Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/308

 292 CRITICAL STUDIES known as an accomplished scholar and writer, of liberal sympathies with all that is beautiful in nature and art; and he reveals himself as an old lover of Shelley in noting that when he was a Harrow boy he picked up two uncut copies of " Laon and Cythna " (unperverted original of the "Revolt of Islam") at a Bristol book-shop. As for the spirit in which Mr. Symonds writes of Shelley, we can scarcely better praise it than by saying that it is as nearly as pos- sible directly opposed to the spirit in which Professor Shairp writes of Burns. In the limits of our space we could not, even were it desirable, accompany Mr. S. through his narrative and criticisms. We may, however, say a very few words on a very few of the still-vexed questions concerning Shelley. And here it must be remarked that while, in discussing such questions, Mr. S. usually starts with a deferential, though by no means very ardent, support of authority or the world's opinion, his natural clear-sightedness and rectitude and love of liberty generally constrain him before he is done into a virtual though unavowed vindica- tion of Shelley. I. The expulsion from Oxford for the (then un- proved) authorship of the two-paged tract, "The Necessity of Atheism j" Shelley then in his nine- teenth year. Mr. S. begins by defending the authorities against the charges of unfair dealing in this matter. But what does he say for and of them in the course of his palliation? — he himself being not only an ««expelled University man, like many others who have argued this business against Shelley, but an Oxford man and the author of a prize poem.