sity, he very soon began to employ the logic which was taught him there in a pedantic endeavor to examine the principles of Christianity. The effect was what might have been anticipated. He published an infidel essay on the Being of a God, which gained him the enmity of his father, and expulsion from his college.

We say this result might have been anticipated, as the natural consequence of the investigations, in which he arrogantly engaged. And this, not that we believe true logic will do anything less than more and more illustrate the unshaken truthnay, the eternal, glorious fixedness-of our holy religion. But still there is something in our faith, so at war with the natural feelings of man, and so at enmity with everything that exalteth itself in the human heart, that the young intellect, just fledged with science, and coming, in its pride, to the examination of things, from which the vulgar are accustomed to shrink with a superstitious awe, is peculiarly ill-adapted to relish the premises on which the Bible bids us reason. The very desire to investigate was, in Shelley, incipient infidelity: simply because, it was no desire to discover truth, at all hazards, but, on the contrary, an itching to rid himself of responsibility, and, if possible, to philosophize truth away. He was dazzled with the world, and desirous of enjoying it, unrestrained. In annihilating the obstacles to such enjoyment, he was radical enough to discover the necessity of disproving the being of God himself: in which, he was certainly more consistent than those, who admitting the existence of a Supreme Being, seek by unsatisfactory excuses to absolve themselves from allegiance to his government. On this account, therefore, we do not praise that "desire to investigate." which many of the great and good are accustomed to commend, because it sounds fair, and they have full confidence in truth, as capable of defending itself. If it were, really, what it professes to be, the case would be far different; but usually it is only a desire to cavil, masked under a philosophical outside. Religion so instinctively recommends itself to conscience, that the real lover of truth is little disposed to call it in question: when, therefore, the mind begins to doubt, and to bluster about investigation, we very naturally conclude, that it finds the restraints of religion inconvenient. Of all men, moreover, the young man, is the last, to be encouraged thus to investigate. The tyro always loves to come to startling conclusions. This seems to have been the case with Shelley. Hence, they have

shown themselves but poorly acquainted with human nature, who have lauded the unhappy man, as one who would "prove all things," and drive truth to its consequences, whatever they might be. Far different was the true state of the case. But alas, poor sophist! let us give him all his due. Shelley was not like Byron, gross in his profligacy, or vulgar in his delineations of vice. Their minds were essentially different; as different as their styles; which, even where they both use the licentious verse of Pulci, are as different as the "hells of London," and the groves of Academus. A fair instance of this may be seen, by a comparison of " Beppo," with "The Witch of Atlas," or the translation of Homer's" Hymn of Mercury.' Shelley was, always, an intellectual sinner; but his tendency was downwards, and he waxed worse. The severity of the discipline which drove him from the arms of Alma Mater gained him the sympathy of many false friends, who either censured it as unnecessary, or derided it as bigotry. Again he received the applauses of the ever evil world. Yet apart from religious considerations, he deserved all his punishment and more, on principles of mere social honor. As a sworn subject of a Trinitarian university, and as a subscriber to his belief in scriptural revelation, as well as a professed member of the church of England, and an approver of her thirty-nine articles, he was perjured in his open blasphemy, and richly merited scorn as well as punishment. But there are some crimes, which, in religion the world pardons, while their equivalents, in civil matters, would be punished by the gibbet or the terrible attainder of universal contempt. By virtue of this obliquity of human judgment, away went the atheist boy, praised as a martyr of truth, and dignified with the name of a philosopher. He shortly fell in with the writings of the infidel Godwin, on "Political Justice." Its theory "haunted him like a passion." He became an idolatrous worshipper of a Themis, which like the Sculptor, he took not from other men's opinions, but which he chose to originate for himself. It is the difficulty with your soi-disant philosopher, that you never can tell exactly what he believes or rejects. He is always arriving at some new conclusion; and, if cornered in an argument, informs you that he has exploded that part of his creed himself, and now sees the point to which it was only an approximation. No one can tell what Shelley was at this period of his progress, for while he denied a God, he yet absurdly poetized about "some great pervading spirit of

intellectual beauty," and at the same time blasphemed and defied the power, which he affected to disbelieve.

And now begins his high poetical career. He published "Queen Mab," in which the most harmonious metres are desecrated to insult the majesty of the great mover of the harmonious spheres, and the dispenser of the bright beams which enlighten them. This work is backed by numerous notes, many original, some from Godwin, and others from the scoffers of France. A more ridiculous farrago than these same notes, was never seen. It consists of Jacobinism and dietetics! Yes, dietetics; for Shelley was a Grahamite; but so far did he improve upon the arguments of the "children of the captivity," that he considered the use of animal food as only not so bad as cannibalism. However, his arguments, drawn from the cruelty of destroying life, and directed against a faith that does not forbid it, are so plausible, as, in connection with his poetical views of the subject, to captivate imperceptibly, our sympathies, and through them, perhaps, to influence our judgment.

