin says that on their completion, Shelley sent the seven or eight cantos 'to Campbell for his opinion on their merits, with a view to publication,' and that the author of the _Pleasures of Hope_ returned the MS. with the remark that there were only two good lines in it:--

'It seemed as if an angel's sigh Had breathed the plaintive symphony,'

lines, by the way (Medwin adds), 'savouring strongly of Walter Scott.' The peculiarities of Mr. Medwin's habitual inexactness countenance the suspicion that, though the poem came under Campbell's critical consideration _through_ Shelley's act, the author of the _Pleasures of Hope_ would not have seen it had he not been the particular literary friend and adviser, whose 'opinion' determined John Ballantyne and Co. not to publish the work. Anyhow, Campbell read and condemned the poem which the publishers declined,--the poem which Shelley (on receiving the letter of 24th September, 1810, from the Edinburgh publishers) lost no time in offering to John Joseph Stockdale, the Pall Mall (London) publisher, whose dealings with the poet and the poet's father were laid before the public in _Stockdale's Budget_ (1827).

In one of the several puerile letters, whose style affords conclusive testimony that he was not the author of the _A.M. Oxon._ letter, Shelley wrote to Stockdale from Field Place on 28th September, 1810 (just a month before he went into 'residence' at Oxford):

'I sent, before I had the pleasure of knowing you, the MS. of a poem to Messieurs Ballantyne and Co., Edinburgh; they have declined publishing it, with the inclosed letter. I now offer it to you, _and depend upon your honour as a gentleman for a fair price for the copyright_. It will be sent to you from Edinburgh. The subject is _The Wandering Jew_. As to its containing Atheistical principles, I assure you, I was wholly unaware of the fact hinted at. _Your good sense will point out to you the impossibility of inculcating pernicious doctrines in a poem, which as you will see is so totally abstract from any circumstances which occur under the possible view of mankind._'

The words, which the present writer has caused to be printed in italics, should hold the reader's attention for a moment. Whilst the desire for money, indicated by the earlier set of words, is noteworthy, the second set of words should be examined as an example of the Oxonian's epistolary style at a time when some of his adulators have declared him capable of writing vigorous prose.

Not quite seven weeks after the date of these significant sets of words, Shelley (now an Oxonian 'in residence') is writing on 14th November, 1810, to the Pall Mall publisher: 'I am surprised that you have not received _The Wandering Jew_, and in consequence write to Mr. Ballantyne to mention it; you will doubtlessly, therefore, receive it soon.' Five days later (19th November, 1810), writing again to his publisher from University College, the youthful literary aspirant says, 'If you have not yet got _The Wandering Jew_ from Mr. B., I will send you a MS. copy which I possess.' Nearly a fortnight later (2nd December, 1810), he writes from his college to the same correspondent: 'Will you, if you have got two copies of _The Wandering Jew_ send one of them to me, as I have thought of some corrections which I wish to make,--your opinion on it will likewise much oblige me:'--words showing that Shelley had sent his 'reserved copy' of the poem to Pall Mall, that he assumed it was in Mr. Stockdale's hands, and that he thought it possible Mr. Stockdale was also in possession of the transcript which should have been sent to him from Edinburgh by the Ballantynes. The words also show that the young author was in some excitement about the fate of his poem, and eager to hear whether the publisher would produce the metrical romance, and, 'as a gentleman' pay him 'a fair price for the copyright.'

Unless Stockdale's memory failed him on the matter in 1827, neither of these copies came to his hands.--'It is singular,' he says in his scandalous _Budget_ (1827), 'that, after all, the poem of _The Wandering Jew_ never reached my hands, nor have I either seen or heard of it from that time.' From this not altogether reliable statement it seems that there was a miscarriage of the second and 'reserved' transcript of the poem, sent by Shelley himself from Field Place to Pall Mall. For the removal of a scarcely noteworthy misapprehension, it may be observed there was no similar miscarriage of the other copy; the evidence being abundant that the MS., sent by Shelley from Field Place to Edinburgh, was _not_ lost through miscarriage on its way from Edinburgh to Pall Mall. This MS. cannot have miscarried for the simple reason, that it was never despatched by the Ballantynes to Mr. Stockdale's place of business. Instead of being sent to London, in accordance with the suggestion made by the Ballantynes themselves, and in accordance with the instructions sent to them by Shelley, mainly in consequence of their suggestion, the MS. rested at Edinburgh till 1831, when, some nine years after the poet's death, it came to light;--a discovery that was speedily followed by a publication of some portions of the metrical folly (Medwin says 'four of the cantos') in _Fraser's Magazine_.

After throwing off _The Wandering Jew_, which even Mr. Buxton Forman, with all his reverence for every scrap of paper blotted by the poet, has excluded (with the exception of a few verses) from his authorized edition of the poet's writings, Shelley, with the assistance of a friend, produced in the spring or summer of 1810, the volume of poetry entitled _Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire_,--the edition of miserable rhymes, noticed in the _British Critic_ of 1811 (_vide_ Professor Dowden's very noteworthy article in _The Contemporary Review_ of September, 1884, on 'Some Early Writings of Shelley'), that was suppressed soon after its untimely birth, because at least one of the poems was discovered to be scandalously wanting in originality; to be, in fact, a gross and disgraceful plagiarism of one of Monk Lewis's pieces of sensational verse.

