It is certain that the three obnoxious letters had a fertilising effect, and raised crops of controversy; but it would be unjust to deny that an honest zeal stimulated divers worthy men to assert the truth against an unknown assailant. The praise of good intention must be conceded; but it is impossible to accord that of powerful execution also to his antagonists; this curious correspondence fully testified the deplorable condition of education at that time. A youth of eighteen was able to confute men who had numbered thrice as many years; to vanquish them on their own ground, although he gallantly fought at a disadvantage by taking the wrong side.
His little pamphlet was never offered for sale; it was not addressed to an ordinary reader, but to the metaphysician alone, and it was so short, that it was only designed to point out the line of argument. It was, in truth, a general issue, a compendious denial of every allegation, in order to put the whole case in proof; it was a formal mode of saying you affirm so and so, then prove it, and thus was it understood by his more candid and intelligent correspondents. As it was shorter, so was it plainer, and, perhaps in order to provoke discussion, a little bolder, than Hume’s Essays—a book which occupies a conspicuous place in the library of every student. The doctrine, if it deserves the name, was precisely similar; the necessary and inevitable consequence of Locke’s philosophy, and of the theory that all knowledge is from without. I will not admit your conclusions, his opponent might answer; then you must deny those of Hume; I deny them; but you must deny those of Locke also, and we will go back together to Plato. Such was the usual course of argument. Sometimes, however, he rested on mere denial, holding his adversary to strict proof, and deriving strength from his weakness.
The young Platonist argued thus negatively through the love of argument, and because he found a noble joy in the fierce shocks of contending minds. He loved truth, and sought it everywhere and at all hazards frankly and boldly, like a man who deserved to find it; but he also loved dearly victory in debate, and warm debate for its own sake. Never was there a more unexceptionable disputant; he was eager beyond the most ardent, but never angry and never personal; he was the only arguer I ever knew who drew every argument from the nature of the thing, and who could never be provoked to descend to personal contentions. He was fully inspired, indeed, with the whole spirit of the true logician; the more obvious and indisputable the proposition which his opponent undertook to maintain, the more complete was the triumph of his art if he could refute and prevent him.
To one who was acquainted with the history of our University, with its ancient reputation as the most famous school of logic, it seemed that the genius of the place, after an absence of several generations, had deigned to return at last; the visit, however, as it soon appeared, was ill-timed.
The schoolman of old, who occasionally laboured with technical subtleties to prevent the admission of the first principles of belief, could not have been justly charged with the intention of promoting scepticism; his was the age of minute and astute disceptation, it is true, but it was also the epoch of the most firm, resolute and extensive faith. I have seen a dexterous fencing-master, after warning his pupil to hold his weapon fast, by a few turns of his wrist throw it suddenly on the ground and under his feet; but it cannot be pretended that he neglected to teach the art of self-defence, because he apparently deprived his scholar of that which is essential to the end proposed. To be disarmed is a step in the science of arms, and whoever has undergone it has already put his foot within the threshold; so it is likewise with refutation.
In describing briefly the nature of Shelley’s epistolary contention, the recollection of his youth, his zeal, his activity, and particularly of many individual peculiarities, may have tempted me to speak sometimes with a certain levity, notwithstanding the solemn importance of the topics respecting which they were frequently maintained. The impression that they were conducted on his part, or considered by him, with frivolity or any unseemly lightness, would, however, be most erroneous; his whole frame of mind was grave, earnest and anxious, and his deportment was reverential, with an edification reaching beyond the age—an age wanting in reverence, an unlearned age, a young age, for the young lack learning. Hume permits no object of respect to remain; Locke approaches the most awful speculations with the same indifference as if he were about to handle the properties of triangles; the small deference rendered to the most holy things by the able theologian Paley is not the least remarkable of his characteristics.
Wiser and better men displayed anciently, together with a more profound erudition, a superior and touching solemnity; the meek seriousness of Shelley was redolent of those good old times before mankind had been despoiled of a main ingredient in the composition of happiness—a well-directed veneration.
Whether such disputations were decorous or profitable may be perhaps doubtful; there can be no doubt, however, since the sweet gentleness of Shelley was easily and instantly swayed by the mild influences of friendly admonition, that, had even the least dignified of his elders suggested the propriety of pursuing his metaphysical inquiries with less ardour, his obedience would have been prompt and perfect.
Not only had all salutary studies been long neglected in Oxford at that time, and all wholesome discipline was decayed, but the splendid endowments of the University were grossly abused. The resident authorities of the college were too often men of the lowest origin, of mean and sordid souls, destitute of every literary attainment, except that brief and narrow course of reading by which the first degree was attained: the vulgar sons of vulgar fathers, without liberality, and wanting the manners and the sympathies of gentlemen.
A total neglect of all learning, an unseemly turbulence, the most monstrous irregularities, open and habitual drunkenness, vice and violence, were tolerated or encouraged with the basest sycophancy, that the prospect of perpetual licentiousness might fill the colleges with young men of fortune; whenever the rarely exercised power of coercion was extorted, it demonstrated the utter incapacity of our unworthy rulers by coarseness, ignorance and injustice.