A poet's life, said Milton, should itself be a true poem. We maintain that it is always one of his poetical works. The Task written by another man would not make a Cowper; and what we know of Homer, as the blind and wandering rhapsodist, makes that counterpart to his Iliad and Odyssey, without which the world would have no Mæonides. Milton's life, and Shakspeare's, and Chatterton's, and Byron's, are essential parts of their works, as poets. Their lives, are the canvass, on which their writings seem depicted. Every one feels this; and who does not think of Anacreon, with a sympathy which perfects his notions of the Teian, when he remembers that the poet of love and wine, died, choked by a grape-stone? It is on this account that we continue to speak of the life of Shelley, in connection with his writings.

Shelley became an infidel to throw off restraint, but he did not become an abandoned debauchee. The same affectation of philosophy, which led him to enroll himself Atheist in an album kept on a Swiss mountain, was happy in preventing him from wallowing with brutes, though it scarcely justified him, in regarding himself, as, in a sense, a divinity.

Having theoretically, annihilated the great lawgiver, he no longer saw any force in law: and this, certainly with greater consistency than characterizes many of his school, who, while they reject the doctrines of any right in the Deity to interfere

with the affairs of his own world, still subscribe to the dogma originally penned by an infidel, that "governments derive a just authority from the consent of the governed!" Shelley, reasoned otherwise; and hence he came to regard the divine institution of marriage as unauthoritative, even as a civil institution. However, notwithstanding his opinion that it was an "unhallowed tie," he still suffered himself to be bound with it, before his majority; he married a woman below him in rank, and one every way unfitted for a poet's spouse. But again he perjured himself at the altar; for shortly after, in a letter to an infidel writer of the day, he enters into an apology for his having submitted to the despotism of priestcraft, and assures his fellow "reformer," that he had only done so, through a willingness to give the poor girl a place in society. In a note to one of his poems he takes occasion also, to ridicule and condemn the cruelty of public opinion in its ostracism of the degraded female. He argues the point with a coolness that sets all decency at defiance, and handles the most delicate subjects with the constrained appearance of ease, which it is common for those to assume, who condemn all modesty, as mawkishness. He affirms that chastity is no virtue, and roundly contends that its loss is no blemish in woman. One would think such notes would effectually exclude him from the boudoir not only, but also destroy all the influence of his sophistry! But his life still more forcibly demonstrates the wretchedness of the godless. The vows which, in professed tenderness for the object of his love, he had rashly assumed, were found inconvenient: and as he deemed them no longer binding when the whim was over, he abandoned the mother of his two children, in disgust, and eloped to Switzerland with-whom? No other than the daughter of the infamous Mary Woolstoncraft, by his old favorite, the infidel Godwin! What a beautiful tissue was this!

His passion was now "to reform the world," as he afterward professes in the preface of his master effort. His great beau ideal was, that "Love is the sole law which should govern the moral world." On this plausible dogma, he speculates beautifully, but not altogether intelligibly. He evidently means by it something very different from our Saviour's intention in giving almost the same command. He does not refer to that benevolence, that aɣánn towards God and man, which Scripture inculcates, and which is only attainable on the principles of the Bible. But he means an imagination of his own a strange

compound of poetry and lust, and desire of ease, pleasure, and a sort of Epicurean sans souci, delighting itself in all pleasant things, and disregarding whatever night annoy it. Still his theory is captivating, because it sounds benevolent; but it ends in the deduction, that the true way to promote human happiness is to allow every one to act his will; and especially, as to the love between man and woman, it should never be shackled by priestly bands, but should be left to come and go at pleasure. So would the world prosper, he thinks; and union inseparable with a detested object would be avoided effectually, to the great comfort of our race. Let us see the practical fruits of such theorizing! The poor girl, whom he originally swore to love, committed suicide in her abandonment; and he returned to England with Miss Godwin, whom he afterwards married at the solicitation of her father, who seems not particularly to have relished the first illustration of his principles, in his own daughter. So the farce became a tragedy, admirably adapted to teach mankind, how undesirable is the happiness that would be attained, if the world were only submitted to the tender mercies of philosophers and speculators upon Love, as the sole law of the universe.

But, no more of a history which sets decency at defiance, as well as religion! Let it go side by side with Byron's, to point a moral, and to teach us Jeremy Taylor's prayer against the dominion of sin and a consuming lust. We could not but notice it, however, as the most appropriate commentary on his poetry; for, as such, God seems to have permitted it to exist; as he did also, for the same great end, the terrible mockery of their philosophy which appeared in the death-beds of Voltaire and Thomas Paine.

Shelley's principal work, for size and style, is the REVOLT OF ISLAM, originally known as Laon and Cynthia. It is in the verse of Spenser, with some occasional irregularities, and is no less tedious, and more complex than Queen Mab, while it is by no means so ingenious as the "Faery Queen" of his great master. Still it is instinct with beauty; and its dedication to his Mary is one of the finest short pieces in our language. We suspect this work is little read even by the poet's warmest partizans, of whom, happily for us, the greater proportion are on the other side of the Atlantic. It is a dreamy thing in which, as in Spenser's great work, "more is meant than meets the ear." It requires thought and study to be appreciated; and this is