An extract from this composition will serve to show his power of handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly twenty.  I have chosen a passage bearing on his theological opinions:—­

“Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess.  To attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is capable of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to this incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible definition of his nature.

“It may be here objected:  Ought not the Creator to possess the perfections of the creature?  No.  To attribute to God the moral qualities of man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out of corporeal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot possess....  But even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and uncertain as that of an earthly king; still, goodness and justice are qualities seldom nominally denied him, and it will be admitted that he disapproves of any action incompatible with those qualities.  Persecution for opinion is unjust.  With what consistency, then, can the worshippers of a Deity whose benevolence they boast, embitter the existence of their fellow-being, because his ideas of that Deity are different from those which they entertain?  Alas! there is no consistency in those persecutors who worship a benevolent Deity; those who worship a demon would alone act consonantantly to these principles by imprisoning and torturing in his name.”

Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to visit him.  The sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a convenient season.  Accordingly he left London, and travelled by coach to Lynmouth, where he found that the Shelleys had flitted a few days previously without giving any notice.  This fruitless journey of the poet’s Mentor is humorously described by Hogg, as well as one undertaken by himself in the following year to Dublin with a similar result.  The Shelleys were now established at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belonging to Mr. W.A.  Madocks, M.P. for Boston.  This gentleman had reclaimed a considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, and protected it with an embankment.  Shelley, whose interest in the poor people around him was always keen and practical, lost no time in making their acquaintance at Tremadoc.  The work of utility carried out by his landlord aroused his enthusiastic admiration; and when the embankment was emperilled by a heavy sea, he got up a subscription for its preservation.  Heading the list with 500 pounds, how raised, or whether paid, we know not, he endeavoured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, and even ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the same purpose with the Duke of Norfolk.  On this occasion he made the personal acquaintance of the Godwin family.