that he yielded to arguments; and these arguments
must have been urged by Godwin, who had never treated him with
cordiality since he left England in 1816. Godwin, though overrated in
his generation, and almost ludicrously idealized by Shelley, was a man
whose talents verged on genius. But he was by no means consistent. His
conduct in money-matters shows that he could not live the life of a
self-sufficing philosopher; while the irritation he expressed when
Shelley omitted to address him as Esquire, stood in comic contradiction
with his published doctrines. We are therefore perhaps justified in
concluding that he worried Shelley, the one enthusiastic and
thorough-going follower he had, into marrying his daughter in spite of
his disciple's protestations; nor shall we be far wrong if we surmise
that Godwin congratulated himself on Mary's having won the right to bear
the name of a future baronet.

The second event was the refusal of Mr. Westbrook to deliver up the
custody of his grandchildren. A chancery suit was instituted; at the
conclusion of which, in August, 1817, Lord Eldon deprived Shelley of his
son and daughter on the double ground of his opinions expressed in
"Queen Mab", and of his conduct toward his first wife. The children were
placed in the hands of a clergyman, to be educated in accordance with
principles diametrically opposed to their parent's, while Shelley's
income was mulcted in a sum of 200 pounds for their maintenance. Thus
sternly did the father learn the value of that ancient Aeschylean maxim,
to drasanti pathein, the doer of the deed must suffer. His own
impulsiveness, his reckless assumption of the heaviest responsibilities,
his overweening confidence in his own strength to move the weight of the
world's opinions, had brought him to this tragic pass--to the suicide of
the woman who had loved him, and to the sequestration of the offspring
whom he loved.

Shelley is too great to serve as text for any sermon; and yet we may
learn from him as from a hero of Hebrew or Hellenic story. His life was
a tragedy; and like some protagonist of Greek drama, he was capable of
erring and of suffering greatly. He had kicked against the altar of
justice as established in the daily sanctities of human life; and now he
had to bear the penalty. The conventions he despised and treated like
the dust beneath his feet, were found in this most cruel crisis to be a
rock on which his very heart was broken. From this rude trial