CHAPTER XI.

THE CHRISTMAS VACATION OF 1810-11.

Presentation copies of _St. Irvyne_--Shelley resorts to Deception--Shelley in Disgrace at Field Place--Harriett Grove's Dismissal of her Suitor--The Squire's Anger--Mrs. Shelley's Alarm for her Girls--Shelley's Troubles--His Rage against Intolerance--His Wild Letters to Hogg--'Married to a Clod'--Stockdale's Design--His Intercourse with Shelley's Father--More Negotiations with the Pall-Mall Publisher--Shelley a Deist--Controversial Correspondence--Shelley's Attempt to enlighten his Father--His Passage from Deism to Atheism--The Squire relents to his Son--Hogg invited to Field Place--Stockdale's Disappointment--Hogg invited to Field Place--Stockdale's Character--His Scandalous _Budget_.

Leaving Oxford at the end of Michaelmas term, 1810, and journeying to Sussex by way of London, Mr. Bysshe Shelley was at Field Place on the 18th of December, on which day he wrote to Mr. John Joseph Stockdale, of Pall Mall, expressing approval of the publisher's advertisement of _St. Irvyne_, and begging him to send a copy of the absurd story to each of the three following persons:--Miss Marshall, of Horsham, Sussex; Thomas Medwin, Esq., of the same place; and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Esq., at the Reverend Mr. Dayrell's, Lynnington (a misspelling of Lillingstone) Dayrell, Buckinghamshire. At the same time the author requested that six copies should be sent to himself, and observed, at the close of his brief note, 'I will enclose the printer's account for your inspection in another letter;' words of some moment to the reader who would get a view of the circumstances that soon resulted in the young author's rupture with his publisher. Under ordinary circumstances, the printer's bill for printing a book published at the author's risk would be paid by the publisher, and would not come under the author's notice save as an item of his publisher's account. Paying the printer with a bill, or with ready-money, on which discount would be allowed, the publisher would charge the author with the full sum of the printer's account, making on the transaction a considerable profit (to the amount of the discount), if he pays the printer in 'cash' and is promptly repaid by the author. Mr. Stockdale, of course, would not have been slow to arrange for getting this advantage, had he not by the middle of December discovered grounds for mistrusting the author's ability to pay the charges for which he was responsible; or had he not somehow come to the opinion that the author (a minor) should be pressed for immediate payment of the costs of producing a book, whose sale would necessarily be trifling. That Mr. Gosnell, of Little Queen Street, London (the printer to whom Mr. Stockdale had himself sent 'the copy' of _St. Irvyne_, after the MS. had been 'fitted for the press'), was thus asked to press the author for immediate payment for the printing, is alike significant of the publisher's distrust of the author's solvency, and of the publisher's unfavourable opinion of the book.

If he was not in trouble and disgrace at Field Place from the first moment of his return to his boyhood's home, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley did not pass many days of the Christmas vacation in Sussex, before his father spoke to him sharply, and his mother regarded him with sorrowful disapproval. A letter he wrote to Hogg on 20th December, 1810--a letter to be found in Hogg's _Life_--shows that, at so early a time of the holidays, he found himself in a position of divers annoyances, several humiliations, and much embarrassment. Acting in the name of their daughter, and also with the authority pertaining to them as her natural guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Grove, of Fern House, Wiltshire, had written to Field Place, expressing reasonable surprise and displeasure at their nephew's conduct in abusing the privileges of familiar intercourse so far and so outrageously as to write his cousin Harriett Grove (_ætat._ 17 to 18) letters, whose main purpose was to draw her into religious controversy, and lure her from Christianity,--the faith in which she had been educated; the faith of her parents and kindred. To Mr. and Mrs. Grove, it necessarily seemed that in thus acting towards their daughter, Bysshe had acted dishonourably, and shown himself unworthy of the love he required from her; unworthy even of the friendly intercourse with her, to which he had been entitled as her near kinsman. Under these circumstances, Shelley was informed that his correspondence with Miss Harriett Grove must be stayed at least for the present, and that his hope of marrying her must be dismissed for ever.

Holding old and wholesome views on certain questions of honour, though he certainly was no person to be compared with the Saviour of the World, Mr. Timothy Shelley concurred in the sentiments of Fern House on this affair, and told his son so in terms none too daintily worded. 'The Fiery Hun' blushed to think he had a son capable of sapping the faith and principles of a young lady, to whose familiar confidence he had been admitted under conditions of which no gentleman, old or young, was unmindful. To poor Mrs. Shelley, the case was even worse. Regarding the point of honour with her husband's eyes, she thought also of the monstrous wickedness of her first-born child, who, throwing from him the truths of the Christian religion, had covered them with ridicule. In alarm, she thought of her girls. If Bysshe could act thus wickedly to his cousin Harriett, what was there to withhold him from acting in like manner to his sister Elizabeth? He and she were so closely attached to one another, that it was their practice to read and walk and write poetry together. During the whole of his single term of residence at Oxford, there had been letters passing between them. Had he already inspired the dear girl with sceptical sentiment? Instead of submitting to her father and mother, as Harriett Grove had done, the evil counsel he was giving her, had Elizabeth taken his impious words to heart? Was she pondering them secretly, and brooding over them, in doubt whether she should reject them as false, or hold to them as true? Or had she embraced them no less impetuously and strongly than furtively? Was she already a disbeliever?--an infidel? Then the terrified mother thought of her younger girls,--Mary, and Hellen, and Margaret. If he could tamper with the religious tenets of so young a girl as Elizabeth, still only sixteen years old, what was there in the tenderness of their infantile years to render Bysshe more heedful for the spiritual health and tranquillity of Elizabeth's younger sisters?

