larceny was due, we know not; but we may be sure that Shelley satisfied Stockdale on the point of piracy, since the publisher saw no reason to break with him.  On the 14th of November in the same year he issued Shelley’s second novel from his press, and entered into negotiations with him for the publication of more poetry.  The new romance was named “St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian.”  This tale, no less unreadable than “Zastrozzi,” and even more chaotic in its plan, contained a good deal of poetry, which has been incorporated in the most recent editions of Shelley’s works.  A certain interest attaches to it as the first known link between Shelley and William Godwin, for it was composed under the influence of the latter’s novel, “St. Leon.”  The title, moreover, carries us back to those moonlight walks with Harriet Grove alluded to above.  Shelley’s earliest attempts in literature have but little value for the student of poetry, except in so far as they illustrate the psychology of genius and its wayward growth.  Their intrinsic merit is almost less than nothing, and no one could predict from their perusal the course which the future poet of “The Cenci” and “Epipsychidion” was to take.  It might indeed be argued that the defects of his great qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works.  But while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent.  A cautious critic will only find food in “Zastrozzi” and “St. Irvyne” for wondering how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a germ apparently so barren.  There is even less of the real Shelley discernible in these productions, than of the real Byron in the “Hours of Idleness.”

In the Michaelmas Term of 1810 Shelley was matriculated as a Commoner of University College, Oxford; and very soon after his arrival he made the acquaintance of a man who was destined to play a prominent part in his subsequent history, and to bequeath to posterity the most brilliant, if not in all respects the most trustworthy, record of his marvellous youth.  Thomas Jefferson Hogg was unlike Shelley in temperament and tastes.  His feet were always planted on the earth, while Shelley flew aloft to heaven with singing robes around him, or the mantel of the prophet on his shoulders. (He told Trelawny that he had been attracted to Shelley simply by his “rare talents as a scholar;” and Trelawny has recorded his opinion that Hogg’s portrait of their friend was faithful, in spite of a total want of sympathy with his poetic genius.  This testimony is extremely valuable.) Hogg had much of the cynic in his nature; he was a shrewd man of the world, and a caustic humorist.  Positive and practical, he chose the beaten path of life, rose to eminence as a lawyer, and cherished the Church and State opinions of a staunch Tory.  Yet, though he differed so essentially from the divine poet, he understood the greatness of Shelley at a glance, and