It has been repeatedly urged, in palliation of the falsehoods Shelley employed in provoking and prosecuting 'his epistolary contentions,' that the scholars of former time, who brought about the revival of letters or were the offspring of the revival, contended with one another by epistles as well as by word of mouth, and that their letters, instead of being signed with their rightful Christian names and surnames, were usually signed with fanciful names of their own manufacture. The apology, were it true to the facts of the ancient fashion, would not justify Shelley's deceits; but it is a misrepresentation of the innocent usage of the old disputants. The mediæval scholar, who wrangled and wrote under an assumed name, held steadily to his adopted name, so that he was known by it and by no other name in the Universities and scholarly guilds. When Gerard's illegitimate son had once styled himself Desiderius Erasmus, in accordance with the innocent though fantastic and pedantic fashion of his contemporaries, he was styled so to his dying hour. The man who thus takes a name and sticks to it, whether he be a soldier or lawyer, a politician or dramatic actor, is guilty of no falsehood. Erasmus did not change his name every day of the week from a deceitful motive; he did not use a score of _aliases_ at the same time; it was not his habit to write to charitable people saying that he was a woman, and whilst feigning to be some one else to pretend he was living in one place whilst he was living in another place. In his epistolary diversions the singularly outspoken and truth-loving Shelley was guilty of all these various forms of misrepresentation. He used a score of different names, misrepresented his sex, told fibs about his address, said he was unhappy at what caused him delight, declared himself to have come accidentally on the book written by his own hand, declared to strangers that he was actuated solely by love of truth at the moment when he was boasting to Hogg that he was animated by hatred of religion. It cannot be denied that he was habitually guilty of all these different forms of deceit. It is admitted he was guilty of them, even by those who extol him for his singular frankness and sincerity.