[236] Shelley. By J. A. Symonds.
[237] Cuvier’s Leçons d’Anatomie Comp., Tom. III., pages 169, 373, 443, 465, 480. Rees’ Cyclop., Art Man.
[238] Inasmuch as at this moment there are in this country more than two thousand persons of all classes, very many for thirty or forty years strict abstinents from flesh-meat, enrolled members of the Vegetarian Society (not to speak of a probably large number of isolated individual abstinents scattered throughout these islands, who, for whatever reason, have not attached themselves to the Society), and that there have long been Anti-flesh eating Societies in America and in Germany, the à fortiori argument in the present instance will be allowed to be of double weight.
[239] “See Mr. Newton’s Book [Return, to Nature. Cadell, 1811.] His children are the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to conceive. The girls are perfect models for a sculptor; their dispositions also are the most gentle and conciliating. The judicious treatment they receive may be a correlative cause of this. In the first five years of their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 7,500 die of various diseases—and how many more that survive are rendered miserable by maladies not immediately mortal! The quality and quantity of a mother’s milk are materially injured by the use of dead flesh. On an island, near Iceland, where no vegetables are to be got, the children invariably die of tetanus before they are three weeks old, and the population is supplied from the mainland.—Sir G. Mackenzie’s History of Iceland—note by Shelley.”
[240] Revolt of Islam, v. 51, 55, 56.
[241] Lately given to the world by Mr. Forman who has carefully collated and printed from Shelley’s MSS.
[242] English Cyclopædia.
[243] Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. Moxon.
[244] Shelley. By J. A. Symonds.
[245] See preface to The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. New edition. London, 1869. The increasing reputation of Shelley is proved, at the present time, by the increasing number of editions of his writings, and by the increasing number of thoughtful criticisms and biographies of the poet, by some of the most cultured minds of the day. Since the time, indeed, when a popular writer but sometimes rash critic, with condemnable want of discernment and still more condemnable prejudice, so egregiously misrepresented to his readers the character as well of the poet as of his poems—which latter, nevertheless, he was constrained to admit to be the most “melodious” of all English poetry excepting Shakespere, and (their “utopian” inspiration apart) the most “perfect”—(Thoughts on Shelley and Byron, by Rev. C. Kingsley, “Fraser,” 1853,) the pre-eminence of the poet, both morally and æsthetically, has been sufficiently established.