the reputation of his son. Shelley has been held in abhorrence as an atheist by a host of people. At Oxford, where he saturated himself with Hume, he wrote a pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism," sent copies to the Vice-Chancellor and heads of the houses, and was promptly expelled. Later he wrote Queen Mab," at the mature age of eighteen. These performances made an immense local sensation and put his name permanently on the black list. People did not realize, apparently, that he was a boy in years; nor did they understand that he never really came in contact with God at all. He was raging against an irresponsible, tyrannical, incredible deity who bore as little resemblance to the God of the New Testament as did Baal or Moloch. So far as this aspect of Shelley's career was concerned, it is not too much to say that it was the dawning of the true Godidea in his mind that set him in battle against the tribal God of a partialistic and dying theology. "Change the name," said Robertson, one of the most saintly spirits of our time, "and I will bid that character defiance with you." The real stain on Shelley's fame is his separation from Harriet Westbrook and his "free-union with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. This act, which inevitably brought tragic consequences in its train, is not to be justified on any ground; but while it cannot be condoned, it can be explained. In Shelley's revolt against what he believed to be the tyranny and injustice of society he rejected legal marriage as a form of conven tional slavery for women, the source of many oppressive and unjust laws. In this position there is no doubt of his entire sincerity; it was a moral conviction, not a disguised plea for license. Mr. Woodberry puts the case admirably when he says, "The belief of Shelley in love without marriage was an extreme way of stating his disbelief in marriage without love." So deep and so sincere was his horror of a legal relation without the justification of love that he disowned the relation itself. When he left Harriet, he explained his position to her with entire frankness, and made provision for her support; he went to Switzerland with Mary Godwin, who had derived the same indifference to marriage from her parents, and he had the incredibly bad taste to invite Harriet to join them there! All |