still a schoolboy, and
in the last year of his Etonian and the first of his Oxonian residence
he published two of the most absurd novels of the most absurd novel kind
that ever appeared, _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_, imitations of Monk
Lewis. He also in the same year collaborated in two volumes of verse,
_The Wandering Jew_ (partly represented by _Queen Mab_), and "_Poems_ by
Victor and Cazire" (which has vindicated the existence of reviewers by
surviving only in its reviews, all copies having mysteriously perished).
His stay at Oxford was not long; for having, in conjunction with a
clever but rather worthless friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg (afterwards
his biographer), issued a pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism" and
sent it to the heads of colleges, he was, by a much greater necessity,
expelled from University on 25th March 1811. Later in the same year he
married Harriet Westbrook, a pretty and lively girl of sixteen, who had
been a school-fellow of his sister's, but came from the lower middle
class. His apologists have said that Harriet threw herself at his head,
and that Shelley explained to her that she or he might depart when
either pleased. The responsibility and the validity of this defence may
be left to these advocates.

For nearly three years Shelley and his wife led an exceedingly wandering
life in Ireland, Wales, Devonshire, Berkshire, the Lake District, and
elsewhere, Shelley attempting all sorts of eccentric propagandism in
politics and religion, and completing the crude but absolutely original
_Queen Mab_. Before the third anniversary of his wedding-day came round
he had parted with Harriet, against whose character his apologists, as
above, have attempted to bring charges. The fact is that he had fallen
in love with Mary Godwin, daughter of the author of _Political Justice_
(whose writings had always had a great influence on Shelley, and who
spunged on him pitilessly) and of Mary Wollstonecraft. The pair fled to
the Continent together in July 1814; and two years later, when the
unhappy wife, a girl of twenty-one, had drowned herself in the
Serpentine, they were married. Meanwhile Shelley had wandered back to
England, had, owing to the death of his grandfather, received a
considerable independent income by arrangement, and in 1815 had written
_Alastor_, which, though not so clearly indicative of a new departure
when compared with _Queen Mab_ as some critics have tried to make out,
no other living poet, p