d Byron_ contains a conversation between that gallant friend of the
two poets and a "prelate of our national Church."

"Some years ago, one of the most learned of the English Bishops
questioned me regarding Shelley; he expressed both admiration and
astonishment at his learning and writings. I said to the Bishop, 'You
know he was an Atheist.' He said, 'Yes.' I answered: 'It is the key
and the distinguishing quality of all he wrote. Now that people are
beginning to distinguish men by their works, and not creeds, the
critics, to bring him into vogue, are trying to make out that Shelley
was not an Atheist, that he was rather a religious man. Would it be
right in me, or anyone who knew him, to aid or sanction such a fraud?'
The Bishop said: 'Certainly not, there is nothing righteous but truth.'
And there our conversation ended."

Trelawny's bishop was willing (outside church, and in private
conversation) to deprecate prejudice and acknowledge the supremacy of
truth; and perhaps for that reason he allowed that Shelley _was_ an
Atheist. Mr. Gosse's bishops will soon be converting him into a pillar
of the Church.

Trelawny knew Shelley a great deal better than Mr. Gosse. He enjoyed an
intimate friendship with the poet, not in his callow days, but during
the last year or two of his life, when his intellect was mature, and his
genius was pouring forth the great works that secure his immortality.
During that time Shelley professed the opinions he enunciated in _Queen
Mab_. He said that the matter of that poem was good; it was only the
treatment that was immature. Again and again he told Trelawny that he
was content to know nothing of the origin of the universe; that religion
was chiefly a means of deceiving and robbing the people; that it
fomented hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness; and that it also
fettered the intellect, deterring men from solving the problems of
individual and social life, as well as the problems of nature, out of
regard for the supposed oracles of Omniscience, which were after all the
teachings of bigoted and designing priests. Shelley called himself an
Atheist; he wrote "Atheist" after his name on a famous occasion; and
Trelawny says "he never regretted having done this."

"The principal fault I have to find," wrote Trelawny, "is that the
Shelleyan writers, being Christians themselves, seem to think that a man
of genius cannot be an Atheist, and so they strain their own faculties
to disprove what Sh