est
manner: while Byron knew him to be exempt from the egotism, pedantry,
coxcombry, and more than all the rivalry of authorship." "Shelley's
mental activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action."
"He was always in earnest." "He never laid aside his book and magic
mantle; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defiance,
stood mute.... Shelley's earnestness and just criticism held him
captive." These sentences, and many others, prove that Trelawny, himself
somewhat of a cynic, cruelly exposing false pretensions, and detesting
affectation in any for, paid unreserved homage to the heroic qualities
this "dreamy bard,"--"uncommonly awkward," as he also called him--bad
rider and poor seaman as he was--"over-sensitive," and "eternally
brooding on his own thoughts," who "had seen no more of the waking-day
than a girl at a boarding-school." True to himself, gentle, tender, with
the courage of a lion, "frank and outspoken, like a well-conditioned
boy, well-bred and considerate for others, because he was totally devoid
of selfishness and vanity," Shelley seemed to this unprejudiced
companion of his last few months that very rare product for which
Diogenes searched in vain--a man.

Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny's own words--words no less
certain of immortality than the fame of him they celebrate. "The
Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great
deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated
conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near
the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes
steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged
to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the
direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, 'Come
in, Shelley, its only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in,
blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands;
and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed,
feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his
warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down
and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible this
mild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with
all the world?--excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of
his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, disc