refuted an argument of mine the very existence of which I had forgotten,' and in the same letter he exclaims, 'Where am I gotten? Perhaps into another ridiculous argument.' Shelley's views at this time cannot with certainty be inferred from the arguments he uses. That he is ready to argue now on one side, now on the other, in order to test his ideas, is characteristic of youth under the first enchantment of metaphysics. 6 Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument It would seem plain that he was not only ready but eager to dispute with those who differed from him; but Mr. Lang is of the contrary opinion, and thinks that, so far from being sincere in asking for the verdict of reason on his anonymous pamphlet, this was the last thing that Shelley desired. The Necessity of Atheism, in his view, was a hoax, designed to tease bishops and dons,' and prompted merely by a love of sport and notoriety. This is a novel contention, and it is with interest that we turn to the facts on which it is based. Mr. Lang founds himself on Shelley's refusal to listen to the proffered refutation of a Mr. Hobbes. Munday and Slatter, the Oxford booksellers, ' very kindly,' as Mr. Lang has it, 'induced a poet and Liberal, Mr. Hobbes, author of The Widower, to argue against Shelley,' who refused to reply in writing. This is the only count in the indictment, but Mr. Lang presses the point home with such evident enjoyment and high spirits that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he wishes to prove the poet both fool and knave. But he would not listen to Mr. Hobbes's refutation' is Mr. Lang's thrice-repeated innuendo. Slatter, in the letter appended by Robert Montgomery to his Oxford, or Alma Mater, implies that a meeting between Shelley and Hobbes was arranged and took place, and that it was subsequent to this that Hobbes at considerable length' analysed the poet's arguments in writing, and that Shelley incontinently refused discussion. With what grace Mr. Hobbes may wear the cloak of Nemesis is shown by his poem The Widower, a copy of which is preserved in the British Museum. The book is not catalogued under the author's name, and I cannot but think that, owing to this circumstance, it escaped the examination not only of Mr. Lang, but of Professor Dowden, who minted the phrase 'Hobbes, the poet and Liberal,' as who should say a man of repute. The synopsis prefixed to the poem begins, 'Justification of and acquiescence in the will of Providence. Resignation and Devotion rational.-Vicious infidels addressed.' vicious infidels are addressed in the following terms: Say then, ye scoffers of religion, whose The From evestigating, studious research; Its character What shall the conscious favour of a God, In a further passage he asks Where, then, ye impious scorners, where Shelley fled to his rooms and sported his oak, from which refuge he wrote that he would rather meet any or all the dignitaries of the Church than one philosopher'-one such philosopher, bien entendu. One other refusal by Shelley to discuss theology is recorded. When living at Marlow Dr. Pope, a Quaker, who had made his acquaintance, challenged him to the fray. Shelley at first refused, fearing that his views would not be to his visitor's taste, but waived his objection when Dr. Pope replied, 'I like to hear thee talk, friend Shelley, I see thee art very deep.' Mr. Hobbes, at any rate, was not deep. In the philosophy of a lad of eighteen we can scarcely expect to find more than the echo of his reading. Shelley, prior to his expulsion, had eagerly devoured Hume's essays and Locke's treatise on The Human Understanding, and his Necessity of Atheism reflects the arguments he found there. His opening statement of the nature of belief is an adaptation of Locke's statement as to the nature of knowledge, and to Locke he is indebted for his premise that the senses are the source of all knowledge. The proposition that we only know cause and effect as a sequence of phenomena he derived in the first instance from Hume, in whose essays he also found his argument in regard to miracles. Traces of Hume's influence may be found, too, in his later writings, and it is at least as probable that it was Hume who effected a change in Shelley's opinions as that it was the result of dialectical discussion with his friend Hogg. His expulsion from the University would no doubt have made a deeper impression on Shelley's mind had it not been immediately preceded and followed by two events which to a youth of his emotional temperament were more momentous. The first was the estrangement of his cousin Harriet Grove, with whom he had fallen in love. 'Bysshe was at that time,' wrote her brother, 'more attached to my sister Harriet than I can express.' Harriet Grove's parents, who were alarmed at Shelley's speculative opinions, must have separated the lovers towards the close of 1810, for on the 2nd of January 1811 Shelley writes to Hogg, 'She (Harriet) abhors me as a sceptic.' The second event was the alienation of his sister Elizabeth, who had been his playmate and confidant from childhood. She was his first convert, and, as he thought, a staunch sceptic. Very naturally Shelley's contumacy had been the subject of family councils at Field Place, when he was attacked for his detestable principles' and 'reckoned an outcast,' as he complains to Hogg. Elizabeth's allegiance was already tottering when her brother was expelled, and that final stigma of disgrace appears to have decided her to renounce scepticism and all its works. This wounded Shelley to the quick, and three weeks after his expulsion from Oxford he can think and write of little else but his sister's recantation. Already the Oxford episode is almost forgotten, and, except in one letter to Godwin, he scarcely ever refers to it. Thenceforth his life is nomadic and full of feverish activity. He marries Harriet Westbrook, flies with her to Scotland and to the Lakes. Sitting at the feet of Godwin he is possessed with the phrensy of politics and social reform. He sails for Ireland to spread his gospel of 'truth and happiness,' but returns as hurriedly, and at Barnstaple pastes upon the walls his Declaration of Rights. Thence post haste to Tremadoc, where he throws himself heart and soul into the effort to reclaim land from the sea, and draws heavily on his slender purse to build the embankment which ultimately transformed the Traeth into fertile land and a dreary waste into the busy town of Portmadoc. Wherever he goes in these early years we must confess he is splendidly impossible, but there is something admirable in his headlong tilt at the world. It is of some controversial interest to examine what are the evidences of Shelley's atheism after he left Oxford. The pamphlet which in 1811 was published in hot haste, either as a speculative challenge or as the first blow in a Quixotic crusade, he deliberately republished in 1813 in the notes to Queen Mab, and the slight differences between the two versions show that he endeavoured to strengthen