“Upon my soul, Shelley, your style of going through a Greek book is something quite beautiful!” was the wondering exclamation of one who was himself no mean student.
As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour of his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of his life most conspicuous.
His food was plain and simple as that of a hermit, with a certain anticipation, even at this time, of a vegetable diet, respecting which he afterwards became an enthusiast in theory, and in practice an irregular votary.
With his usual fondness for moving the abstruse and difficult questions of the highest theology, he loved to inquire whether man can justify, on the ground of reason alone, the practice of taking the life of the inferior animals, except in the necessary defence of his life and of his means of life, the fruits of that field which he has tilled, from violence and spoliation.
“Not only have considerable sects,” he would say, “denied the right altogether, but those among the tender-hearted and imaginative people of antiquity, who accounted it lawful to kill and eat, appear to have doubted whether they might take away life merely for the use of man alone. They slew their cattle, not simply for human guests, like the less scrupulous butchers of modern times, but only as a sacrifice, for the honour and in the name of the Deity; or, rather, of those subordinate divinities, to whom, as they believed, the Supreme Being had assigned the creation and conservation of the visible material world. As an incident to these pious offerings, they partook of the residue of the victims, of which, without such sanction and sanctification, they would not have presumed to taste. So reverent was the caution of humane and prudent antiquity!”
Bread became his chief sustenance when his regimen attained to that austerity which afterwards distinguished it. He could have lived on bread alone without repining. When he was walking in London with an acquaintance, he would suddenly run into a baker’s shop, purchase a supply, and breaking a loaf he would offer half of it to his companion.
“Do you know,” he said to me one day, with much surprise, “that such an one does not like bread? Did you ever know a person who disliked bread?” And he told me that a friend had refused such an offer.
I explained to him that the individual in question probably had no objection to bread in a moderate quantity at a proper time and with the usual adjuncts, and was only unwilling to devour two or three pounds of dry bread in the streets, and at an early hour.
Shelley had no such scruple; his pockets were generally well-stored with bread. A circle upon the carpet, clearly defined by an ample verge of crumbs, often marked the place where he had long sat at his studies, his face nearly in contact with his book, greedily devouring bread at intervals amidst his profound abstractions. For the most part he took no condiments; sometimes, however, he ate with his bread the common raisins which are used in making puddings, and these he would buy at little mean shops.
He was walking one day in London with a respectable solicitor who occasionally transacted business for him. With his accustomed precipitation he suddenly vanished and as suddenly reappeared: he had entered the shop of a little grocer in an obscure quarter, and had returned with some plums, which he held close under the attorney’s nose, and the man of fact was as much astonished at the offer as his client, the man of fancy, at the refusal.