d of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark of
nice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry, and the
best criterion of a choice spirit." Such was the genesis of "Posthumous
Fragments of Margaret Nicholson", edited by John Fitz Victor. The name
of the supposititious nephew reminds us of "Original Poems" by Victor
and Cazire, and raises the question whether the poems in that lost
volume may not have partly furnished forth this Oxford travesty.

Shelley's next publication, or quasi-publication, was neither so
innocent in substance nor so pleasant in its consequences. After leaving
Eton, he continued the habit, learned from Dr. Lind, of corresponding
with distinguished persons whom he did not personally know. Thus we find
him about this time addressing Miss Felicia Browne (afterwards Mrs.
Hemans) and Leigh Hunt. He plied his correspondents with all kinds of
questions; and as the dialectical interest was uppermost at Oxford, he
now endeavoured to engage them in discussions on philosophical and
religious topics. We have seen that his favourite authors were Locke,
Hume, and the French materialists. With the impulsiveness peculiar to
his nature, he adopted the negative conclusions of a shallow
nominalistic philosophy. It was a fundamental point with him to regard
all questions, however sifted and settled by the wise of former ages, as
still open; and in his inordinate thirst for liberty, he rejoiced to be
the Deicide of a pernicious theological delusion. In other words, he
passed at Oxford by one leap from a state of indifferentism with regard
to Christianity, into an attitude of vehement antagonism. With a view to
securing answers to his missives, he printed a short abstract of Hume's
and other arguments against the existence of a Deity, presented in a
series of propositions, and signed with a mathematically important
"Q.E.D." This document he forwarded to his proposed antagonists,
expressing his inability to answer its arguments, and politely
requesting them to help him. When it so happened that any incautious
correspondents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with merciless
severity upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The little
pamphlet of two pages was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism"; and its
proposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation already
described, is proved by an advertisement (February 9, 1811) in the
"Oxford University and City Herald". It was not, howe