Page:Shelleysvegetarianism.pdf/8

4 Shelley", Vol. i.,p. 387.) Peacock had the ordinary Philistine dislike of Vegetarianism, and records that Shelley "had certainly one week of thorough enjoyment of life," when on the excursion from Old Windsor to Lechlade he adopted, for the time, the ordinary method of diet, which found favour with the author of "Nightmare Abbey." Mr. Jeaffreson, who is, if possible, more prejudiced on the subject than Peacock, and who writes with the easy assurance of what is apparently an absolute ignorance of both the theory and practice of Vegetarianism, describes it as a "regimen of starvation," which obliged both Byron and Shelley to have recourse to laudanum! "In drinking laudanum to deaden the pangs of spasmodic dyspepsia, consequent on long persistence in a lowering and otherwise hurtful diet, Shelley, be it observed, took opium when he had been slowly reduced to a condition that rendered the drug more powerful to derange his nerves for several days, than it would have been had he been previously sustained by sufficient food."—("Real Shelley," Vol. i., p. 145.) This is pure assumption, for which there is neither historical nor physiological evidence. To describe the diet of Wesley and Howard, of Plutarch and Porphyry, the diet of great workers and great thinkers in all ages as starvation leading to opium is to show a curious want of acquaintance with the real truth of the matter.

Shelley's Vegetarianism is seen in its pleasantest and most picturesque aspect at Marlow. The "Quarterly Review" declared that Shelley was "shamefully dissolute" in his conduct. On this Leigh Hunt wrote: "We heard of similar assertions when we resided in the same house with Mr. Shelley for nearly three months; and how was he living all that time? As much like Plato himself as all his theories resemble Plato—or rather still more like a Pythagorean. This was the round of his daily life. He was up early, breakfasted sparingly, wrote this 'Revolt of Islam' all the morning; went out in his boat, or in the woods, with some Greek author or the Bible in his hands; came home to a dinner of vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine); visited, if necessary, the sick and fatherless, whom others gave Bibles to and no help; wrote or studied again, or read to his wife and friends the whole evening; [took a crust of bread or a glass of whey for his supper, and went early to bed." Mr. Jeaffreson very