Whilst it is certain that Shelley was not dismissed from Eton for the cause he stated, it is by no means improbable that he was sent home on account of his amiable habit of cursing his own father,—a practice that cannot have favoured the moral tone of school, and on coming to the knowledge of the masters would necessarily move them to a strong expression of disapproval.
It accords with this conjecture, that the Etonians, who called on Shelley at Oxford in Hogg’s presence, obviously regarded his singular way of proclaiming his hatred of his father as the grandest and most memorable of his offences at school. The young man, whose reluctance to repeat the form of cursing for the amusement of his old schoolfellows may be fairly attributed to regretful shame, would naturally in later time shrink from confessing he had been sent away from Eton for so heinous a misdemeanour.
But though he left Eton in disgrace with the masters, the Atheist of the school does not seem to have fallen out of favour with the boys, whose regard he had won by extravagances of unruliness. Hogg speaks of the books (Greek or Latin classics, each inscribed with the donor’s name) given to Shelley by his comrades on his withdrawal from the college, and reasonably urges that the ‘unusual number’ of these parting gifts is sufficient evidence of his eventual popularity with his schoolfellows.
CHAPTER VI.
ZASTROZZI; A ROMANCE. BY P. B. S.
Literary Ambition—Biographical Value of Zastrozzi—The Etonian Shelley’s Disesteem of Marriage—Review of the Romance—Julia and Matilda—Conceits of the Romance reproduced in Laon and Cythna—Egotisms of the Prose Tale and the Poem—The Original of Count Verezzi and Laon.
The literary diversions, that occupied a considerable part of his leisure at Eton, are note-worthy indications of Shelley’s intellectual tastes and aims at a time, when delusive biography represents him as possessed by a passion for scientific studies. Having in his earlier terms at the school found congenial pastime in the composition of childish dramas, he amused himself, after coming under Dr. Lind’s hurtful influence, with translating some of the earlier chapters of Pliny’s Natural History. Medwin assures us it was the boy’s intention to produce a complete English version of that curious medley of fact and fable, but relinquished the enterprise almost at the threshold, on account of his inability to comprehend the philosopher’s chapters on the stars. In his perplexity the youthful translator is said to have sought the aid of Dr. Lind, who avoided the difficulties submitted to his consideration, and at the same time preserved his credit for masterly erudition, by telling his disciple that he had better not waste his time on passages which the best scholars could not understand. In accordance with this prudent counsel, the aspirant to literary eminence bade adieu to Pliny the Elder, and looked about him for an easier way of winning the distinction for which he hungered.
In the spring of 1809, he bethought himself that he would compete with the artists of prose-fiction, and write a novel that should make him as famous as Mrs. Anne Radcliffe and Mr. Matthew Lewis. If the son of a West Indian planter could in his nonage write a novel so famous, that he was universally styled after its title ‘Monk’ Lewis, surely ‘the heir of a gentleman of large fortune’ (as the Etonian described himself in his letter to Messrs. Longman and Co.) might in his nonage produce a romance that should cause him to be talked about as Zastrozzi Shelley. To accomplish this ambition, Shelley went to work on the novel which, certainly begun in Mr. Bethell’s house, and talked about before he left the school, was perhaps written to the last line at Eton; though, in consequence of the delays and postponements which usually attend a literary aspirant’s first steps to celebrity, it was not published by Messrs. G. Wilkie and J. Robinson, of Paternoster Row, till the summer of 1810, when the author had been for some seven or eight weeks a member of the University of Oxford.