Ignorant of the name of Shelley's coadjutor in this discreditable business, Mr. Garnett is at much pains to show, who could not have been the coadjutor, who may not be supposed to have been the coadjutor, and who might have been the coadjutor. Hogg could not have been the coadjutor, because he had not yet made the poet's acquaintance. Tom Medwin was not the coadjutor. But Mr. Garnett is of opinion that Miss Harriett Grove may have been the coadjutor. 'A more likely coadjutor,' he says, 'would be Harriet Grove, Shelley's cousin, and the object of his first attachment, who is said to have aided him in the composition of his first romance, _Zastrozzi_.' It is strange that so exemplary a Shelleyan expert as Mr. Garnett dealt thus respectfully with what Shelley told Medwin, or Medwin imagined himself to have been told by Shelley, about Harriett Grove's part in the composition of _Zastrozzi_. There is no more truth in the fable that Harriett Grove wrote some of the chapters of _Zastrozzi_, than there is in the fable that she was the Harriett of the Dedicatory Prelude to _Queen Mab_. Possibly Shelley saw his pretty cousin in her Wiltshire home, when he went from Brentford to Fern for the Easter holidays, in the company of her Harrovian brothers. Probably the cousins saw one another on other occasions, when they were small children; but when they met at Field Place in the summer of 1810, they came together as new acquaintances. There is decent, though not conclusive, evidence that they had never looked on each other before that summer. It is certain that their brief intimacy, attended with innocent flirtation and cousinly correspondence, was an affair of the later six months of 1810:--that _Zastrozzi_ had been written to the last line, sent to Messrs. Longman and Co., declined by those publishers, sent to Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson, printed by them, and almost, if not actually published, before the dawn of that brief intimacy. So much for what has been written about Harriett Grove's participation in the authorship of the earlier of Shelley's inexpressibly ludicrous novels.

The poet's coadjutor in the unfortunate business of the _Original Poetry_ was his sister Elizabeth, and it is easy to see how Shelley manufactured the fanciful name 'Cazire' out of so dissimilar a name as Elizabeth. He may be presumed to have made it out of the letters of his sister's name and a single epithet of affection, on principles familiar to students who are versed in the romantic curiosities and fanciful contrivances of eighteenth-century English literature. Isabel and Elizabeth are the same name with differences of garniture. In each case Iza is the veritable name. To call a woman Izabel, or Izabella, is to call her 'the beautiful Iza.' To call her Elizabeth (El Iza beata) is to style her 'the blessed Iza.' In being christened Elizabeth, the eldest of Shelley's sisters was named Iza. The letters out of which Shelley made the fancy-name 'Cazire,' were the letters of Cara Iza == dear Iza. Of course he used no letter twice. Rule of art forbade him to use the same letter twice. First he took the letters of the name, and by reversing their order made them spell 'azi.' By prefixing to 'azi' the 'C' of Cara, and putting the 'r' of the same epithet after the 'i' of 'Cazi,' he made the name 'Cazir,'--a name to which he gave a more feminine appearance by adding to it the initial letter of his sister's familiar name, Elizabeth. Hence 'Cazire.'

Even as the Byron of Southwell Green employed Ridge, the Newark bookseller, to print and publish his three first volumes of verse, the Shelley of Field Place appointed a Horsham printer to make a printed book of the _Original Poetry_, which he and his sister had put together. The edition, thus printed at Horsham in the late summer or early autumn of 1810, though it can scarcely be said to have been published there, seems to have been an edition of fifteen hundred copies. If the youthful authors looked for a brisk sale in Sussex, that would enable them to pay their printer as soon as he should ask for his money, they were disappointed. If the Horsham printer worked off the edition, under the notion that he would have no difficulty in getting payment of his little bill from the young gentleman of Field Place, or from the Member of Parliament for New Shoreham, or from old Sir Bysshe Shelley, he, too, was disappointed. For in the autumn (towards the end of August or on one of the earliest days of September), 1810, the Oxford undergraduate entered for the first time the place of business of Mr. John Joseph Stockdale, and with a countenance eloquent of anxiety besought the publisher to satisfy the demand of the importunate Horsham printer, and taking over the stock of printed copies to offer them for sale in his usual way of business. Had he been a youth of no social quality, instead of being the eldest son of a well-known Member of Parliament, who was reputed to be the heir of the wealthiest commoner of Sussex, the petitioner for relief from an embarrassing position would probably have been bowed out of the publisher's office with more promptitude than courtesy. But the heir-apparent of the heir-apparent of the inordinately rich Sir Bysshe Shelley, Baronet, was no person for Mr. John Joseph Stockdale to repel. In a few years the beardless undergraduate might himself be one of the richest of England's dignified commoners.

An arrangement was made between the man of business and the youth of quality; and on 17th September, 1810, the Pall-Mall publisher received from the Horsham printer fourteen hundred and eighty copies of the _Original Poetry: By Victor and Cazire_, a work forthwith announced in the principal London papers as on sale 'by Stockdale, Jun., 41, Pall-Mall,' at the price of 4_s._ per copy, in 'boards.' The book's career, under these circumstances, was brief. It had not been re-published many days, at the longest not more than two or three weeks, and the copies sold or put into circulation cannot, at the boldest computation, have exceeded a hundred, when, on examining the book closely (examining it, probably, in consequence of something he had heard to the volume's discredit) the publisher came to the conclusion that the work must be withdrawn and suppressed. A fraud on the public, an infringement of at least one author's copyright, a thing published with a deceptive title-page, the _Original Poetry_ was found to contain poetry by Monk Lewis. It may be conceived how surprised Shelley was to find he had induced a London publisher to accept for the original poetry of himself and his friend, poetry that, instead of being what he declared it to be, was stolen poetry. No fine words, no specious phrases, can put out of sight the fact that this business was an ugly business. Shelley was not a child when he thus put wares under a false name on a London tradesman. He had entered his nineteenth year when he did this distinctly discreditable thing.

