eories as
a child chases butterflies. There is a story told of his Oxford days which
shows how eccentrically his theories converted themselves into conduct.
Having been reading Plato with Hogg, and having soaked himself in the
theory of pre-existence and reminiscence, he was walking on Magdalen
Bridge when he met a woman with a child in her arms. He seized the child,
while its mother, thinking he was about to throw it into the river, clung
on to it by the clothes. "Will your baby tell us anything about
pre-existence, madam?" he asked, in a piercing voice and with a wistful
look. She made no answer, but on Shelley repeating the question she said,
"He cannot speak." "But surely," exclaimed Shelley, "he can if he will,
for he is only a few weeks old! He may fancy perhaps that he cannot, but
it is only a silly whim; he cannot have forgotten entirely the use of
speech in so short a time; the thing is absolutely impossible." The woman,
obviously taking him for a lunatic, replied mildly: "It is not for me to
dispute with you gentlemen, but I can safely declare that I never heard
him speak, nor any child, indeed, of his age." Shelley walked away with
his friend, observing, with a deep sigh: "How provokingly close are these
new-born babes!" One can, possibly, discover similar anecdotes in the
lives of other men of genius and of men who thought they had genius. But
in such cases it is usually quite clear that the action was a jest or a
piece of attitudinizing, or that the person who performed it was, as the
vulgar say, "a little above himself." In any event it almost invariably
appears as an abnormal incident in the life of a normal man. Shelley's
life, on the other hand, is largely a concentration of abnormal incidents.
He was habitually "a bit above himself." In the above incident he may have
been consciously behaving comically. But many of his serious actions were
quite as comically extraordinary.

Godwin is related to have said that "Shelley was so beautiful, it was a
pity he was so wicked." I doubt if there is a single literate person in
the world to-day who would apply the word "wicked" to Shelley. It is said
that Browning, who had begun as so ardent a worshipper, never felt the
same regard for Shelley after reading the full story of his desertion of
Harriet Westbrook and her suicide. But Browning did not know the full
story. No one of us knows the full story. On the face of it, it looks a
peculiarly atrocious thing to dese