Harriett Westbrook--Her Character and Beauty--How Shelley came to care for her--Her Subscription for Janetta Phillips's Poems--Shelley's first Visit to Harriett's Home--His Intention to compete for 'the Newdigate'--Thornton Hunt's scandalous Suggestion--Obligations of the Oxford Undergraduate--Mary Wollstonecraft on the Guinea Forfeit--Shelley's False Declaration--His numerous Untruths--_The Necessity of Atheism_--Was it a Squib?--Lady Shelley's Inaccuracies--Mr. Garnett's Misdescription of the Tract--His Misrepresentation of Hogg--The _Little Syllabus_ printed at Worthing--More Untruths by Shelley--The Tract offered for Sale in Oxford--Shelley called before 'the Dons'--His Expulsion from University College--Hogg's Impudence and Craft--His Misrepresentations--Shelley and Hogg leave Oxford. Though he had not yet seen the child who, in the following September, became his first wife, Shelley was enough interested in her on 11th January, 1811, to write to his publisher, Stockdale:--'I would thank you to send a copy of _St. Irvyne_ to Miss Harriet Westbrook, 10, Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square;' an order he would scarcely have given, had not circumstances already caused him to think of her with peculiar friendliness. At their boarding-school on the north side of Clapham Common, near the 'Old Town,' Miss Mary Shelley (_ætat._ 13) and Miss Hellen Shelley (_ætat._ 11) had several schoolmates, of whose looks and doings they would naturally prattle to their elder brother during the Christmas holidays, as they sat about the Christmas fire. How was it that, of all the girls about whom his sisters may be assumed to have spoken in his hearing, Harriett Westbrook was the one he selected for a compliment that must have greatly pleased her? Mary and Hellen were the only persons (with the exception of their elder sister--possibly one of Harriett's school friends in earlier time) who can be conceived to have gossiped with him about the loveliest of Mrs. Fenning's pupils, in a way to inspire him with interest in her. The fair inference from the reasonable assumptions is that of all the school-girls, of whom his sisters spoke, Harriett Westbrook seemed the fairest and most fascinating to him and them. Let it be assumed that, of all their friends at the Clapham boarding-school, Harriett was the only girl of whom the sisters spoke to their brother. In that case, the question arises, why the sisters, so uncommunicative about the others, were eloquent about the girl who soon became their brother's wife?--eloquent about her in a way to make him desirous of knowing her? The question must be answered in a way more or less favourable to the notion that Harriett stood well in the opinion of the sisters.