To separate Shelley as far as possible from what he necessarily regards as an awkward and humiliating affair, Mr. Garnett has recourse to a representation which, instead of according with the probabilities of the case, is discountenanced by several facts. 'It was but too clear,' says the author of _Shelley in Pall Mall_, 'that Shelley's colleague, doubtless under the compulsion of the poet's impetuous solicitations for more verses, had appropriated whatever came first to hand, with slight respect for pedantic considerations of _meum_ and _tuum_.' What evidence could Mr. Garnett produce that the pilfered matter was put into the book, not by Shelley but by his coadjutor? that the poet had pressed his coadjutor impetuously for more verses? that, in consequence of his impetuous solicitations for more verses, Shelley's coadjutor took verses out of a printed book, and palmed them off on him as verses of her own composition? What evidence could Mr. Garnett produce that Shelley was unaware that the volume of so-styled original verse contained poetry which had been 'appropriated ... with slight respect for pedantic considerations of _meum_ and _tuum_?' No evidence of any kind, over and beyond these words by the mendacious and rascally Stockdale:--

'I fully anticipated the probable vexation of the juvenile maiden-author, when I communicated my discovery to Mr. P. B. Shelley. With all the ardour, incidental to his character, which embraces youthful honour in all its brilliancy, he expressed the warmest resentment at the imposition, practised upon him, by his coadjutor, and intreated me to destroy all the copies.'

Of Stockdale's motives of self-interest and vindictiveness, in writing of Shelley in a laudatory style, something will be said by-and-by. For the present it is enough to remind the reader that the concoctor of the scandalous _Budget_ (1827) was writing from memory, more than sixteen years after the incidents to which he refers. That Shelley's coadjutor was spurred into wrongful action by 'the poet's impetuous solicitations for more verses,' is a touch of fiction for which we are indebted to Mr. Garnett's imagination.

As no copy of the suppressed edition is known to be in existence, and all our certain knowledge of the contents of the volume comes from Stockdale's meagre and mendacious narrative, it is useless to inquire what will probably never be known--what proportion the purloined matter bore to the original writing of the book, and how far the purloined matter was manipulated and re-dressed by the pilferer or pilferers? It is scarcely conceivable that the stolen stuff was lifted from one book to the other without any verbal alteration. Should a copy of the _Original Poetry_ be recovered, I should expect to find the least original of its pieces to be specimens of bold, free, manifest plagiarisms--not verbatim transcripts. That Shelley was a partner to such plagiarisms in 1810 we know from Medwin's candid account of the way in which they made up the cantos of _The Wandering Jew_. That Shelley used to perpetrate such plagiarisms single-handed, and for his own sole use, in 1810, we know from the plagiarism from Byron's _Lachin-y-Gair_ (_Hours of Idleness_) to be found in _St. Irvyne_. Lewis's _Monk_ was boldly pilfered for the benefit of the third canto of _The Wandering Jew_, a canto altered and added to by Shelley after Medwin had rough-written it. Monk Lewis's writings were so much admired by Shelley, and so familiar to him, that whilst he (with a strong taste for literary imitation) may be assumed, almost as a matter of course, to have plagiarized some parts of them at some time or other, he was not likely to have overlooked the quality of any plagiarism from Monk Lewis in the verses given him by his sister for their joint enterprise.

It follows that, whilst there is no sufficient evidence in support of Mr. Garnett's account of the affair, several facts point to the probability that, instead of being perpetrated by Miss Shelley, the plagiarisms, which made it needful to withdraw and suppress the 'original poetry,' were done by her brother's own hand. Yet Mr. Garnett declares it not merely clear, but 'too clear,' that Shelley was nothing more than the simple and unsuspicious victim of an unworthy coadjutor. At the same time to minimize the discredit, accruing to Shelley from her misconduct, it is observed lightly that, instead of stealing, she only 'appropriated whatever first came to hand, with slight respect for pedantic considerations of _meum_ and _tuum_.' It is thus that disagreeable matters are glossed for the benefit of the poet, who might have been the Saviour of the World.

Mr. Rossetti, by far the most discreet and able of Shelley's apologists, would win a favourable verdict for the poet in respect to this _Victor and Cazire_ business, on the plea that so youthful and unworldly a writer is not to be supposed to have studied the law of copyright.

'One can but speculate on the question whether Shelley was himself in fault in this matter, or whether he had been duped by his coadjutor. There was certainly some tendency to secretiveness in his early literary attempts; and it may be doubted whether the Etonian scatterbrain would have seen much harm in appropriating stanzas or whole compositions from Lewis if they fell in with his notions,--or, indeed, whether he had ever perceived or pondered the meaning of the word copyright. Stockdale, at any rate, does not seem to have considered himself aggrieved by Shelley, as he soon after undertook the publishing of _St. Irvyne_; in fact, after some serious rows during their business connexion, he continued enthusiastic as to the young author's character and honour.'

