“Ah! they were sly fellows. None but men who were reputed to devote themselves for many hours to prayers, to religious meditations and holy abstractions, would ever have been permitted quietly to place at pleasure such a barrier between themselves and the world. We now reap the advantage of their reputation for sanctity. I shall revere my oak more than ever, since its origin is so sacred.”
CHAPTER III
The sympathies of Shelley were instantaneous and powerful with those who evinced in any degree the qualities, for which he was himself so remarkable—simplicity of character, unaffected manners, genuine modesty and an honest willingness to acquire knowledge, and he sprang to meet their advances with an ingenuous eagerness which was peculiar to him; but he was suddenly and violently repelled, like the needle from the negative pole of the magnet, by any indication of pedantry, presumption or affectation. So much was he disposed to take offence at such defects, and so acutely was he sensible of them, that he was sometimes unjust, through an excessive sensitiveness, in his estimate of those who had shocked him by sins, of which he was himself utterly incapable.
Whatever might be the attainments, and however solid the merits of the persons filling at that time the important office of instructors in the University, they were entirely destitute of the attractions of manner; their address was sometimes repulsive, and the formal, priggish tutor was too often intent upon the ordinary academical course alone to the entire exclusion of every other department of knowledge: his thoughts were wholly engrossed by it, and so narrow were his views, that he overlooked the claims of all merit, however exalted, except success in the public examinations.
“They are very dull people here,” Shelley said to me one evening, soon after his arrival, with a long-drawn sigh, after musing a while. “A little man sent for me this morning and told me in an almost inaudible whisper that I must read. ‘You must read,’ he said many times in his small voice. I answered that I had no objection. He persisted; so, to satisfy him, for he did not appear to believe me, I told him I had some books in my pocket, and I began to take them out. He stared at me and said that was not exactly what he meant. ‘You must read Prometheus Vinctus, and Demosthenes De Corona and Euclid.’ ‘Must I read Euclid?’ I asked sorrowfully. ‘Yes, certainly; and when you have read the Greek I have mentioned, you must begin Aristotle’s Ethics, and then you may go on his other treatises. It is of the utmost importance to be well acquainted with Aristotle.’ This he repeated so often that I was quite tired, and at last I said, ‘Must I care about Aristotle? What if I do not mind Aristotle?’ I then left him, for he seemed to be in great perplexity.”
Notwithstanding the slight he had thus cast upon the great master of the science that has so long been the staple of Oxford, he was not blind to the value of the science itself. He took the scholastic logic very kindly, seized its distinctions with his accustomed quickness, felt a keen interest in the study and patiently endured the exposition of those minute discriminations, which the tyro is apt to contemn as vain and trifling.
It should seem that the ancient method of communicating the art of syllogising has been preserved, in part at least, by tradition in this university. I have sometimes met with learned foreigners, who understood the end and object of the scholastic logic, having received the traditional instruction in some of the old universities on the Continent; but I never found even one of my countrymen, except Oxonians, who rightly comprehended the nature of the science. I may, perhaps, add that, in proportion as the self-taught logicians had laboured in the pursuit, they had gone far astray. It is possible, nevertheless, that those who have drunk at the fountain head and have read the Organon of Aristotle in the original, may have attained to a just comprehension by their unassisted energies; but in this age and in this country, I apprehend the number of such adventurous readers is very considerable.
Shelley frequently exercised his ingenuity in long discussions respecting various questions in logic, and more frequently indulged in metaphysical inquiries. We read several metaphysical works together, in whole or in part, for the first time, or after a previous perusal by one or by both of us.