change of life and thought which they built upon the fact to which they testified, and the persecutions which they endured for their faith in it, there is no ' reappearance,' there is scarcely even any historical fact of any kind the evidence of which is as strong as that which we have for the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

But the reader is now in a position to judge whether we were wrong in representing Mr. Haweis's book as a crude and careless attempt to teach both naturalism and supernaturalism at the same time---to satisfy himself and others that they can possess the inheritance of the Lord, and at the same time serve the gods of the heathen that are round about them. It cannot be done. You cannot eat your cake and have your cake-deny supernaturalism in every particular case, but assert it in general. That which Mr. Haweis regards as a reconciliation of religion with science and thought is really an expulsion of religion from all influence in life. It is impossible that any constraining influence in morality should proceed from a system which demands no faith and no obedience, but yields, and that with an apology, to any pressure from the earthly reason or the tendencies of human society. Mr. Haweis thinks to recommend Christianity by showing that men may take its phrases into their mouths without ever lifting their minds beyond the same natural circle within which their visible and material life is passed. But he may rely on it, the same levelling process which brings such ease of adoption, deprives religion of all its characteristic power. It is because its agencies and its methods are something more than those with which our physical nature is in contact, that it commands our consciences, comforts our souls, and uplifts our hopes, with a power which is peculiar to itself, and which the world, with whatever ornaments of sentiment you deck its materialism, can never give.

ART. III.-SHELLEY AND THE SHELLEY

SOCIETY.

1. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By EDWARD DOWDEN, LL.D. (London, 1886.)

2. Publications of the Shelley Society. (London, 1886-87.)

IN the face of the large amount of interest which seems to be taken at the present time in the life and writings of the poet Shelley, we do not think it necessary to indulge in any apology to our readers for handling a subject which might at first sight seem to them a little out of place in the pages of the Church Quarterly Review.

If,

We feel, too, that we have a duty to perform. No one who is acquainted with certain phases of modern literature can fail to observe that, mingled with the admiration of Shelley which is at present so common, there is a considerable amount of laxity on moral questions. Appreciation of his poetry is becoming more general, and this leads naturally to affection for his character and even sympathy with his principles. then, we can show that it is possible to admire his poetry without worshipping him as a deity; if we can enable our readers to form a just estimate of the strength and weakness of his character; above all, if we can convince any 'Shelleyist' of the absurdity of his position and keep him from adopting the cant and mannerisms of his sect, we shall feel we are doing some good work. We shall have to touch on the very gravest questions of morals and religion, and we shall have to show that literary taste is perfectly consistent with decency of behaviour-a statement which probably seems a truism to our readers, but would certainly be looked upon as a paradox by some persons who are probably not among our readers.

The continually increasing bulk of the literature about Shelley has recently been swollen from two sources. The foundation of the Shelley Society has led to the production of a large number of somewhat strange books, and the publication of Professor Dowden's new Life has provided an excuse for a large number of estimates of his character. We propose first of all to examine both these new sources of information.

The popularity of Shelley has been continually increasing, and at the present time is at its height. There is certainly no limit to either the size or the number of the editions of

his works which are published. But he is not, and cannot be, a popular poet, He enjoys many devoted adherents, many enthusiastic admirers, who lavish their money, time, and energies on his service; and perhaps it is this excessive enthusiasm which interferes with the true appreciation of his merits. Certainly, neither his own nor his worshippers' reputation for sanity is increased by the existence of the Shelley Society. We suppose we ought to feel some admiration for the genius and energy of a man who can style himself the founder of an unknown number of literary societies, in addition to being the champion of Sculls versus Oars, and who has published voluminous 'trial Forewords,' collecting all the information which no one wants to know. As founder of the Wycliffe Society, Dr. Furnival will have the merit of having taught the believers in 'the Morning Star of the Reformation what very different opinions he held to what they do. The New Shakspere and Spenser Societies at any rate publish works which are rare and difficult of access; but for the existence of the Browning and Shelley Societies it is really hard to find a reason. The former may injure the reputation of a living man, but he can take care of himself, and perhaps, with his broad interest in human nature, can tolerate the insipidities of his blue-stocking admirers. At any rate, it is a harmless society, which we venture to affirm is more than can be said of the Shelley Society whose aim seems to be to advertize to the world that Shelley wrote a great deal which was extremely foolish. Like those editors of his proseworks who republish his puerile novels and rescue them from the oblivion which they deserve, by an elaborate critical apparatus which notes every variation in commas and semicolons, it feels that whatever 'bears the impress of the divine Master' must be religiously preserved and reproduced. Nothing is too small, nothing too trivial. It is without any sense of perspective. The Essay in Vindication of Natural Diet seems as important to it as the Epipsychidion, and the notes to Queen Mab contain the sum of his philosophy. Money is lavished on reproducing in facsimile reprint the first editions very often of his most inferior and ephemeral works, on hand-made paper (which certainly does not imitate the original), and preserving all the bad punctuation and spelling (in one case the errors of foreign printers), which we should have thought might have been dispensed with. Does not prudence, at any rate, suggest that a facsimile reprint of Laon and Cythna will not add to the popularity of its author? It is probable that at the end of his life he would have seen the folly of con-