By all means let Shelley have the benefit of the lenient judgment of a publisher, who came to ruin through his own dishonourable conduct. The publisher, who gave English literature _The Memoirs of Harriet Wilson_, is scarcely the person on whose evidence a proud man would care to rely for the vindication of his own or his friend's honour. The plea that Shelley probably knew nothing of the law of copyright, reminds one of the similar plea, which caused Lord Justice Knight Bruce to declare in his proper court, that 'to be honest it was not necessary to be an attorney.' In truth, the question is wholly beside Shelley's knowledge or ignorance of that law. Every Eton boy knows whether he has done a set of Latin verses for himself, or copied them from another boy's paper; knows also that he is telling an untruth when he expressly declares himself the maker of the verses which another boy has composed for him. If Shelley knew the book contained poetry, that was written by neither of the individuals indicated in the title-page,--contained poetry that was _not_ original in the sense of the title,--he was guilty of an untruth. For reasons already stated, I cannot question he had this knowledge, and was guilty of an untruth, which he would not have uttered to the publisher and the world, had he been (as Lady Shelley declares him to have been) more outspoken and truthful than other boys; or (as Mr. Walter S. Halliday declares him to have been) remarkable for 'great moral courage' and dislike of everything that was 'false.' Were it a solitary instance of departure from truth in the poet's career, his present biographer would be at less pains to call attention to this matter, as an affair that should not be without effect on our final estimate of an equally interesting and puzzling character.

After placing the 1480 copies of the _Original Poetry_ in Mr. Stockdale's hands, Shelley naturally wished the same publisher of light literature to produce _St. Irvyne; or, the Rosicrucian_,--a novel of which so much will be said in the next chapter of this volume, that it is enough in the present page to say the young author was at work upon it in the summer and autumn of 1810, and probably began to work upon it soon after sending the copy of _The Wandering Jew_ to John Ballantyne and Co.

Enough has been said of the verses that, written by Shelley in 1809-10 (probably in the earlier half of 1810), may have been the first sketches and studies for _Queen Mab_. It is, however, well to refer again to the metrical performances that, engaging Shelley's attention in the autumn of 1810, were published by the Oxford printer and bookseller, J. Munday, in the middle of the November of that year, under the title of _Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson_. In a contemptuous notice of the _Victor and Cazire_ poems, the _British Critic_ (1811) spoke of the volumes as 'sentimental nonsense and very absurd tales of horror' in terms, that seem to dispose of Mr. D. F. MacCarthy's suggestion that the _Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson_ may be a mere reproduction of the _Victor and Cazire_ poems, _minus_ the verses that might have brought the publisher into the Court of Chancery. In comparing Byron's story with Shelley's story, one is struck by the numerous resemblances and coincidences of the two careers. Even as Byron employed a country printer to produce his first volume of boyish verse, Shelley employed a country printer for the production of his first book of jingle. Even as the indiscretions of Byron's first book constrained him to suppress it, Shelley was forced to suppress his first thing of rhymes by fear of consequences.

What was the year of Shelley's correspondence with Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne (afterwards Mrs. Hemans), the correspondence, in which he impregnated her mind with sceptical thought, and so far disturbed her religious life that Mrs. Browne (Felicia's mother) wrote to Mr. Medwin the elder, begging him to use his influence with Shelley, so that he should desist from writing to the girl he had never seen? In the absence of dated documents, I answer this question with some hesitation by assigning the interchange of letters to 1810. There are reasons for giving a somewhat earlier date to the correspondence, and reasons for thinking the boy and girl were writing to one another even so late as the spring of 1811. But, speaking doubtfully, I regard the interchange of epistles as an affair of the spring and summer of 1810.

With his usual ambiguity of expression, Medwin says, or seems to say, that he made Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne's acquaintance in North Wales at the beginning of 1808 or somewhat before that year; subscribed for a volume of her poems when she was sixteen years old; and on his return from North Wales (in the earlier part of 1808) spoke of her and her writings to Shelley, in terms that caused him to write to the young lady. The perplexing Mr. Thomas Medwin writes thus:--

'In the beginning of the first of these two years' (_i.e._ 1808 and 1809), 'I showed Shelley some poems to which I had subscribed by Felicia Browne, whom I had met in North Wales, where she had been on a visit at the house of a connexion of mine. She was then sixteen, and it was impossible not to be struck with the beauty (for beautiful she was), the grace, and charming simplicity and _naiveté_ of this interesting girl; and on my return from Denbighshire, I made her and her works the frequent subject of conversation with.... He desired to become acquainted with the young authoress, and using my name wrote to her, as he was in the habit of doing to all those who in any way excited his sympathies. This letter produced an answer, and a correspondence of some length passed between them, which, of course, I never saw, but it is to be supposed that it turned on other subjects besides poetry. I mean that it was sceptical. It has been said by her biographer, that the poetess was at one period of her life, as is the case frequently with deeper thinkers on religion, inclined to doubt; and it is not impossible that such owed its origin to this interchange of thought. One may, indeed, suppose this to have been the case, from the circumstance of her mother writing to my father, and begging him to use his influence with Shelley to cease from any further communication with her daughter,--in fact, prohibiting their further correspondence.'

Medwin is obviously not right in his dates. Born on 23rd September, 1793, Felicia Browne (Hemans) attained the age of sixteen on 23rd September, 1809. If he made the young lady's acquaintance at the end of 1807, or in the beginning of 1808, she was only fifteen years of age when he first made a bow to her. If she was in her seventeenth year when he first saw her, the meeting took place on some day between 23rd September, 1809, and 23rd September, 1810. It is much more probable that he was right about her age than about the year. The girl's precise age is much more likely than the precise number of the year, in which he first saw her, to have lived in his memory. The admiration with which he regarded and remembered her is a state of feeling much more likely to have been caused by a girl of sixteen than a child of fifteen. If he made her acquaintance at the end of 1809, he made it at a time closely preceding the winter in which he saw so much of Shelley. If he made her acquaintance at the close of 1807, or the beginning of 1808, he would have had fewer opportunities for speaking about her to his cousin (still an Eton schoolboy); and in the spring and summer of 1809, he would scarcely have been cognizant of the correspondence of the boy at Eton and the girl in Wales. In the winter of 1809-10, and in the following spring, he would naturally know of the correspondence, and hear something of the letters he was not permitted to see.