It needs no lively imagination to conceive the terror that agitated this anxious mother, to realize the apprehensions that, fretting her spirits incessantly, gave her sleepless nights and sorrowful days. Instead of being touched and subdued by the words and looks, that made him cognizant of her maternal solicitude, the young gentleman (who might have been the Saviour of the World) wrote lightly to his fellow-collegian on January 11, 1811, about his mother's alarm. She imagined him on the high road to perdition. She fancied him set on making infidels of his little sisters. Could anything be more laughable? It was, however, no laughable matter to the poor lady; and it should not have been a matter for laughter with her son. Why was his mother a simpleton for allowing such fears to trouble her, when the young gentleman was craftily and insidiously sapping his eldest sister's belief in Christianity, apportioning the new doctrine of Free Thought with nice consideration for her girlish timidity, and for the weakness of her intellect,--giving it in doses large enough to awaken and stimulate curiosity, without stirring her to amazement and horror?

As he was working in this condescending and considerate manner on Elizabeth's darkness and weakness on the 26th of December, 1810, why was his mother a mere goose for fearing he might be no less condescending, and considerate, and slily beneficent to Elizabeth's younger sisters?

Moreover the time was near at hand when, in his fanatical intolerance of all opinion from which he differed, the youthful philosopher regarded Elizabeth's younger sisters as quite old enough to digest the crumbs of truth, that fell from his lips. With all her disposition to minimize and palliate the feelings of her poet, Lady Shelley admits that such a youngster as the Oxonian Shelley would be a perplexing member of any household with a brood of children to be thought for. Indeed, she even goes the length of saying that, before accusing Mr. Timothy Shelley of treating his heir with inadequate tenderness, people should ask themselves how they would like to have in their houses a Spinozist or a Calvinist, so set on making converts, as to seek them in the butler's pantry or the children's schoolroom. Lady Shelley is even more particular, in moving every Christian mother to think, how she would like to entertain for her guest a Spinozist, desirous of making her 'youngest daughter' concur in his opinions.

Readers should bear in mind how clearly the author of _Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources_, intimates that, instead of being the absurd and laughable fancy her son declared it, poor Mrs. Timothy Shelley's fear for the spiritual safety of her younger girls was nothing less than a reasonable anticipation of what actually took place in their schoolroom, in respect to the youngest of them, before the poet turned his back on Field Place for ever.

Just about the same time at which his attention was called to his son's sceptical opinions, and his zeal for making converts to them, by Mr. and Mrs. Grove, of Fern House, Mr. Timothy Shelley received some information, touching the same matters of painful interest from Mr. John Joseph Stockdale, of Pall Mall. As the man of business, who lived to be one of the blackest sheep of 'the trade,' was at no point of his career a person of extraordinary worth, the readers of the present chapter are not required to attribute the publisher's action in this particular business to any sincere concern for the younger gentleman's welfare, or for his father's happiness. Before he became uneasy about the printer's bill, for whose payment he was of course responsible, should the undergraduate of University College fail to pay it, Mr. Stockdale had been warned by several circumstances to exercise greater caution in his dealings with the young gentleman, whose _Original Poetry_ had proved so inconveniently wanting in originality. _Zastrozzi_, of which he doubtless took a view after learning the name of its publisher, can scarcely have raised the author of the Victor-and-Cazire book in Mr. Stockdale's estimation. The quality of _St. Irvyne_, and the pains he had himself taken to fit it for the press, cannot have disposed the man of business to think highly of the author's ability. What he had heard about _The Wandering Jew_ cannot have disposed the publisher to think less contemptuously of the young gentleman's literary parts and ambition. The note touching the Hebrew Essay to the discredit of the Christian religion, was only one of several matters, to indicate to the publisher that his youthful client's reading would possibly result in perilous writing. One can imagine how the publisher of novels and inferior poetry received the suggestion that he should publish the novel on _Metaphysical and Political Opinions_. On the approach of the Christmas holidays (1810-11), it was clear to Mr. Stockdale he had better press for a pecuniary settlement with Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley; and in case the young gentleman was not likely to pay his debt, to take measures for getting the money out of the young gentleman's father. Hence, the publisher's earlier interviews with the Member for New Shoreham, who was instructed that his son had fallen into evil hands at Oxford, and was a supporter of sceptical philosophy. How little the publisher got by his pains, and how he avenged himself on the Member of Parliament, whom he failed to bleed, are matters for subsequent pages.

When he wrote to Hogg on the 20th of December, 1810, Shelley had endured and was still enduring several sharp annoyances. Angry words had escaped 'the Fiery Hun,' who scolded his son for writing ridiculous books when he should be reading learned ones at Oxford; scolded him for running into debt with a publisher and printer, whom he had no means of paying; scolded him for adopting the damnable opinions of Hume, Paine, and the other infidels; scolded him royally for his most ungentlemanlike behaviour, in trying to lure his cousin Harriett from the sound Christian principles in which she had been educated by her most virtuous and exemplary parents. It was the way of fathers to scold their sons thus royally at the beginning of the present century; and it being part of the paternal style of George the Third's time, no sound-hearted and loyal-hearted son ever resented so wholesome, though somewhat turbulent, an exercise of paternal authority. Now-a-days, fathers bring, or try to bring, their disorderly sons to meet contrition, with less noise and more dignity, but with speech quite as galling at the time, and more likely to rankle in the memory. To argue that Mr. Timothy Shelley was brutal and wanting in natural affection, because he scolded his naughty boy in this manner, is wild nonsense. However roundly he was spoken to, Mr. Bysshe Shelley received nothing more than he deserved. For awhile the father threatened to take his son from Oxford at once, but the threat was not carried out. It would have been better for Shelley had his father held to the threat. Mr. Bysshe Shelley's grand averment that the menace was withdrawn, because he 'would not consent to it,' is a delicious piece of puerile 'bounce.'

