Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/309

 "THE LIFE OF SHELLEY" 293 Read pp. 36, 37 : "But it must be remembered that he despised the Oxford dons with all his heart ; and they were probably aware of this. He was a dex- terous, impassioned reasoner, whom they little cared to encounter in argument on such a topic. . . . Nor was it to be expected that the champion and apostle of atheism should be unmolested in his propaganda by the aspirants to fat livings and ecclesiastical dignities. ... At the beginning of this century the learning and the manners of the Oxford dons were at a low ebb ; and the Fellows of University College acted harshly but not altogether unjustly, ignorantly but after their kind, in this matter of Shelley's expulsion. Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa. "They are not worth speaking about ; look at them and pass on ; " the most con- temptuous line in all Dante; for the miserables in limbo who have never really lived, the neutrals re- jected by hell as by heaven, who envy even the positive tortures of the deeper damned, who are hateful to God and to the enemies of God ! Call you that backing of your friends? A plague on such backing ! they might well exclaim. We are not concerned here with Shelley's opinions ; but as mere outsiders, who have no Alma Mater to look back upon either with gratitude or contempt, we may remark that a university which has no other discipline at command for sceptical or heretical pupils than expulsion, proclaims its own utter incapacity for the duties it undertakes to fulfil in the guidance and education of youth. Try to fancy one of the old teachers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, or any other, driving away a pupil who propounded