My Autobiography: A FragmentMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
My Autobiography: A Fragment
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Asianists -- Germany -- Biography; Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max), 1823-1900
One of these young men, who was at University College at the same
time, might certainly not have been considered a very desirable
companion for these two Scotch girls. It was no other than Shelley.
What they say of him does not tell us much that is new, yet it
deserves to be repeated. “Mr. Shelley,” we read, “afterwards so
celebrated, was half crazy. He began his career with every kind of
wild prank at Eton. At University he was very insubordinate, always
infringing some rule, the breaking of which he knew could not be
overlooked. He was slovenly in his dress, and when spoken to about
these and other irregularities, he was in the habit of making such
extraordinary gestures, expressive of his humility under reproof, as
to overset first the gravity and then the temper of the lecturing
tutor. When he proceeded so far as to paste up atheistical squibs on
the chapel doors, it was considered necessary to expel him privately,
out of regard to Sir Timothy Shelley, the father, who came up at once.
He and his son left Oxford together.”
No one would recognize in this picture the University of Oxford, as it
is at present. _Nous avons changé tout cela_ might be said with great
truth by the Heads of Houses, the Professors, and Fellows of the
present day. And yet what the Highland lady, or rather the Highland
girl, describes, refers to times not so long ago but that some of the
men we have known might have lived through it. How this change came
about I cannot tell, though I can bear testimony to a few survivals of
the old state of things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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