Shelley had reason for discontent. Forbidden to write to his cousin Harriett, he imagined, for a few days, he had loved her vehemently. Dismissed by her on account of his opinions, he deemed himself the victim of religious intolerance. By turns he thought of committing suicide, and wreaking his vengeance on the religion, which he held accountable for his greatest trouble. Swearing on what he was pleased to call the altar of perjured love, he vowed he would put an end to religious intolerance, by slaying secretly, stabbing secretly, the creed and the sentiment which generated religious intolerance. Dismissing the thought of killing himself, he confirmed himself in his purpose to kill superstition; and whilst maturing his plans for the achievement of this resolve, he determined to pursue his literary enterprises. But as 'the Fiery Hun' disapproved of his dealings with publishers, he determined to conceal his literary designs from his parents. On this point he wrote with instructive frankness to Hogg. 'There is now,' he wrote to his friend, 'need of all my art: I must resort to deception.' The deception he practised was to work on a new novel, with a view to early publication, whilst telling his father and mother he had no intention of publishing anything again. 'Inconveniences would now result from my owning the novel,' he wrote to Hogg, 'which I have in preparation for the press. I give out, therefore, that I will publish no more.' It pleased him to know that every one believed his false statement, with the exception of the few, who, being in his confidence, knew that it was a falsehood. One of the persons thus taken into his confidence was his sister Elizabeth (_ætat._ 16), whom he thus educated in deceit, by telling her how he was deceiving their parents. This was the course taken by the singularly outspoken and truth-loving Shelley in his own home,--towards his father and mother on the one hand, and towards his sister on the other. At the same time, whilst deceiving his father and mother, he was debating how he could impose his new book on a publisher by misrepresenting the tendency and purpose of the work. He was afraid that, though a thick-skulled man, Stockdale would detect the falsehood of the statement he was ready to make about the book.

What further evidence can readers of ordinary intelligence and temper require that, instead of being more outspoken and truth-loving than other people, the poet suffered from a deficiency of that repugnance to untruth which is the prime characteristic of English gentlemen; that he was capable of telling untruths, and did tell them, for small ends that would not draw Englishmen of average veracity a single hair's-breadth out of truth's clear and straight path? Of course the facts, which cannot fail to bring impartial readers to this painful conclusion, are regarded in another way, by those 'Shelleyan enthusiasts' who idolize the author of _Laon and Cythna_ as a being worthy of being likened to the Saviour of the World. The facts that to impartial minds are evidential of the poet's untruthfulness, the most extravagant of the Shelleyan zealots regard as so much evidence that their idol possessed an inordinately powerful imagination. What stronger evidence can there be of the overpowering vigour and sway of his fancy, than that so lofty and faultless a being could imagine himself capable of deceiving his publisher, of telling falsehoods to his father and mother, of educating his younger sister in untruth; and could, moreover, deliberately write himself down guilty of these flagrant offences, of which so faultless a being must have been innocent as the new-born babe?

Scarcely less noteworthy than his avowal of the deceit he is practising on his father and mother, are the terms in which Shelley refers to the abrupt termination of his correspondence with Miss Harriett Grove, and declares his purpose of avenging himself on Intolerance for the annoyance that has come to him from the lady's disapproval of his religious scepticism.

As Miss Harriett Grove had never promised to be his wife, but had on the contrary persisted in assuring her cousin Elizabeth that she might not anticipate a successful issue to her brother's suit, this talk about 'perjured love' was very much out of place. Still it did no harm; and as the young gentleman felt it needful to swear on something, and was precluded by the exigencies of the case from swearing 'on the book,' he, perhaps, exercised a wise discretion when he elected to 'swear on the altar of perjured love.' To swear what? That, because he was very much annoyed at being sent about his business by Miss Harriett Grove, and at being otherwise reprimanded for troubling her mind with sceptical sentiments, he would make war upon Intolerance, would fight Intolerance to the bitter end, would be the death of Intolerance, would 'stab the wretch in secret.' This was the oath sworn on the altar of perjured love! Having suffered, more in self-love than in any other of his affections, from a young lady's disapproval of his religious opinions, and from her parents' no less cordial repugnance to those opinions, Mr. Bysshe Shelley regarded himself as a victim of religious intolerance. Yet further,--seeing that Christians, intolerant of opinions antagonistic to their religious tenets, would not be intolerant Christians were it not for their Christianity, he determined to render them tolerant by slaying the religion which he regarded as the source of their intolerance. 'Indeed, I think it,' he wrote, 'to the benefit of society to destroy the opinions which annihilate the dearest of its ties,'--_i.e._ the ties uniting such lovers as Mr. Bysshe Shelley and Miss Harriett Grove were, before religion separated them. As the war against Christianity had begun long before the poet's severance from his cousin, which was, indeed, one of the consequences of the war, it would, of course, be absurd to attribute the poet's hatred of the religion to the anger begotten of his dismissal by Miss Grove. But in accounting for the vehemence with which Shelley pushed the war, and the spirit in which he extended the field of his operations, and from being the enemy of a single faith became the foe of all religions, readers must make allowance for the sense of personal injury which animated him to swear he would slay Religious Intolerance.

In the letters which Shelley poured upon Hogg, from the 20th of December, till the end of the academic vacation, one comes upon much more about Harriett Grove, and his correspondence with her. To skim these flighty and rhapsodical letters is to miss the information that may be extracted from them. But to study them carefully is to take the present writer's view of Shelley's regard for his cousin, from the summer of 1810.

It is clear the cousins never plighted troth to one another. On 23rd December, 1810, Shelley wishes to know, whether he did wrong in luring his cousin to correspond with him, in order that they 'might see if by coincidence of intellect,' it would be well for them 'to enter into a closer, an eternal union;' the desire for information being clothed in words, amounting to an admission there had been no regular engagement. In the same letter, speaking of Miss Grove's coldness, Shelley speaks also of the failure of his sister's efforts to make the self-possessed beauty regard him with feelings warmer than those of cousinly kindness. That the young gentleman's strongest affections were not concerned in the affair appears from the fact that, within eight days of swearing on the altar of perjured love, he could write with comparative calmness of his inability to fall in love at present with any other young lady.

