In the year 1821 we meet with two phrases* which, taken on their own showing, would indicate belief in a God. In Adonais (vol. ii. p. 98)— "A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst, From the great morning of the world when first In The Boat on the Serchio (vol. ii., p. 359)— "All rose to do the task He set to each Who shaped us to his ends and not our own. What none yet ever knew nor can be known." Of these phrases, the first certainly does not count for much: it may have little beyond a rhetorical or figurative significance, although properly it is an assertion of creative-or at any rate regulative-Deity. The second is more important. The poem is strictly personal to Shelley himself, and one can scarcely suppose he would put into it a theistic phrase if he steadfastly professed atheism. Still, one must hesitate before laying any very great stress, or putting any very sharply defined construction, on its terms. We next (noting for what it may be worth the couplet from Epipsychidion-1820-quoted on p. clxiv.) step back to the year 1819, and observe, in a letter to Leigh Hunt dated 27th September, an expression which counts for a good deal. "It would give me much pleasure to know Mr. Lloyd. Do you know, when I was in Cumberland, I got Southey to borrow a copy of Berkeley from him; and I remember observing some pencil notes in it, probably written by Lloyd, which I thought particularly acute. One especially struck me as being the assertion of a doctrine of which even then I had long been persuaded, and on which I had founded much of my persuasions as regarded the imagined cause of the universe-Mind cannot create, it can only perceive."" To much the same effect, but more extended and ratiocinative, is a passage in an unfinished essay by Shelley On Life: its date is not recorded, but I should presume it to be probably between 1815 and 1818, rather of the earlier " There is also a third phrase, in the Defence of Poetry: "a poem. is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds," Here the word "Creator," having a capital initial letter (as printed in the Essays and Letters, vol. i., p. 12) seems at first sight to mean "Creative Deity," and, if it did so, the pas sage would be a very important one for our present purpose: but, on considering the entire clause and context, I can only infer that the "Creator" here spoken of is simply the human poet, wonths. than the later limit of date. I give in a condensed form the most important portion. "Nothing exists but as it is perceived. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be a delusion. Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it. The relations of things remain unchanged, by whatever system. Yet that the basis of things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges, Mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we have any experience of its properties (and beyond that experience how vain is argument!) cannot create-it can only perceive. It is said also to be the cause.' But 'cause' is only a word expressing ja certain state of the human mind with regard to the manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to be related to each other. It is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind-that is, of jexistence is similar to mind." We shall probably not get beyond this in our endeavour to ascertain the bearing of Shelley's understanding with regard to the existence or nature of a Deity. Clearly, when he wrote these lines, he did not believe in what is called "an Intelligent First Cause"-the God, selfexistent from all eternity, of theologians. At the same time, he did believe in a universal Mind, whereof he himself, the intellect or person Shelley, was a part; and he further believed that all we ordinarily call external objects, or matter, are but the sum of perceptions of the total Mind. I must leave it to theosophists to decide whether this comes nearest to theism, atheism, or pantheism I presume to the last. I apprehend that from beginning to end-whether in The Necessity of Atheism or The Boat on the Serchio-Shelley's conception was equally and unswervingly alien from the Personal God or Immediate Providence of the Jewish, Christian, Mahometan, and so many other religions. 2. The Immortality of the Soul. As regards this question, we must primarily remember what we have just traced—viz. : That Shelley considered (at one stage of his speculations at any rate) that there are not, properly, separate minds, but that there is one universal mind informing many personalities; also that the so-called Material Universe is in fact a mere perception of Universal Mind, which Mind must consequently be eternal-or at any rate must endure as long as any perception, commonly called any Material Universe, shall endure. Therefore, in a certain sense, Shelley could not, at the same time with this belief, entertain a belief in the Mortality of the Soul, or of Mind. To withdraw from the sum of mind that particular mind currently termed Shelley would, according to this view of the matter, be an extinction of soul in the same sense (and no other) as the absorption into the sand of a ladle-full of sea-water is an annihilation of the sea. But "the Immortality of the Soul" is generally understood as meaning "the eternal separate self-consciousness of every individual soul." Now it is plain that this doctrine is not necessarily involved in the hypothesis of Shelley as above expressed: he might, without self-contradiction, either add it to, or reject it from, his hypothesis. He might, for instance, believe that the portions of mind individuated in Keats and Shelley on the earth would not, after the death of the body, continue eternally and separately to be, the one Keats, and the other Shelley. What we have to investigate therefore is—How near did he approach to this phase of opinion? The last indication on this subject is of a date, 29th June 1822, very close indeed to Shelley's death: it occurs in a letter to some correspondent whose name is not given. "The destiny of man can scarcely be so degraded that he