Shelley possessed a quality of mind which experience has shown me to be of the rarest occurrence among human beings:  this was his unworldliness.  The usual motives that rule men, prospects of present or future advantage, the rank and fortune of those around, the taunts and censures, or the praise, of those who were hostile to him, had no influence whatever over his actions, and apparently none over his thoughts.  It is difficult even to express the simplicity and directness of purpose that adorned him.  Some few might be found in the history of mankind, and some one at least among his own friends, equally disinterested and scornful, even to severe personal sacrifices, of every baser motive.  But no one, I believe, ever joined this noble but passive virtue to equal active endeavours for the benefit of his friends and mankind in general, and to equal power to produce the advantages he desired.  The world’s brightest gauds and its most solid advantages were of no worth in his eyes, when compared to the cause of what he considered truth, and the good of his fellow-creatures.  Born in a position which, to his inexperienced mind, afforded the greatest facilities to practise the tenets he espoused, he boldly declared the use he would make of fortune and station, and enjoyed the belief that he should materially benefit his fellow-creatures by his actions; while, conscious of surpassing powers of reason and imagination, it is not strange that he should, even while so young, have believed that his written thoughts would tend to disseminate opinions which he believed conducive to the happiness of the human race.

If man were a creature devoid of passion, he might have said and done all this with quietness.  But he was too enthusiastic, and too full of hatred of all the ills he witnessed, not to scorn danger.  Various disappointments tortured, but could not tame, his soul.  The more enmity he met, the more earnestly he became attached to his peculiar views, and hostile to those of the men who persecuted him.

He was animated to greater zeal by compassion for his fellow-creatures.  His sympathy was excited by the misery with which the world is burning.  He witnessed the sufferings of the poor, and was aware of the evils of ignorance.  He desired to induce every rich man to despoil himself of superfluity, and to create a brotherhood of property and service, and was ready to be the first to lay down the advantages of his birth.  He was of too uncompromising a disposition to join any party.  He did not in his youth look forward to gradual improvement:  nay, in those days of intolerance, now almost forgotten, it seemed as easy to look forward to the sort of millennium of freedom and brotherhood which he thought the proper state of mankind as to the present reign of moderation and improvement.  Ill-health made him believe that his race would soon be run; that a year or two was all he had of life.  He desired that these years should be useful and illustrious.  He saw, in a fervent call on his fellow-creatures to share alike the blessings of the creation, to love and serve each other, the noblest work that life and time permitted him.  In this spirit he composed “Queen Mab”.