In language that may be suspected of having contributed something to Lord Dundreary's colloquial style, he wrote to Hogg, on 28th December, 1810, 'at present a thousand barriers oppose any more intimate connexion, any union with another, which, although unnatural and fettering to a virtuous mind, are nevertheless unconquerable.' After writing thus calmly, however, he relapsed into moods, of alternate dejection and fury. He 'slept with a loaded pistol and some poison last night' (_i.e._ 2nd January, 1811), 'but did not die.' Again he vowed vengeance on the religious intolerance that had robbed him of his Harriett. On the 11th January, 1811, he wrote fiercely to Hogg, 'She is gone! She is lost to me for ever! She is married! Married to a clod of earth; she will become as insensible as himself; all these fine capabilities will moulder!'

It may not be inferred from the words 'She is married,' that the gentlewoman had already become a wife, or that Shelley meant to do more than announce her engagement to Mr. William Helyar, of Coker Court, Co. Somerset, whose wife she became in November, 1811, two months after the future poet's Scotch marriage to Harriett Westbrook. Bearing in mind the old distinction between marriage and its celebration, and remembering, at the same time, the ancient doctrine of the Church, that a mere matrimonial contract was wedlock--though not yet celebrated and sanctified into _holy_ wedlock--readers must take the words as a mere declaration that Miss Grove had plighted her troth to her future husband. The old ecclesiastical law, which made matrimonial pre-contract a sufficient ground for nullification of marriage, was based on the doctrine that an interchange of nuptial promises was, in itself, marriage. In his 'anti-matrimonialism'--a sentiment growing more and more powerful in the author of _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_--Shelley, disdainful of the ecclesiastical celebration, looked upon the interchange of promises ('the engagement' of ordinary parlance) as the real marriage; and in doing so he was (strange to say) in accord with the canonists, and with the old matrimonial law that, surviving in North its extinction in South Britain, was, even to yesterday, generally known as 'the Scotch marriage-law.'

The clod of earth had a good many acres of land in Wiltshire, Somerset, and Devonshire, and instead of being the senseless and soulless wretch it pleased Mr. Bysshe Shelley to imagine him, was a gentleman of good repute in the three shires, for each of which he was a magistrate. Heir to an ample estate, he married Miss Harriett Grove in November 1811, and living with her till death divided them, was never moved to transfer his affections to another lady. Would life have gone thus pleasantly with the gentlewoman, who became the mother of children fair and gracious as herself, had she yielded to the suit of her scatter-brain cousin?

Whilst he was fuming over his sentimental misadventure, and writing extravagant nonsense about the 'altar of perjured love,' not so much because he felt his cousin's unkindness acutely, as from a notion that the poetical proprieties required him to use the language of indignation and wretchedness, Mr. Bysshe Shelley made frequent mention of his sister Elizabeth in the letters he sent in steady stream to the young gentleman, who had been entreated to fall in love with her.

It sadly disarranged the brother's plans for his sister's welfare, that he could not invite his peculiar friend forthwith to Field Place. The reason why he could not do so was that his father, already instructed by Stockdale to attribute his son's scepticism to the influence of his Oxford friend, had declared his opinion of Mr. Hogg in terms, which satisfied Bysshe he had better not ask for permission to summon the incomparable Hogg to Sussex. But though he could not bring them together for the present, the match-making brother did his best to inspire his sister and his college-friend with a sentimental regard for one another, that could not fail to result in mutual love, so soon as they should come together. Speaking to his sister of his friend in terms of vehement admiration, he read her the letters that came to him in steady stream from his idolized and incomparable Hogg. That Hogg (whose sense of humour was allied with a liberal measure of romantic sensibility) delighted in the notion of becoming his friend's brother-in-law, and during the holidays even went so far as to bind himself to fall in love with Miss Shelley, appears from the letter in which Shelley overflowed with gratitude for so great a concession to his wishes. 'How,' wrote Shelley to his friend, 'can I find words to express my thanks for such generous conduct with regard to my sister, with talents and attainments such as you possess, to promise what I ought not, perhaps, to have required, what nothing but a dear sister's intellectual improvement could have induced me to demand?' At Oxford it had been enough for Shelley to declare a hope that Hogg would become his brother-in-law. From Field Place, during the Christmas holidays, the enthusiastic stripling begged Hogg to promise he would satisfy the hope.

Whilst he thus arranged a match between Hogg and his sister, Shelley knew that his friend was a Freethinker on questions relating to religion. From what had recently taken place in respect to his sceptical correspondence with Miss Harriett Grove, he knew that his father and mother concurred with his uncle and aunt Grove in regarding religious scepticism with repugnance and horror; knew that his father and mother would regard their eldest daughter's marriage to a Freethinker as a terrible and supreme calamity. Yet he was coolly and secretly scheming for such a marriage of their sixteen-years-old daughter, and was cautiously 'illuminating' her out of the Christian religion, and otherwise training her to become the fit wife of a man, whom he had good reason to know her parents would never consent to accept for their son-in-law. The young gentleman does all this in absolute indifference to the rights and feelings of his own father and mother--with absolute carelessness for the serious trouble he is preparing for his father, the agonizing sorrow he is preparing for his mother. Am I wrong in saying that the young man (_ætat._ 18), who acted in this manner to his father and mother and his younger sister, was guilty of domestic treason?