was born only to die; and, if such should be the case, delusions, especially the gross and preposterous ones of the existing religion, can scarcely be supposed to exalt it." Here we see clearly that Shelley's mind, at the very last, was in a state of suspense on this question: he thought it scarcely likely that the death of the body was lethal to the soul also, but he knew nothing about the matter, and did not profess to know anything. This is confirmatory of what Trelawny records, from the same conversation that we have already quoted, though here the opinion appears in a more distinctly negative shape-possibly more so than the poet would have been prepared deliberately and in written disquisition to maintain. As we have seen, he had said: "If old women's tales are true,* in another minute I might have been in another planet." Trelawny: "No, you would be mingled * This phrase, and the next ensuing question and answer, had never yet been in print. They are communicated to me by Mr. Trelawny, from his written memorandum of the conversation. The residue of the colloquy is in the Recollections. with the elements." Shelley: "My mind is at peace respecting nothing so much as the constitution and mysteries of the great system of things. My curiosity on this point never amounts to solicitude." Trelawny: "Do you believe in the immortality of the spirit?" Shelley: "Certainly not: how can I? We know nothing; we have no evidence. We cannot express our inmost thoughts they are incomprehensible, even to ourselves." Another and seemingly later conversation contains this passage, spoken by Shelley. "With regard to the great question, the System of the Universe, I have no curiosity on the subject. I am content to see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil : I have no fears, and some hopes. In our present gross material state, our faculties are clouded: when Death removes our clay coverings, the mystery will be solved.” This is the language, not of confidence in either direction, but of uncertainty: it goes a little way, but only a little, towards confirming an expression in a letter from Byron to Moore, dated 6th March 1822, "Shelley believes in immortality." Again, in the notes to Hellas, written in 1821, we find (vol. ii. p. 139) a similar uncertainty. The poet comments on some expressions in his own verses, which might be supposed to imply a positive belief in immortal individual souls; he here explains that he has no idea of dogmatizing on the subject. He does, indeed, absolutely disbelieve the ordinary hypothesis of retributive punishment; but he has no distinct counter-belief with regard to "the condition of that futurity towards which we are all impelled by an inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until better arguments can be produced than sophisms which disgrace the cause, this desire itself must remain the strongest and the only presumption that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking being." The general tenor of Adonais may seem to amount to the expression of a positive belief in the immortality of Keats as a separate individual soul: but we must be on our guard against poetic abstractions and (not to use the word disrespectfully) poetic machinery. We read for instance that Keats "is not dead,” "hath awakened from the dream of life," "is made one with Nature;" his soul "beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." If Shelley had thoroughly disbelieved the immortality of the soul, and had been writing in an expository strain, no doubt he would not and could not have used three of these expressions; but we cannot argue conversely, and say that, inasmuch as he did use the expressions, he must have thoroughly believed in immortality. The substructure is much too unsolid for such a superposition. I will quote one more testimonythat of Mrs. Shelley, in the Preface to the Essays and Letters. She refers to a fragmentary essay On a Future State written by her husband, and observes that the extant portion discusses the question merely on grounds of reasoning and analogy, which he himself would not have considered the sole grounds adducible. She then adds:-"I cannot pretend to supply the deficiency, nor say what Shelley's views were. They were vague, certainly; yet as certainly regarded the country beyond the grave as one by no means foreign to our interests and hopes. Considering his individual mind as a unit divided from a mighty whole, to which it was united by restless sympathies and an eager desire for knowledge, he assuredly believed that hereafter, as now, he would form a portion of the whole-and a portion less imperfect, less suffering, than the shackles inseparable from humanity impose on all who live beneath the moon." Mrs. Shelley also! cites an extract from Shelley's diary, written when death seemed near him. This must apparently be dated in 1814; the essay on a Future State, perhaps about the same date, 1815 to 1818, as the fragment On Life previously cited. As these dates are so far back, and as our enquiries have already yielded a tolerably plain result as to Shelley's views towards the close of his life, I shall say no more regarding those earlier writings, save that they do not alter the general result in question. The essay, indeed, comes to much the same conclusion as the note on Hellas, and goes somewhat further in opposition to the hypothesis of immortality. What, then, is the result? I take it to be this :-That Shelley regarded the aspiration of man after individual immortality as some presumption in favour of that, and he himself had the aspiration in a marked degree; but at the same time he considered it a mere presumption-unproved, incapable of proof, and exceedingly uncertain. He found it difficult to conceive that man is mortal, and alike difficult to perceive that he is immortal. 3. Political Institutions. There is not very much to be said in detail on this matter. Shelley was an intense lover of freedom, and his ideal of freedom was a democratic republic. In his Ode to Liberty, written in 1820, he expresses a longing that |