licentiousness. It was moreover added, that, to carry out his own theory, he was keeping a seraglio at Marlow.

"His love," says a reviewer, "was not the love which is said to be of God, and which is beautifully coupled with joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance."

He was assailed as belonging to a miserable crew of atheists or pantheists, who had just sense enough to abuse the "pure and holy philosophy of Wordsworth," without possessing either heart or principle to comprehend its import, or follow its application.

When such were the sentiments with which he was saluted by the more enlightened class of his countrymen, we need not be surprised at the impression he seems to have left behind him at Marlow.

His desire to reform the world, with which a reviewer upbraided him, exhibited itself in a variety of ways; and coming occasionally in contact with his neighbours, he did not disdain talking to them on topics that were far beyond their comprehension.

His system of philosophy excluded the idea

of the existence of a spirit of evil, and it is easy to conceive that the poet's unconventional mode of life, no less than his want of orthodoxy, gained him many enemies among the inhabitants of a provincial town.

It must be allowed, however, that he was fond of shocking people, and he often excited their religious horror by the disrespectful manner in which he spoke of the devil, in order to prove whose non-existence he would sometimes adopt a singular method.

At the solemn and mysterious hour of midnight he would direct his course towards the woods of Bisham, for the purpose, as he said, of invoking the devil: when there, he would employ every form of incantation to induce him to appear. On his return, he would astonish and terrify the unsophisticated minds of his listeners with the account he gave of the opprobrious and disrespectful epithets he employed to induce his Satanic majesty to shew himself—but, of course, without effect.

This peculiarity of the poet seems to have produced feelings which William Howitt found

to exist when he visited Marlow thirty years afterwards. At that period he still had chroniclers among the poor of his benevolence and unassuming kindness, but the little to be gleaned from other classes was not such as might be desired of a man like Shelley.

An old shopkeeper, a grocer, living near to the poet's residence, remembered him, and hoped his children did not take after him, for he was a very bad man;" but on being interrogated as to the poet's bad actions, he explained that Shelley had not been guilty of any bad actions that he knew of-on the contrary, he was uncommonly good to the poor-but then he did not believe in the devil!

The grocer's wife also bore testimony to Shelley's want of orthodoxy in this repect.

The poet had christened his boat the "Vaga," and she related with much apparent satisfaction, how a wag had on one occasion added the letters bond to the name printed at the stern, remarking :

"Mr. Shelley was not offended; he only laughed; for you see he did not believe in the

VOL. II.

G

devil, and so he thought there could be nothing

But even at Marlow, Shelley had his admirers. Mr. Maddocks, like his namesake in Wales, seems to have known him only to love him; and if he did not always understand his strange, spiritual talk, he is proud of his having slept under his roof, and of his having in many ways partaken of his hospitality; nor does it appear, whatever the feeling excited by his unbelief in the devil, that there was anything to be said against the poet in his general dealings with the good people of the place, as the following amusing anecdote will illustrate.

When William Howitt visited Marlow, he endeavoured to gather all possible reminiscences of Shelley. After many fruitless enquiries, he at last found out the surgeon, who had attended almost everybody for the last half century.

He was an old man, nearly ninety. He recollected little of Shelley himself, except that he was very unsociable, kept no company but Mr. Peacock's, and was always either boating or walking about book in hand. He, however, * William Howitt's "Homes and Haunts of the Poets.""

succeeded in finding some one who knew all

about Shelley.

Introduced into the surgeon's back parlour, Howitt met there a tall well-dressed man in black, and with a very solemn aspect.

It is the squire of the place, thought Howitt. It is Shelley's executor, thought the man in black. They bowed solemnly, and Howitt at once proceeded to interrogate the other on the subject of his enquiry.

The man in black, however, was very taciturn, and slow to impart information. He pointed out Shelley's house, said he knew the poet very well, that he was a very extraordinary man, a very good man, and very honest in all his dealings.

"But," exclaimed Howitt, "can you give me any information concerning him beyond all this?"

It was evident that the man in black possessed some secret, but not till Howitt's patience was fairly exhausted, did he unburden himself. He at last exclaimed, after considerable hesitation, that he did know something about Mr. Shelley.