What was the literary enterprise on which Shelley was at work during the earlier weeks of this Christmas recess (1810-11)?--the work that was offered to Mr. Stockdale during the recess?--the work about whose publication Mr. Hogg, whilst staying at a London hotel, had several interviews with the Pall-Mall publisher, who, sixteen years later, professed to have been most unfavourably impressed by the Oxonian's appearance, speech, and manner, at those interviews? The general opinion of the 'Shelleyan enthusiasts' is that the work thus submitted to the bookseller was _The Necessity of Atheism_, the pamphlet that resulted in Shelley's expulsion from his college? Mr. Garnett has no doubt that the work was 'either the unlucky pamphlet which occasioned Shelley's expulsion from Oxford, or something of a very similar description.' Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy goes a step further, and speaks of it roundly as the manuscript of _The Necessity of Atheism_. That the manuscript, which afforded Stockdale another opportunity for warning Mr. Timothy Shelley to remove his son from Mr. Hogg's pernicious influences, was a sceptical performance is unquestionable. But there are grounds for a strong opinion that it was neither _The Necessity of Atheism_, nor any tract written on the same lines as that notorious pamphlet. The evidence is conclusive that up to the time, and beyond the time, when Stockdale was invited to publish the pamphlet, Shelley believed in the existence of a supreme Deity. He had for a considerable period ceased to be a Christian. But he still believed in God. To hold, therefore, that the manuscript declined by Stockdale was _The Necessity of Atheism_, or 'something of a _very similar description_,' is to hold that whilst believing in God Shelley wrote a book to prove there was no God; that whilst believing in the existence of the Deity he set himself deliberately to work, to force other people into pure atheism. I cannot believe with Mr. Garnett, and Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy, that Shelley was capable of such amazing impiety. Nothing is stranger in Shelley's story than that the hardest things said of him should, in so many cases, be uttered by his extravagant idolaters. My conception of the Oxonian Shelley is that he was an impetuous, unruly, combative young scatterbrain; disloyal and deceitful to his parents; certainly capable of falsehood in comparatively small matters to other people; but I cannot believe he could have been so false to his own soul, so prodigiously false to his own convictions on the most awful of all solemn subjects, as to write and seek a publisher for a serious argument against the belief in God, whilst he himself believed in the Deity.

Let us see from evidences, known to Mr. Garnett, when he wrote his _Shelley in Pall Mall_, what were some of Shelley's views respecting God, in the Christmas holidays of 1810-11. On 26th December, 1810, he writes to Hogg from Field Place:--

'Thanks, _truly_ thanks, for opening your heart to me, for telling me your feelings to me. Dare I do the same to you? I dare not to myself, how can I to another, perfect as he may be. I dare not even to God, whose mercy is great.'

On 3rd January, 1811, the future poet writes to the same correspondent:

'The word "God," a vague word, has been, and will continue to be, the source of numberless errors, until it is erased from the nomenclature of philosophy. Does it not imply "the soul of the universe, the intelligent and necessarily beneficent, actuating principle." This it is impossible not to believe in. I may not be able to adduce proofs; but, I think, that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are, in themselves, arguments more conclusive than [any] which can be advanced [....] that some vast intellect animates infinity. If we disbelieve this, the strongest argument in support of the existence of a future state instantly becomes annihilated.'

Nine days later (12th January, 1811), the future poet writes from Field Place:--

'I here take God (_and a God exists_) to witness, that I wish torments, which beggar the futile description of a fancied hell, would fall upon me; provided I could attain thereby that happiness for what I love, which, I fear, can never be!... I wish, ardently wish, to be profoundly convinced of the existence of a Deity, that so superior a spirit might derive some degree of happiness from my feeble exertions; for love is heaven, and heaven is love.... I think I can prove the existence of a Deity--a First Cause.'

After declaring thus emphatically his belief in the existence of a Deity, Shelley goes on to argue in defence of his conviction.

Thus Shelley is found declaring his belief in the existence of God so late as 12th January, 1811, when the work declined by Stockdale (the work said by Mr. Garnett to have been either _The Necessity of Atheism_, 'or something of a very similar description'), must have already been in the publisher's hands. The post did not travel seventy years since so quickly as it travels in these railway times; the work, whatever it was, could not have been written in a day; brief though it is, _The Necessity of Atheism_ could not have been designed and put on paper in a single morning; yet, on 14th January, 1811, Shelley could write indignantly to Hogg:--

'S[tockdale] has behaved infamously to me; he has abused the confidence I reposed in him in sending him my work; and he has made very free with your character, of which he knows nothing, with my father.'

Moreover, on the 12th January, 1811, Hogg (who saw Stockdale about the work during his stay in Lincoln's Inn Fields) had left London some six or eight days. It is, therefore, certain that Shelley was believing in the existence of God at a time when Mr. Garnett represents him as set on teaching men that atheism was a necessity.

When did Shelley discard the reasons which had hitherto constrained him to believe in the existence of God? Clearly at some time subsequent to 12th January, 1811. Who caused him to discard them?--Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg. To readers of Shelley's afore-mentioned letter of 12th January, 1811, it is obvious, from the arguments with which he essays to demonstrate the reasonableness of his belief in a Deity, that, though still clinging to his belief in God, he was already troubled by, and battling with, his doubts on the subject. His mind had been so troubled for several days. On 6th January, 1811, he had written from Field Place to Hogg, 'I will consider your argument against the non-existence of a Deity.' In reply to Hogg's arguments for _The Necessity of Atheism_, Shelley does his feeble best (on 6th January, 1811) to demonstrate their unreasonableness. If Shelley's arguments were sufficient for their purpose, Hogg had argued with less than his usual ability. Shelley's arguments are puerile, and he clearly felt their insufficiency, when he followed them up with these words: 'But I will write again; my head is dizzy to-day, on account of not taking rest, and a slight attack of typhus.' Hence it appears that from 6th to 12th January, Hogg was arguing against the existence of God, and Shelley was more earnestly than strenuously arguing for the belief in Deity. If he was dizzy on 6th January, after replying to Hogg, he was yet more so on 12th January, 1811, after striving to prove the existence of God.

The poor lad's head was dizzy, but not from want of sleep, or from typhus fever: Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg had dizzied it with his ingenious arguments against the existence of Deity. One can conceive how the clever, hard-headed, humorous young gentleman from the neighbourhood of Stockton-upon-Tees, smiled over his friend's letters, and exulted at the signs of his plaything's perplexity. It mattered not a rush to Mr. Hogg, of University College, Oxford, on which side of a question he argued. Having done his best to dizzy his young friend out of his belief in God, and convince him of the necessity of atheism, Mr. Hogg tacked about, and five or six days later amused himself by constructing some equally ingenious arguments to convince his young friend of the necessity of Christianity. On the 12th of January, 1811, after fighting desperately for the preservation of his belief in God, the poor boy with the dizzy brain writes to his tormentor: 'But now, to your argument of the necessity of Christianity, I am not sure that your argument does not tend to prove its unreality,' All through this perilous game Hogg was at play, whilst Shelley was in earnest,--far too much in earnest to be capable of publishing a tract against God's existence, whilst he believed in it. What was sport to Hogg was death to Shelley,--at least, to his happiness in this world.

