Had it proceeded from a man far less imaginative than Shelley, and far less prone to mistake the creations of his fancy for sincere recollections, no cautious reader would regard this pleasant record of infantile affection as faithful in every particular to the actual circumstances of the childish attachment. On the other hand, the coldest and most suspicious peruser will be disposed to think the story substantially truthful, due allowance being made for the force of imagination, the deceitfulness of the equally retentive and fallacious memory, and the peculiar infirmity of the man who could not be trusted to give twelve fairly consistent accounts of any matter, however much he might desire to be precisely accurate. It is in favour of this estimate of the story that the essayist's portraiture of his former self harmonizes with the several other accounts he has given elsewhere of his character in childhood. In his later time Shelley always thought of the child, from which he had developed, as a mild-mannered, tractable, gentle child. The attachment being remembered, as an affair of his twelfth or thirteenth year, it may be presumed to have stirred and held his heart towards the close of his time at Brentford,--probably after Tom Medwin (who says nothing of the matter) left Sion House. To see the Brentford schoolboy's prominent blue eyes overflowing with tears of delight, under the music of his friend's voice, to watch the two urchins exchanging kisses, is to remember the girlishness of Byron's early attachments, as well as the girlishness of his affectionate care for his Harrow 'favourites.' From his first to his last hour at Sion House the masculine forces of Bysshe's two-sided nature were in abeyance. He was a gentle English girl rather than a gentle English boy. CHAPTER V. THE ETON SCHOOLBOY. First year at Eton--Creation of the Castle-Goring Baronetcy--Sir Bysshe Shelley's Last Will--Timothy Shelley's Children--Miss Hellen Shelley's Recollections--The Etonian at Home--The Big Tortoise--The Great Snake--Dr. Keate--Mr. Packe at fault--Walter Halliday--Mr. Hexter--Mr. Bethell--Fagging--Mad Shelley--'Old Walker'--Enthusiasm for Natural Science--The Rebel of the School--Lord High Atheist--Dr. Lind's Pernicious Influence on Shelley--Poetical Fictions about Dr. Lind--Shelley's Illness at Field Place--His Monstrous Hallucination touching his Father--John Shelley the Lunatic--_Zastrozzi_--Premature Withdrawal from Eton.