It matters little whether the correspondence was an affair of this year or that year. The important fact is that, whilst still a stripling, the future poet opened a correspondence with the young lady, and used the opportunities of the correspondence to infuse her with sceptical sentiment, and disturb her faith in the religion in which she had been trained. What might come to Miss Felicia Browne from his intrusion on her spiritual life was no question to trouble him. What misery might ensue to the girl's mother and other kindred from his action was no matter for him to consider. The rights and feelings of parents were rights and feelings to which the young gentleman (who might have been the Saviour of the World) was sublimely indifferent, whenever it pleased him to talk with a school-girl (whose acquaintance he had made without the sanction or knowledge of her parents) on the evidences of Christianity, the soul's immortality, the existence of the Deity. No less heedless was he of his own mother's wishes, anxieties, fears, hopes, when the humour came upon him to enlighten his sisters on matters about which she wished them to be left in ignorance. Himself a passionate disbeliever of the Christian religion, Shelley was possessed by a passion for making other people sharers of his disbelief, especially for raising the young ladies of his acquaintance to his own philosophical contempt for the delusions of Christianity. Any one who humoured his propensity to win converts to his own particular infidelity was a philosopher; every one who presumed to oppose it was an intolerant bigot. In the indulgence of this passion for making converts to unbelief, he was selfish.

Without receiving or seeking Mrs. Browne's permission to address her daughter on matters pertaining to religion, or to have any kind of confidential relations with her, he opened a correspondence with the sixteen-years-old girl, and did his best to lure her from the religion in which she had been educated,--and was so far successful as to shake her faith in Christianity. A few weeks or months later, without receiving or seeking Mrs. Grove's permission to address her daughter (a young girl of his own age) on matters of religion, he did his best by spoken words and written words to lure the girl from Christianity, though he must have known that he could not effect his purpose without inflicting inexpressible pain on his mother's sister. Knowing his mother's repugnance to infidelity, he did his best to lure his eldest sister (a girl of poetical sensibility and genius, who idolized him) from the Christian religion. In the following year, finding Harriett Westbrook still a sixteen-years-old school-girl, who held the usual religious views of an English school-girl educated within the lines of the Established Church, he approached her without asking her parents' authority to do so, lured her from Christianity to Atheism, set her in rebellion against her father, and having made her an undutiful daughter and an atheist, married her,--marrying her instead of making her his mere mistress, _only_ because Hogg made him see he was bound in honour to make her his lawfully wedded wife, before possessing himself of her person. In this period of his early manhood, he approached other girls of tender age in the same manner,--addressing them on matters of religion, disturbing their spiritual life, and shaking their faith in Christianity, when he did not succeed in his efforts to extinguish it. With the single exception of Miss Harriett Grove (who does not seem to have suffered from his sophistries) he seems to have been more or less successful in all his attempts on the faith of young girls.

In acting thus to young girls, without the sanction or knowledge of their natural guardians, the apt pupil of the hard-swearing Windsor doctor is declared by the most fervid of his admirers to have been justified, because he was a sincere and earnest teacher of what he believed to be the truth, an enthusiastic assailant of error, and a fervid enemy of intolerance. Though his action was often strangely wanting in candour and openness, was sometimes odiously secretive and treacherous towards the parents of the young girls with whose faith he tampered, the sincerity of his religious sentiments and utterances is open to no suspicion. It is unquestionable that he believed what he tried to make others believe,--that he was wholly convinced and absolutely certain of the falseness of the opinions which he entreated other people to repudiate as false. It cannot be doubted he was an enthusiastic assailant of what he thought to be error, and the majority of his acquaintance thought to be the reverse of error. In one sense, he was no doubt a disinterested assailant of what he thought to be error. But how about his tolerance? his hatred of intolerance? For the moment we are not thinking of the Italian Shelley, who, after warring wildly with all who differed from him in opinion, desisted in some degree from the bootless strife,--on discovering that what was truth to him might be error to higher intelligence, that the people from whom he differed in opinion had the same right to their manifestly erroneous opinions as he had to his possibly erroneous views; that human creatures could not be forced out of their errors by passionate speech; that disputants fighting with subtle arguments and hot words might be as essentially intolerant as disputants fighting with instruments of torture and blazing faggots. To say that the Shelley, who, after surviving the phrensies of his earlier manhood, wrote the _Essay on Christianity_, was devoid of tolerance would be unjust. But how about the Shelley who wrote _Laon and Cythna_, who raved against religion in _Queen Mab_, and was moved by hatred of error to teach Harriett Westbrook (ætat. 16), Harriett Grove (ætat. 17), his sister Elizabeth (ætat. 16), Felicia Browne (ætat. 16), that Christianity was made up of monstrous fables and delusions; that the Christian religion was accountable for the worst evils of human society; that the sentiment of the Christian faith was pernicious and execrable. Was this enemy of intolerance chiefly remarkable for tolerance? Whilst railing at the world's want of tolerance, Shelley was himself a caricature of intolerance.