Towards the close of the Christmas vacation, Mr. Timothy Shelley seems to have worked off his anger with his son, and taken him into affectionate consideration--though, of course, neither into high favour nor perfect confidence. Having thrown off his wrath in scolding with tongue and pen, the Member of Parliament for New Shoreham relented to his scatterbrain boy, so far as to talk with him sympathetically on the very questions that had caused their disagreement. This change of feeling may have resulted in some degree from the advice of judicious counsellors. The Duke of Norfolk, whose opinion was weighty with Mr. Timothy Shelley in his private concerns, no less than in his political affairs, may have been one of these judicious counsellors; for his Grace had already displayed a kindly interest in the future poet, and in later time was at great pains to mediate between the father and son, and recover them from open war to an appearance of mutual friendliness. The Horsham miser, whose word of definite command was law to the son he hated, may also have used his influence in favour of the grandson, for whom he cherished in his cold and selfish breast a secret and curiously malicious tenderness. An atheist himself, who, on the approach of death, spoke with equal confidence and contentment of his own utter annihilation, the aged baronet was in no degree shocked by the youngster's religious, opinions. On the contrary, he contemplated them with self-complacence as the fruits of his own teaching and example, and as indications that the lad would develop into a creditable chief of the Castle Goring Shelleys. Approving his grandson's heterodoxy, and liking him none the less for being a thorn in his father's side, Sir Bysshe may be assumed to have given the Squire of Field Place a significant hint that the boy was not to be rated and denounced out of his grandsire's favour. In accounting, however, for the alteration of Mr. Timothy Shelley's demeanour to his heir, it is only fair and reasonable to suppose that the change was in some degree due to the paternal affectionateness and good sense of this gentleman, who could not shut his eyes to the fact that he was his son's father. Anyhow, it is inconsistent with much which has been written of the father's invariable harshness to the youthful poet, that towards the middle of January, 1811, he could invite his son to a friendly conference on the evidences of Christianity.

Ever in the humour for controversy, it is needless to say that Mr. Bysshe Shelley (whose great grievance against the 'dons' of University College was that they expelled him _without_ arguing with him) accepted this invitation without requiring his father to repeat it. For a few minutes the youngster's brain and heart kindled with a desire to enlighten his father out of his Christian darkness, and the hope that by winning so strange a convert he should make himself master of the religious position at Field Place. For a few minutes the discussion was more than satisfactory and encouraging to the beardless apostle of Free Thought. Admitting it was absurd to believe in witches and ghosts, Mr. Timothy Shelley allowed that the mediæval miracles were the mere offspring of vulgar fancy and vulgar credulity. But on being pressed to take the same view of the Scriptural miracles, the worthy gentleman faced about, and held stoutly to his delusions, making it only too manifest that he could not be argued and illuminated out of them.

By the considerations which determined him to ascertain his son's religious opinions, the Squire of Field Place was also brought to see that, instead of denouncing his son's familiar friend without knowing him, even as he had denounced his religious views without apprehending precisely what they were, it would be better for him to look Mr. Hogg clearly in the face, make his acquaintance, talk to him in friendly wise, and judge for himself how far the young gentleman from the neighbourhood of Stockton-upon-Tees had been fairly described, and how far misrepresented, by the Pall-Mall bookseller. Mr. Timothy Shelley was far too robust and intelligent a gentleman to put implicit reliance in Mr. Stockdale's judgment, and to have perfect confidence in the honesty of the publisher, who, after giving a 'minor' pecuniary credit for conveniences scarcely to be rated as 'necessaries' for an Oxford undergraduate, was now looking to the minor's father for payment of 'the little account.' Quite shrewd enough to see Mr. Stockdale's motive and game, Mr. Timothy Shelley, whilst listening to him with abundant civility, and thanking him with all the customary courtesies for his valuable information, saw the necessity of checking the publisher's statements with intelligence, gained from other, and possibly less equivocal, sources. Acting like a sensible man of affairs and the world, the Member of Parliament made inquiries about Mr. Stockdale, and also inquiries touching Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, and Mr. Hogg's people in Durham Co. and Yorkshire; the result of the inquiries being that he thought none too well of the bookseller, and a good deal better of Mr. Hogg. Hence it was that, whilst adopting a conciliatory tone to his son on the religious questions, Mr. Timothy Shelley ceased to speak harshly, and began to speak civilly to his son, of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, whom he now knew by good report, as well as by ill report, though only by report.

At the same time, it became obvious to the Squire of Field Place that he had better have the friendly regard of the young gentleman, who certainly had considerable influence over his son. Hence it was that the Squire, little imagining the conspiracy for marrying his eldest daughter to the young gentleman he had never seen, told Shelley to invite his college-friend to Field Place for the next Easter vacation:--a concession that, attended with other indications of the Squire's change of feeling for Hogg, caused Shelley to think his father must have received a favourable account of the Durham Co. and Yorkshire Hoggs, from some of his friends in the House of Commons.

The visit was never paid by Hogg; but to the date of the catastrophe, which, driving them from Oxford, was quickly followed by incidents that rendered Hogg no person to be welcome at Field Place, the friends looked forward to the Easter recess as a time that would be fruitful of opportunities for the accomplishment of their designs on the eldest daughter of the house.