stituting himself the champion of incest; and loyalty to their eponymous hero might have suggested to his adherents that they should not publish abroad follies or crimes which demand a defence. But we really think that the very lowest depth of folly is reached when a society of educated and cultivated men announce among their publications for 1887 a facsimile reprint of the Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, with a Portrait of Margaret Nicholson-poems so bad that it is uncertain whether they are meant for serious or burlesque poetry, and the portrait of an obscure maniac whose only title for distinction is that she shot at George III. and contributed a name to some of the worst of Shelley's juvenile attempts at writing verses. We think that the Shelley Society has drained the cup of silliness to the dregs. But their proudest title to fame is to have shown what a very doubtful success the Cenci is as a stage play, and what a very decided failure the Hellas can be made. They have succeeded in making the ordinary Philistine, who has at any rate the advantage of numbers, undesirous of making acquaintance with the works of a poet whose worst productions are paraded before him. After all, we do not wonder that any well-bred Englishman or decent woman shows some distaste for the poet when they see what kind of stuff his admirers are made of. Their mental calibre is what might be expected from a continued nourishment on the writings of Shelley and Swinburne and other masters of musical rhythm. Their views combine unpractical idealism with an immense superiority to all existing institutions. Their conversation rarely rises above the commonplace of literary gossip, or the repetition of the most barren freethinking formulas, but they imagine it is philosophical and intellectual. With the mind of the most illeducated stump orator or a well-educated parrot, they imagine they are at the summit of the mental pyramid. They imitate the faults and follies of their hero, but not his virtues. They show their superiority to the world by despising its conventionalities. They ruin their health by an excessive consumption of tea and of whatever is unwholesome in vegetarian diet. If they are men, they may be known by their low turn-down -collars, by their cadaverous countenance and would-be poetic aspect; if they are women, by a style of dress which is by turns slovenly and meretricious. Luckily they are generally young, they are better than they make themselves out to be, and a few years of experience and knowledge of the world works. wonderful transformations.

If we asked them to desist in the name of public opinion,

or of religion, or of decency, or of conventional morality, or common sense, it would be useless, for we should be appealing to principles which they do not recognize. But there is one appeal which they can recognize: they are genuine in their admiration of and their devotion to Shelley; one thing they feel is that his poems have not even yet attained the general popularity they deserve, and we venture to think that it is the persistency of his admirers to praise his worst qualities which causes this. What wonder if ordinary Englishmen hesitate to admire a man who is sedulously put before them as one who had the courage to follow his opinions in spite of 'faith and custom,' the joint cause of all the ills of humanity, when they hear him spoken of as a champion of something very like free-love; when they are told that he is a great philosopher, and find that his philosophy reduced all the causes of evil to the restraints of law and order; when they are asked to admire Queen Mab, and Swellfoot the Tyrant, and are shown the eight volumes of prose and poetical works half filled with writings of which even Shelley himself, when his mind was matured, was ashamed; when, above all, they find that many of the devotees at his shrine are just what they would rather not be? When they see all this they naturally feel somewhat inclined to withhold their admiration for the beauty of his poetry and of his character. The truest friends of Shelley are his most discriminating critics, and the best edition of his works would be one which contained only those poems of his which are worth reading. But enough of the Shelley Society.

We must attempt now to estimate the value of Professor Dowden's new work. The last narrator of the life of Shelley has had the advantage of succeeding to the labours of all his predecessors, and has had at his disposal a large number of unpublished documents, all the papers in the possession of the Shelley family, and a very large number in other hands: the work may in fact be considered as an authoritative Life of the poet. The author has himself spared no trouble, and neglected no source of information; he has bestowed on his book an immense almost an excessive-amount of care. The life, not only of Shelley, but also of the various members of the circle that surrounded him, is narrated with the greatest minuteness, his money affairs are investigated with great care, and no detail is omitted of his frequent changes of residence. For our own part we should like to make a protest against the length of the book; we cannot help remembering that Johnson's Lives of the Poets (to take one instance) do not occupy