He was, indeed, in his life and in his poetry, as nearly a
disembodied spirit as a human creature can be. The German poet, Heine,
said that liberty was the religion of this century, and of this religion
Shelley was a worshiper. His rebellion against authority began early. He
refused to fag at Eton, and was expelled from Oxford for publishing a
tract on the _Necessity of Atheism_. At nineteen, he ran away with
Harriet Westbrook, and was married to her in Scotland. Three years
later he deserted her for Mary Godwin, with whom he eloped to
Switzerland. Two years after this his first wife drowned herself in the
Serpentine, and Shelley was then formally wedded to Mary Godwin. All
this is rather startling, in the bare statement of it, yet it is not
inconsistent with the many testimonies that exist to Shelley's singular
purity and beauty of character, testimonies borne out by the evidence of
his own writings. Impulse with him took the place of conscience. Moral
law, accompanied by the sanction of power, and imposed by outside
authority, he rejected as a form of tyranny. His nature lacked
robustness and ballast. Byron, who was at the bottom intensely
practical, said that Shelley's philosophy was too spiritual and
romantic. Hazlitt, himself a Radical, wrote of Shelley: "He has a fire
in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic
flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic.
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