Notes to The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley | Page 6

having been frequently reprinted, the omission would be vain. In the
former edition certain portions were left out, as shocking the general
reader from the violence of their attack on religion. I myself had a
painful feeling that such erasures might be looked upon as a mark of
disrespect towards the author, and am glad to have the opportunity of
restoring them. The notes also are reprinted entire--not because they are
models of reasoning or lessons of truth, but because Shelley wrote them,
and that all that a man at once so distinguished and so excellent ever
did deserves to be preserved. The alterations his opinions underwent
ought to be recorded, for they form his history.
A series of articles was published in the "New Monthly Magazine"
during the autumn of the year 1832, written by a man of great talent, a
fellow-collegian and warm friend of Shelley: they describe admirably
the state of his mind during his collegiate life. Inspired with ardour for
the acquisition of knowledge, endowed with the keenest sensibility and
with the fortitude of a martyr, Shelley came among his fellow-creatures,
congregated for the purposes of education, like a spirit from another
sphere; too delicately organized for the rough treatment man uses
towards man, especially in the season of youth, and too resolute in
carrying out his own sense of good and justice, not to become a victim.
To a devoted attachment to those he loved he added a determined
resistance to oppression. Refusing to fag at Eton, he was treated with
revolting cruelty by masters and boys: this roused instead of taming his
spirit, and he rejected the duty of obedience when it was enforced by
menaces and punishment. To aversion to the society of his

fellow-creatures, such as he found them when collected together in
societies, where one egged on the other to acts of tyranny, was joined
the deepest sympathy and compassion; while the attachment he felt for
individuals, and the admiration with which he regarded their powers
and their virtues, led him to entertain a high opinion of the
perfectibility of human nature; and he believed that all could reach the
highest grade of moral improvement, did not the customs and
prejudices of society foster evil passions and excuse evil actions.

The oppression which, trembling at every nerve yet resolute to heroism,
it was his ill-fortune to encounter at school and at college, led him to
dissent in all things from those whose arguments were blows, whose
faith appeared to engender blame and hatred. 'During my existence,' he
wrote to a friend in 1812, 'I have incessantly speculated, thought, and
read.' His readings were not always well chosen; among them were the
works of the French philosophers: as far as metaphysical argument
went, he temporarily became a convert. At the same time, it was the
cardinal article of his faith that, if men were but taught and induced to
treat their fellows with love, charity, and equal rights, this earth would
realize paradise. He looked upon religion, as it is professed, and above
all practised, as hostile instead of friendly to the cultivation of those
virtues which would make men brothers.
Can this be wondered at? At the age of seventeen, fragile in health and
frame, of the purest habits in morals, full of devoted generosity and
universal kindness, glowing with ardour to attain wisdom, resolved at
every personal sacrifice to do right, burning with a desire for affection
and sympathy,--he was treated as a reprobate, cast forth as a criminal.
The cause was that he was sincere; that he believed the opinions which
he entertained to be true. And he loved truth with a martyr's love; he
was ready to sacrifice station and fortune, and his dearest affections, at
its shrine. The sacrifice was demanded from, and made by, a youth of
seventeen. It is a singular fact in the history of society in the civilized
nations of modern times that no false step is so irretrievable as one
made in early youth. Older men, it is true, when they oppose their
fellows and transgress ordinary rules, carry a certain prudence or
hypocrisy as a shield along with them. But youth is rash; nor can it
imagine, while asserting what it believes to be true, and doing what it
believes to be right, that it should be denounced as vicious, and pursued
as a criminal.
Shelley possessed a quality of mind which experience has shown me to
be of the rarest occurrence among human beings: this was his
UNWORLDLINESS. The usual motives that rule men, prospects of
present or future advantage, the rank and fortune of those around, the

taunts and censures, or the praise, of those who were hostile to him, had
no influence whatever over his actions, and apparently none over his