But the "voice of warning", as he himself
would too generously have called it, is not long in making itself
heard. "Mr. Shelley, with perfect deliberation and the steadiest
perseverance, perverts all the gifts of his nature, and does all the
injury, both public and private, which his faculties enable him to
perpetrate. . . .He draws largely on the rich stores of another mountain
poet, to whose religious mind it must be matter of perpetual sorrow
to see the philosophy, which comes pure and holy from his pen, degraded
and perverted by this miserable crew of atheists and pantheists."
So far, perhaps, the writer may claim not to have outstepped the
traditional limits of theological hatred. For what follows there is
not even that poor excuse. "If we might withdraw the veil of his private
life and tell what we now know about him, it would be indeed a
disgusting picture that we should exhibit, but it would be an
unanswerable comment on our text. . .Mr. Shelley is too young, too
ignorant, too inexperienced, and too vicious to undertake the task of
reforming any world but the little world within his own breast.
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