than Percy to disregard all prescription in religious dogma.  By demeanour and act they both courted academic censure, and they got it in its extremest form.  Shelley wrote, probably with some co-operation from Hogg, and he published anonymously in Oxford, a little pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism; he projected sending it round broadcast as an invitation or challenge to discussion.  This small pamphlet—­it is scarcely more than a flysheet—­hardly amounts to saying that Atheism is irrefragably true, and Theism therefore false; but it propounds that the existence of a God cannot be proved by reason, nor yet by testimony; that a direct revelation made to an individual would alone be adequate ground for convincing that individual; and that the persons to whom such a revelation is not accorded are in consequence warranted in remaining unconvinced.  The College authorities got wind of the pamphlet, and found reason for regarding Shelley as its author, and on March 25, 1811, they summoned him to appear.  He was required to say whether he had written it or not.  To this demand he refused an answer, and was then expelled by a written sentence, ready drawn up.  With Hogg the like process was repeated.  Their offence, as entered on the College records, was that of ‘contumaciously refusing to answer questions,’ and ’repeatedly declining to disavow’ the authorship of the work.  In strictness therefore they were expelled, not for being proclaimed atheists, but for defying academic authority, which required to be satisfied as to that question.  Shortly before this disaster an engagement between Shelley and his first cousin on the mother’s side, Miss Harriet Grove, had come to an end, owing to the alarm excited by the youth’s sceptical opinions.

Settling in lodgings in London, and parting from Hogg, who went to York to study conveyancing, Percy pretty soon found a substitute for Harriet Grove in Harriet Westbrook, a girl of fifteen, schoolfellow of two of his sisters at Clapham.  She was exceedingly pretty, daughter of a retired hotel-keeper in easy circumstances.  Shelley wanted to talk both her and his sisters out of Christianity; and he cultivated the acquaintance of herself and of her much less juvenile sister Eliza, calling from time to time at their father’s house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square.  Harriet fell in love with him:  besides, he was a highly eligible parti, being a prospective baronet, absolute heir to a very considerable estate, and contingent heir (if he had assented to a proposal of entail, to which however he never did assent, professing conscientious objections) to another estate still larger.  Shelley was not in love with Harriet; but he liked her, and was willing to do anything he could to further her wishes and plans.  Mr. Timothy Shelley, after a while, pardoned his son’s misadventure at Oxford, and made him a moderate allowance of L200 a-year.  Percy then visited a cousin in Wales, a member of the Grove family.  He was recalled to London by