is more widely contrasted
with him in mental qualities, than united by similarity in the character
of his unbelief. Both were weary of the world; but the one was drawn down
by unbelief to earth, the other soared into the ideal: the one was driven
to the gloom of despair, the other was excited by the imagination to the
madness of enthusiasm: the one was made sad by disappointment, the other
was goaded by it into frenzy.

Shelley merits more than a passing notice, both because his poetry is a
proof of our main position concerning the influence of certain forms of
philosophy in producing unbelief, and because his mental history, as
learned by means of his works and memoirs, is a psychological study of the
highest value. The infidelity which shows itself in him is an _idolum
specus_, as well as an _idolum theatri_.(642)

His life, his natural character, and his philosophy, all contributed to
form his scepticism.(643) His life is a tale of sorrow and ruined hopes,
of genius without wisdom: one of the sad stories which will ever excite
the sympathy of the heart. Early sent to this university, he seems like
Gibbon to have lived alone; and in the solitude of that impulsive and
recluse spirit which formed his life-long peculiarity, to have nursed a
spirit of atheism and wild schemes of reform. Charged by the authorities
of his college with the authorship of an atheistical pamphlet,(644) he was
expelled the university. An outcast from his family, he went forth to
suffer poverty, to gather his livelihood as he could by the wonderful
genius which nature had given him. Wronged as he thought by his university
and his country, his wounded spirit imputed the supposed unkindness which
he received to the religion which his enemies professed. In a foreign
land, brooding over his wrongs, he cherished the bitter antipathy to
priestcraft and to monarchy which finds such terrific expression in his
poems.(645) His end was a fit close of a tragic life. A friendly hand paid
the last office of friendship to his remains; and the urn which contains
the ashes of his pyre rests in the solemn and beautiful cemetery of the
eternal city, which he himself had described so strikingly in his
affecting memorial of his friend, the poet Keats.(646)

His natural character contributed to produce his scepticism not less than
his life to increase it. He has left us a clear delineation of himself in
his writings. If considered on the emotional side, he was a cre