g in Shelley's own work--his forgotten
novels, _Zastrossi_, and _St. Irvyne or the Rosicrucian_--but we can see
how his life itself borrowed some of the extravagances of fiction. Many of
his recorded adventures are supposed to have been hallucinations, like the
story of the "stranger in a military cloak," who, seeing him in a
post-office at Pisa, said, "What! Are you that d--d atheist, Shelley?" and
felled him to the ground. On the other hand, Shelley's story of his being
attacked by a midnight assassin in Wales, after being disbelieved for
three-quarters of a century, has in recent years been corroborated in the
most unexpected way. Wild a fiction as his life was in many respects, it
was a fiction he himself sincerely and innocently believed. His
imaginative appetite, having devoured science by day and sixpenny romances
by night, still remained unsatisfied, and, quite probably, went on to mix
up reality and make-believe past all recognition for its next dish.
Francis Thompson, with all respect to many critics, was right when he
noted what a complete playfellow Shelley was in his life. When he was in
London after his expulsion from the University, he could throw himself
with all his being into childish games like skimming stones on the
Serpentine, "counting with the utmost glee the number of bounds, as the
flat stones flew skimming over the surface of the water." He found a
perfect pleasure in paper boats, and we hear of his making a sail on one
occasion out of a ten-pound note--one of those myths, perhaps, which
gather round poets. It must have been the innocence of pleasure shown in
games like these that made him an irresistible companion to so many
comparatively prosaic people. For the idea that Shelley in private life
was aloof and unpopular from his childhood up is an entirely false one. As
Medwin points out, in referring to his school-days, he "must have had a
rather large circle of friends, since his parting breakfast at Eton cost
L50."

Even at the distance of a century, we are still seized by the fascination
of that boyish figure with the "stag eyes," so enthusiastically in pursuit
of truth and of dreams, of trifles light as air and of the redemption of
the human race. "His figure," Hogg tells us, "was slight and fragile, and
yet his bones were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much
that he seemed of low stature." And, in Medwin's book, we even become
reconciled to that shrill voice of his, which