The knavish publisher of 41 Pall Mall, had small reason to congratulate himself on the success of his machinations for separating Bysshe Shelley from his friend; for rendering Hogg the object of Mr. Timothy Shelley's strongest aversion; and for inducing the Squire of Field Place to pay the costs and charges of the publication of _St. Irvyne_. Instead of separating the two undergraduates, the schemer had the pleasure of knowing they were even closer friends at the beginning of February than they had been in the earlier weeks of December. Instead of rendering Hogg especially distasteful to Mr. Timothy Shelley, the schemer had only stimulated the Member for New Shoreham to make inquiries, which disposed him to think favourably of his son's friend. Instead of making Mr. Timothy Shelley mistake him for a worthy man, who was entitled to handsome reward for important service, the schemer got never a shilling for his pains. For breach of confidence and slanderous tattle, Hogg whipt the dirty fellow with a scorching letter. For the same offence the paltry creature was punished in the same manner by Shelley. Having heard the tale-bearer out to the end of his cunning talk, Mr. Timothy Shelley saw no reason why he should pay a sixpence of the bill which he had declared no affair of his, on the first hint that he would act gracefully and generously by settling the claim. Having exhausted his store of pleasant words for such a creature, Mr. Timothy Shelley turned from the man with a sufficiently frank avowal of contempt.

Mr. John Joseph Stockdale was no person to smart acutely from disdainful words. He was, of course, uneasy to think he had provoked the enmity of the two young men, who a short while hence might be able to injure him in his business; but, had it not been for this consideration, he would read their angry letters with more amusement than annoyance. Mr. Timothy Shelley's scorn would have passed over his thick skin without causing him aught more than transient uneasiness, had it been accompanied with a cheque for the required sum. But it galled Mr. John Joseph Stockdale to miss the trick for which he had played so meanly,--galled him all the more because he was conscious of having played his poor cards badly. It must be confessed that the cards were no less weak than dirty. A cleverer rogue than Mr. Stockdale would have failed to win with them. Had he, in 1811, been the rich man he became in later times, Mr. Timothy Shelley might well have declined to pay the publisher's demand, and thereby encourage other literary speculators to produce his son's works in the expectation of being paid by his father. But till Sir Bysshe passed from the world, the Squire of Field Place, far from being wealthy for his station, was in no position to spend a hundred guineas lightly. Under these circumstances, the gentleman with several children and a pecuniary prospect that might even yet be darkened by the caprice of his eccentric father, was more than barely justified in saying that his son's publisher must look to his client, not to his client's father, for remuneration. It was not in Mr. Stockdale to take this obvious and reasonable view of a simple question. The money Mr. Timothy Shelley refused to give him was regarded by Mr. Stockdale as money basely and fraudulently withheld. To the publisher's imagination the sum he failed to extort became a sum of which he had been robbed; the injury done him being the more outrageous and exasperating because he had rendered the doer of the wrong an important service.

In 1827, when the poet had been dead between four and five years, the publisher took his revenge on the perpetrator of so monstrous an injustice. By that time the embittered knave had dropt from the ways of decent trade, and was falling to the deeper disrepute in which he soon passed from view. A fabricator of scandalous literature as well as a publisher of it, he had already produced the _Memoirs of Harriet Wilson_, when he started the _Budget_, that bears his name, as a vehicle for airing a vanity, which had in some degree deranged a mind long fretted by imaginary grievances, and as an instrument for venting his spite on those who had provoked his displeasure, no less than as means of drawing relief to his indigence from the lovers of personal gossip. In this sordid serial, the broken and utterly discredited libeller produced a mendacious narrative of his transactions with Shelley and Shelley's father. As he could get nothing in 1827 by abusing Shelley, it is not surprising that he spoke well of him at the instigation of self-interest, vanity, and spite. The man knew enough of the literary coteries to know the tide of social feeling had so far turned in Shelley's favour that, whilst disparagement of the poet would not fail to offend, praise of him would not fail to conciliate the readers, most capable of commending the _Budget_ to public favour. For the same reason vanity prompted the fellow to represent himself as the original discoverer and earliest fosterer of the poet's genius. In praising the poet he was also actuated by spite against the poet's father, whose treatment of his son would appear harsh and hateful, in proportion to the strength of the reader's conviction that the poet deserved different usage. On the other hand, though chiefly actuated by malice, the libeller was also animated by vanity and self-interest in what he wrote to Sir Timothy Shelley's discredit; for whilst it afforded him a pleasant sense of his own importance to speak authoritatively of a baronet's misdemeanour, the slanderer knew the growing appetite for words to the poet's credit was attended with an even keener appetite for evidence to his father's discredit. Hence, whether he spoke of the poet or the poet's father, he spoke at the instance of self-interest, vanity, and malice.

Such was the man, such were the motives of the man, in whose malignant and nauseous gossip about the poet and his father, Mr. Garnett discovers 'traces of sincere affection' for the author of _Laon and Cythna_. Not content with gushing over Stockdale's 'sincere affection for the young author whose acquaintance was certainly anything but advantageous to him in a pecuniary point of view,' Mr. Garnett deals with the words of this professional slanderer as good evidence, that in their bitter differences the poet was guiltless of serious offence, and that the poet's father was greatly to blame.

'Stockdale,' says Mr. Garnett, of this creditable witness to character and want of character, 'had frequent opportunities of observing the uneasy terms on which the two stood towards each other, and unhesitatingly throws the entire blame upon the father, whom he represents as narrow-minded and wrong-headed, behaving with extreme niggardliness in money matters, and at the same time continually fretting Shelley by harsh and unnecessary interference with his most indifferent actions.'

What a use to make of the words of a slanderer-by-trade, a libeller surcharged with rancorous enmity against the poet's father! To insult Shelley by making his character depend in any degree on the words of such a rascal as Stockdale, it is necessary that a man of letters should be a 'Shelleyan enthusiast.'