In regarding Shelley during the earlier stages of his crusade against Christianity, more especially in regarding his endeavours to dispel the religious delusions of Felicia Browne, Harriett Grove, his sister Elizabeth, Harriett Westbrook and other young ladies of his acquaintance, readers should judge him at least quite as severely as they would judge any young man of the present period, whom they should detect in sapping the religious faith and disturbing the religious life of young girls, still under their governesses. I might even go a step further and say that they should judge him even more severely than a young man of the present period: as in these days of Free Thought, when it is questioned by a considerable minority of people whether children are the better for being kept well within the lines of religious orthodoxy, a young man guilty of infusing the damsels of his familiar circle with sceptical sentiment, would offend social opinion less flagrantly and universally, than the Oxford undergraduate who was guilty of such conduct in days, when society was almost unanimous in attaching the highest value to religious orthodoxy, and in believing that to depart from it was to lay aside the only effectual armour against temptations to immorality.

Still, it is enough for readers to judge Shelley in this matter, precisely as they would judge a youthful delinquent of the present period, when the wholesome opinion still prevails that the man is guilty of heinous domestic treachery, who abuses the opportunities of familiar intercourse, so as to disturb the religious life of the young people of his acquaintance, and lure them from the tenets in which their natural guardians have educated them, and desire them still to be educated. What would the readers of this page say of any clever Etonian or Oxford undergraduate, whom they should overhear and catch in the very act of luring a girl of tender age from the religion of her parents (the religion in which they wish to confirm her) into Atheism? I conceive most readers of this page would pass judgment on the offender, without reference to the relative merits or demerits of the religion the girl was being lured to repudiate. I do not hesitate to say that in such a case I should tell the youthful apostle of Free Thought my opinion of his conduct, in a few words of homely English, that would make his ears tingle;--and the words of homely English would be none the less stinging and disdainful, because I knew the young gentleman to be a rather clever fellow, and even thought him likely to write good poetry some years hence.

Why do I presume to say without hesitation that Miss Harriett Grove's correspondence with, and so-called engagement to, her cousin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, were affairs of the year 1810, whilst Lady Shelley (writing '_from authentic sources_') declares them to have been affairs of the previous year 1809?

The authorities have blundered curiously about this affair of the two cousins. Mr. Thomas Love Peacock makes a great slip, where he says that 'Shelley's expulsion from Oxford brought to a summary conclusion his boyish passion for Miss Harriett Grove.' Letters published in Hogg's first volume put it beyond question that, whilst the brief familiar intercourse was an affair of the latter half of 1810, it was all over by the end of that year, or at latest before the end of the Christmas holidays of 1810-11. Shelley had ceased to sigh for Harriett Grove, some weeks before the expulsion.

In the note, which reveals his disposition to think the dedicatory verses of _Queen Mab_ may after all have been addressed by the poet in the first instance to Harriett Grove, Mr. Forman does an injustice (for which he has, however, a sufficient excuse) to Mr. Thomas Medwin, in representing him as giving the summer of 1809 as the summer in which the young lady and the poet 'met for the first time, since they had been children, at Field Place.' An inexact author must be read with proper regard for his besetting infirmity, even as an unsound horse must be handled with due regard for his particular unsoundness. Half-a-score facts show that in speaking of the winter of 1809 (the winter next after Shelley's withdrawal from Eton), Medwin was speaking of the winter of 1809-10. From that date on p. 53, vol. I., of the _Life of Shelley_, the narrative is carried on throughout the winter and ensuing spring into the summer, when, on p. 66 of the same volume, the biographer says, 'It was in the summer of this year that he became acquainted with our cousin, Harriet Grove;'--obviously meaning the summer of 1810. Lady Shelley, who makes free use of Medwin's book (blunders and all), probably made her mistake of the year by reading Medwin, even as Mr. Forman in later time read him, without sufficient care.

What does Mr. Charles Henry Grove (Harriett's brother) say about the matter in a very interesting letter? Writing from Torquay on 16th February, 1857, when still only in his 63rd year, this gentleman (after mentioning the Brentford schoolboy's visit to Fern for the Easter holidays), remarks:--

'I did not meet Bysshe again after that till I was fifteen, the year I left the navy, and then I went to Field Place with my father, mother, Charlotte, and Harriet. Bysshe was there, having just left Eton, and his sister, Elizabeth. Bysshe was at that time more attached to my sister Harriet than I can express, and I recollect well the moonlight walks we four had at Strode, and also at St. Irvings; that, I think, was the name of the place, then the Duke of Norfolk's, at Horsham. [St.[1] Irving's Hills, a beautiful place, on the right-hand side as you go from Horsham to Field Place, laid out by the famous Capability Brown, and full of magnificent forest trees, waterfalls, and rustic seats. The house was Elizabethan. All has been destroyed.] That was in the year 1810. After our visit to Field Place, we went to my brother's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Bysshe, his mother, and Elizabeth joined us, and a very happy month we spent. Bysshe was full of life and spirits, and very well pleased with his successful devotion to my sister. In the course of that summer, to the best of my recollection, after we had retired into Wiltshire, a continued correspondence was going on, as, I believe, there had been before, between Bysshe and my sister Harriet. But she became uneasy at the tone of his letters on speculative subjects, at first consulting my mother, and subsequently my father also, on the subject. This led at last, though I cannot exactly tell how, to the dissolution of an engagement between Bysshe and my sister, which had previously been permitted, both by his father and mine.'