its contention. The Refutation of Deism, published in the following year (1814), is, according to the preface, an attempt to show that there is no alternative between Atheism and Christianity; that the evidences of the Being of a God are to be deduced from no other principles than those of Divine Revelation.' But in the powerful Letter to Lord Ellenborough (1812) and in Queen Mab he had violently attacked the 'pretended evidences' of Christianity and prophesied its decay. If God has spoken, why is not the Universe convinced? ' is his reply to the exponent of Revelation. The conclusion that in 1814 Shelley was an atheist is surely irresistible. During the summer of 1816 Shelley, with Mary Godwin and Claire Clairmont, visited Switzerland, and in the inn album at Montanvert the poet in doubtful Greek avowed himself an atheist. The inscription of the pious visitor whose effusion provoked Shelley' defiance has not been transcribed, but Trelawny states that it was to this effect: 'No one can view this sublime scene and deny the existence of God.' He adds that Shelley never regretted this action, for which he has been consistently condemned. Yet to a man of his opinions it was as natural as is the expression of his views by a fervent believer. The late Professor Huxley, in his controversy with high ecclesiastical authorities, had occasion to complain of the curious delusion of his clerical opponents that those whom they are so fond of calling" Infidels " are people who not only ought to be, but in their hearts are, ashamed of themselves.' It is a delusion to which Shelley's critics are prone. If it is an exhibition of bad taste to express opinions hurtful to the feelings of others, there are two sides to the shield. This breach of taste is committed no less by those who offend the ears of the sceptic with the aggressive expression of their beliefs than by the sceptic when he attacks Christianity. Those who are unable to believe this, who think that the sceptic is insincere, may at least realise the feelings of a Buddhist when told by a Christian missionary that his philosophy is vain. But in such a case, the reply may be made, the issues are so vital that the question of taste may be ignored. So with Shelley; he had the proselytising spirit of a Christian missionary, to him the issues were vital, only he was on the other side. Lord Crewe, as well as Mr. Hutton, has lectured Shelley for his 'foolish, bitter jest-bad Greek and bad taste.' Another view may be taken, however. To witness man's awe in the presence of mountains is to a sceptic as unpleasant as it is for any of us to perceive too plainly the resemblance between the human and the simian face. The naïve expression of this awe takes us back to primitive man-confronts us with our origins. It is not the beauty of the mountains which makes them awful to man, the most beautiful things may be of insignificant proportions; it is because they are so very large. A more reasonable attitude, perhaps, was that of the eighteenth century, when mountains were regarded as great dirt heaps, and the pious discreetly marvelled at the Creator's inscrutability in making things of such a size, whose use they were unable to perceive. No one, seemingly, has turned from Shelley's sign-manual in the inn album to his account of this holiday, the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, to discover what were his feelings at Montanvert. Yet there they are reflected, with every accent of sincerity. The mountain scenery inspired him with ' ecstatic wonder,' but the glaciers of Bossons and Montanvert affected him with horror. The verge of a glacier (he writes to Peacock) presents the most vivid image of desolation that it is possible to conceive. No one dares to approach it, for the enormous pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall are perpetually reproduced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at one extremity, are overthrown and shattered to a wide extent at its base. There is something inex 2 Literature, the 1st of January, 1898. A leaf from an inn album. pressibly dreadful in the aspect of the few branchless trunks, which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand in the uprooted soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and stones. A little further on he asks Do you, who assert the supremacy of Ahriman, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, among these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, avalanches, torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at once the proof and symbols of his reign? Add to this the degradation of the human species, who in these regions are half-deformed or idiotic, and most of whom are deprived of anything that can excite interest or admiration. To Shelley the devastating glacier was an evil force, its icy plains as cruel as the burning marl which Satan trod. If we are to suppose that his pamphlet, the Necessity of Atheism, was a hoax, if with Lord Crewe we interpret his sign-manual of Atheism five years later as a 'foolish, bitter jest,' if with Browning we consider Shelley' a man of religious mind who would have finally ranged himself with the Christians,' we must conclude that his Letter to Lord Ellenborough and his Refutation of Deism were also only his fun.' If these were Shelley's jokes small wonder that he earned a reputation for a lack of humour. But what then becomes of his sincerity, that quality which all who knew him deemed his salient virtue ? There is another circumstance the significance of which has hitherto been overlooked. Shelley's two children by his first wife, Ianthe and Charles, remained in Harriet's charge until her death, when he did everything in his power to gain possession of them. He was devoted to his children, as Peacock attests. The bill of complaint filed by their maternal grandfather, John Westbrook, who resisted Shelley's application, set forth as one of the chief grounds of complaint that the father' avows himself to be an atheist,' and 'has written and published a certain work called Queen Mab, with notes, and other works' wherein he has blasphemously derided the truth of the Christian Revelation and denied the existence of God as the Creator of the universe.' The other complaints dealt with his views on marriage and his conduct in living with Mary Godwin. Lord Eldon, after examining the various publications, said, 'There is nothing in evidence before me sufficient to authorise me in thinking that this gentleman has changed, before he arrived at the age of twenty-five, the principles he avowed at nineteen; I think there is ample evidence in the papers and in conduct that no such change has taken place.' He did not decide the case, however, on the point of atheism. The judgment by which Shelley was deprived of his children was based on his opinions and conduct taken together, and on the influence on conduct of his opinions, whether opposed to marriage or religion. But Shelley could not have foreseen the basis of the judgment. His |