It is not a fact that 'Stockdale had frequent opportunities of observing the uneasy terms on which the two stood to each other.' With the exception of the two or three occasions when the father and son came together to the Pall-Mall shop, Stockdale never saw them together. Doubtless there was uneasiness between them on those occasions, for they met on matters of disagreement, and in the presence of the man who, for his own advantage, was doing his best to render the father more than usually distrustful of, and anxious about, his son. The whole period of Stockdale's acquaintance with Mr. Timothy Shelley was covered by the few weeks, during which time they exchanged letters and had two or three conferences touching the poet's affairs,--the few weeks during which the unscrupulous tradesman was vainly endeavouring to wheedle the Member of Parliament into paying the minor's bill for the publication of _St. Irvyne_. What opportunities can so brief and slight an intercourse have offered the publisher for using influence to dispose Mr. Shelley to be a better father? To believe the fellow's impudent statements, one must believe that during those few weeks he assumed an almost parental authority over the gentleman on whose pocket he had designs. In 1827 sixteen years had elapsed since this slight intercourse of less than two months. How strange that after so many years, Stockdale should have had so clear a memory of the incidents of this slight intercourse,--so distinct a recollection of the peculiarities of the gentleman with whom he spoke on three or four occasions, and exchanged perhaps as many letters! How strange that 'the Shelleyan enthusiasts'--so suspicious and distrustful of the accuracy of Hogg's recollections of his most familiar friend whom he knew thoroughly--should accept so readily the publisher's recollections of the gentleman, of whom he knew scarcely anything!

The same reflections are applicable to Stockdale's vivid recollections of the Oxonian Shelley, and to Mr. Garnett's reliance on the accuracy of those recollections. Though they exchanged letters in January, 1811, and had some disagreeable correspondence in later months of the same year, it does not appear that Shelley ever set eyes on the Pall-Mall publisher after December, 1810. The whole period of their personal intercourse cannot have exceeded four months:--months spent chiefly by Shelley at Oxford or in Sussex, whilst the publisher was attending to his affairs in London? To assume that during these four months they had a dozen meetings is to assume too much. It is more probable that they talked with one another on seven or eight several occasions. What opportunities could such an acquaintanceship afford the publisher for knowing his young client in such a way, that sixteen years later he could recall him clearly? Is it reasonable to suppose that the publisher during these interviews (and from several letters in no degree calculated to fill their receiver's breast with tender emotion) conceived a strong affection--or any affection whatever--for the boy out of whom, or rather out of whose father, he meant to 'make a bill?'

One might as reasonably imagine a money-lender overflowing with love for any young gentleman 'in his teens,' to whom he lends 50_l._ on the usual terms. Are London publishers so very different from other men of business, that they do business with youthful poets and novelists from impulses of affection, altogether pure of self-interest? I know something of London publishers: few men have better reason to think and speak well of them; to my last hour of consciousness I shall never recall a particular London publisher, without remembering him as one of the trustiest and dearest of the many friends who have contributed to my happiness; but still my impression is, and my experience has been, that a publisher's regard for a young author has a tendency to rise and fall with the sale of the young author's works. _St. Irvyne_ having fallen dead from the press, even as Mr. Stockdale expected it to do, I have no doubt that Mr. Stockdale merely regarded his young author as a simpleton, whom he would not trust on any future occasion (during his minority) to pay the printer's bill. To do Stockdale justice (and even to such a worm I would not be less than just) it should be remarked that he is no such preposterous 'humbug' as Mr. Garnett's words imply. Though he whines hypocritically about 'his too conscientious friendship' for Mr. Bysshe Shelley, of University College, Oxford, the professional libeller does not profess to have loved the youth, with whom he was doing 'risky business.' In 1827, the disposition to think tenderly of Shelley had not gone so far as to produce a crop of 'Shelleyan enthusiasts' capable of believing that the publisher loved the author of _St. Irvyne_. Had Stockdale claimed credit for loving the dear boy, who came to his shop about the _Original Poetry_ that was not original, the original readers of the _Budget_ would have derided him, and denounced his _Budget_. Though he says civil things of Shelley, to heighten the effect of the uncivil things said of Shelley's father, Stockdale forbears to descant on his affection for the future poet. It is enough for him to say, 'Even from these boyish trifles' (_i.e._ _St. Irvyne_, and the _Victor-and-Cazire Book_), 'assisted by my personal intercourse with the author, I at once formed an opinion that he was not an everyday author.' In saying this (as he meant the ambiguous words to be construed in the way most complimentary to the poet) the budgeteer told a lie,--but a lie not too outrageous to be believed. Further (to insult Sir Timothy Shelley, who in the scribbler's opinion had refused to discharge 'every honest claim upon him'), the libeller spoke highly of the poet's 'honour and rectitude,' declaring him a man to 'vegetate, rather than live, to effect the discharge of every honest claim upon him.' But to speak of a man in this style is not to show signs of loving him. I know an author who certainly is no 'everyday author,' and would (I am sure) be at great pains to pay his creditors twenty shillings in the pound; but far from loving him, I would any day rather go without my dinner than eat it in his company.

Truth to tell, the 'traces of a sincere affection for the young author,' which Mr. Garnett has discovered in Stockdale's words about Shelley, are so far from being distinctly apparent, that I have vainly sought for them in the pages, where they are so manifest to the author of _Shelley in Pall Mall_. I think Mr. Garnett goes a little too far in saying--

'Percy Shelley captivated all hearts: the roughest were subdued by his sweetness, the most reserved won by his affectionate candour.... In spite of his disappointment, Stockdale really appears to have been captivated by Shelley, and to have been not more forcibly impressed by the energy of his intellect than by the loveliness of his character.'

Gentlemen given to gushing often say more than they mean. I cannot conceive Mr. Garnett means all he says in his perplexing article. I have vainly worked through Stockdale's _Budget_ in search for the proofs, that Stockdale was forcibly impressed by the intellectual energy and moral loveliness of the author of _St. Irvyne_. But the 'Shelleyan enthusiasts' are so apt to weaken their case by exaggeration; they are so excessive in their statements. The notion that Stockdale the Libeller was a man to be captivated by moral beauty is comical.