The bracketed words being regarded as 'editorial comment,' this quotation from Mr. Charles Henry Grove's letter, and all the rest of the epistle, are lucid and strenuous. The writer of so good a letter may have exaggerated the fervour of Shelley's passion for his cousin Harriett, and made a regular engagement out of a mere appearance of mutual liking that promised to ripen quickly into a formal betrothal (of these errors I have no doubt Mr. Charles Henry Grove was in some degree guilty); but he was not likely to be wrong about the year, remembered as the year in which he was fifteen, and the year in which he left the navy. That he was right about the year appears also from divers of Shelley's letters to Hogg.

It requires no great effort of the imagination to create pleasant scenes and incidents from the little that is recorded of this meeting and association of the two families of the Wiltshire Groves and Sussex Shelleys, families having their homes too far apart to see much of one another in pre-railway time. Harriett and Percy Bysshe had not seen each other (if we may trust Medwin) since they were children. No wonder the young man was favourably impressed by his fair cousin,--a singularly beautiful girl of graceful figure, clear blue eyes, a singular superabundance of light golden-brown tresses, a complexion comparable with his own complexion for show of pink and white, but surpassing it in clearness and freedom from freckles. Cousins of the same age almost to a day, they resembled one another in several personal particulars; but the girl had the advantage of her cousin in the delicate symmetry of her countenance, and the fine straightness of the feature that rendered the fault of his small, turn-up nose more noticeable. In the dignity and composure of her carriage she also had the advantage of the Oxford undergraduate, whose movements were too nervous, and impetuous, and irregular for stateliness. This difference of bearing and gesture in the two cousins corresponded with the difference of their temperaments,--his quick and vehement impulsiveness, her calm self-possession. Perhaps Shelley liked the lovely girl all the more for her coldness, just as Byron was fascinated by the frigid placidity of Miss Milbanke's demeanour. That he had reason to admire her is unquestionable. After a lapse of six-and-thirty years, Tom Medwin (who was one of the family party at Field Place in 1810, and in those thirty-six years had seen many charming women in divers lands) could recall no woman comparable with her for beauty.

Possibly the meeting of the two families had been arranged by the elders to see if the two cousins were likely to care more than a little for each other. It was not in human nature for the two families to live together for two months without thinking that it might result in a wedding. Mr. Grove (_ætat._ 51, a country gentleman with a large family:--I find no sufficient reason to credit him with clerical quality, though he is styled a clergyman by one of the poet's biographers; Burke only styles him 'esquire') may well have liked the thought of matching his lovely daughter with the heir-apparent of the heir-apparent of the prodigiously wealthy baronet of Castle Goring. Mrs. Grove would have been a strangely unreasonable woman to think her nephew no sufficient match for her beautiful daughter. The Member for New Shoreham and Mrs. Shelley of Field Place may well have thought an early engagement, with a prospect of early marriage, precisely the thing to keep their eccentric, troublesome, scatterbrain boy steady and straight at Oxford.

Whilst the Eton-Oxford man certainly liked his cousin well enough to enjoy the notion of becoming her husband, at least one member of the family party was desirous, intent, busy on making a match out of such promising materials. This would-be match-maker was Bysshe's sister Elizabeth,--the Iza of Cazire, at the same time her brother's idol and idolater, a girl of no common beauty and mental endowments, a maiden clever with her pen and yet cleverer with her pencil. At her own instance, and at his request, to please her brother and to please herself, she threw herself into his purpose, and pleaded in his behalf to the Beauty of Fern, declaring he possessed every noble quality, and was free from every failing of his sex; insisting that he and the cousin whom he admired so enthusiastically were designed by Heaven for one another; and imploring the tranquil, too unresponsive beauty to rate Bysshe at his proper worth, and prize his expressions of affection far higher than she seemed to prize them.

The poet must have mistrusted his power to win and hold the beauty when he asked his sister to help him; and before she entreated the beauty to be merciful, Miss Shelley must have felt her brother sorely needed her assistance. My impression is that from first to last Shelley never had any hold whatever on Miss Grove's affections, that he was no clever suitor, that circumstances were from the outset against him. Before she came to Field Place there may have been an understanding between the young lady and the Somerset gentleman whom she married in the following year; an understanding that, whilst binding her lightly though securely to him, left her free to amuse herself with a little innocent flirtation with her cousin of Field Place. I have reason to suspect that when she consulted her father and mother about Bysshe's sceptical views after corresponding with him for several months, she produced the letters not so much for the benefit of their advice as for the assistance they would afford her in inducing them to relinquish a scheme on which they had set their hearts, and to sanction a scheme on which she had set her heart nine months since. I cannot question that Bysshe diminished and weakened any slight chance he may have had of winning the beauty's hand by talking sceptically to her, and otherwise carrying her through the primer of infidelity. Instead of taking the new doctrine to her heart, she was at first a little frightened by it, and then strongly determined by it to take a path of life, in which she would not be attended by the scatterbrain heir to the brand-new Castle Goring baronetcy.

Still every girl likes to be admired, and Miss Grove liked her cousin's admiration none the less because his sister entreated her so prettily to accept it responsively. There was no reason why she should disappoint the brother and sister with a promptitude, that would put a premature period to an agreeable holiday. The obvious wishes of the elders of both families may also have disposed the young lady to temporize. That the elders of the family party wished for the match when the Groves went from Field Place to town, may be inferred from the arrangement for the speedy reunion of the young people in Lincoln's Inn Fields. That Bysshe, Mrs. Shelley, and Miss Shelley, followed the five Groves to London so quickly, and spent a month with them under the same roof of Lincoln's Inn Fields, is a significant fact.

In London, as the reader doubtless remembers, the poet had other business to look after besides the pursuit of his cousin's affection. It was needful for him to come to an arrangement with a London publisher respecting those already mentioned fourteen hundred and eighty copies of _Original Poetry_, by Victor and Cazire. Needful, also, was it that he should find a publisher for _St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian_, which would soon be ready for the press. The poet's first visit to Mr. John Joseph Stockdale's place of business in Pall Mall was paid whilst he was staying with his mother, and his sister, and Harriett the Enchantress, under his cousin Grove's house, hard by Lincoln's Inn. Since he entered the publisher's office with a countenance eloquent of anxiety, one can imagine the relief it was to Cazire (the sharer of his literary toil and anxiety) to learn from Victor, on his return from Pall Mall, that he thought he saw a way out of the bother with that embarrassing Horsham printer, who wanted his money so much sooner than was reasonable and convenient.

But though she cannot have rated him highly as a partner in the dance, and does not seem at any moment to have thought seriously of taking him for a partner through life, the cousins played together prettily for two summer months. The moonlight walks at Strode and about St. Irving's Hills were followed by no less agreeable visits to the sights of the town. And when Miss Harriett returned to Wiltshire, and the youthful poet went back to Field Place, there was a commencement or renewal (Mr. Charles Henry Grove is uncertain which it was) of their correspondence through the post, that came to an end in, or shortly before, the ensuing Christmas holidays. It is not surprising that spectators of the game, who, of course, could see but little of it, mistook for an engagement what to outsiders seemed so likely to become an engagement, though it never was an affair (if I read the facts aright) that could have ended in marriage.

Peacock was justified in saying far too much had been made of this affair. On Shelley's side, it certainly was no grand passion. On Harriett's side it probably was nothing more than an innocent, perfectly feminine, and scarcely avoidable, flirtation. To please her parents rather than herself, she was something more complaisant to her cousin than she need have been. To please him, she answered the letters he rained down upon her--letters it would have been uncivil in her to leave altogether unnoticed. After fuming for a week or ten days, on being told he might not write to her again, Shelley never pretended that his heart had been seriously concerned in the affair, that he was a blighted being, that Harriett Grove had dealt him a blow comparable with the blow that drove Byron in anguish from Annesley. In this matter, at least, he was wholly guiltless of affectation, even whilst in his first annoyance he fumed and blustered in a very absurd fashion, vowing war to the bitter end with the demon Intolerance, that had severed him from his Harriett. He played a perfectly natural, though scarcely heroic, part, when he had taken time to wipe his eyes and recover his temper. The affair with his cousin had been ended only a few months, when he went off cheerily to Scotland with the sixteen-years-old daughter of a licensed victualler.

After leaving Oxford, Shelley never talked any nonsense about Harriett Grove's unkindness, never affected to have suffered much from her rejection of his suit, never accused her of having treated him badly. And so long as he lived, no nonsense was written or talked about the matter by the poet's friends. But when he had been dead for some few years, it occurred to the Shelleyan zealots, who were decrying Byron on serious questions for the advantage of their peculiar bard, that less important matters might be handled in the same way to the benefit of the poet, whom (to use an Americanism) they were 'running' against the author of _Childe Harold_. Hence the extravagant talk about Shelley's ancient lineage and patrician quality. If the opposition poet was a baron of the realm, a man of splendid lineage, a descendant from the Norman Buruns, the poet of 'the zealots' was next in succession to an English baronetcy, a gentleman of Norman ancestry, a worshipful personage, who had reason to value himself on his relationship to the Penshurst Sidneys, and on being heir to wealth that could purchase a score such places as Newstead Abbey. Hence, also, the talk about Byron's egotistic selfishness, insincerities, and affectations, which made him show disadvantageously in comparison with Shelley, who was (of course) so remarkable for simplicity and devotion to the truth, so invariably considerate for the feelings of other people, and so incapable of talking about himself in his poetry! Hence, also, the disparagement of Byron's singular facial loveliness. When he discovered that Byron's nose was too big for his face, and declared it had the appearance of having been imposed upon the face instead of growing naturally out of it, Leigh Hunt was trying (even in respect to so trivial a matter as a single feature) to reduce the poet he hated, to an equality with the poet, whose too small nose was 'a turn up,'--a blemish, that the 'Shelleyan enthusiasts' have done their best to withhold from the poet's posterity.

Hence, also, the practice of making far too much of Shelley's passion for Harriett Grove, and its disappointment. Readers do not need to be reminded what good running Byron made during life with his droll piece of romance about his passion for Mary Chaworth, and the ruin that came to him from its disappointment;--the fiction, that originated in vanity and sentimentalism, being subsequently embellished and emphasized at the instigation of the poet's spite against his unforgiving wife. But the sympathy and admiration, that came to Byron during his life from this fantastic and lovely bit of poetical fibbing, were trivial in comparison with the compassion and charity, lavished upon him in the grave by the thousands and hundreds of thousands of simple persons, who had been taught by his verse to believe he would have abounded in all the social virtues, had it not been for that unfortunate business with Mary Chaworth. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the zealots, who persisted in 'running' Shelley against Byron, determined to 'run' Harriett Grove against Mary Chaworth, and to teach mankind that Byron's passion for Mary was no grander an affair than Shelley's passion for his Harriett (the First).