This notion of entering the church was nothing more than a passing fancy; but with Shelley to entertain the notion was to discover virtuous reasons for acting on the immoral fancy. All through life Shelley thought of himself and his doings in this self-justificatory fashion. Whatever he said or did was right to be said and done. In a former chapter it has been remarked how Shelley resembled Byron in being a sentimental egotist; and how the egotism of the one poet differed from the egotism of the other. Whilst it delighted Byron to figure as the man of sin, Shelley sided with angels and asked the world to worship him for his celestial qualities. Whilst Byron delighted in painting himself blacker than he was, Shelley never wearied of proclaiming himself a creature of angelic purity and whiteness. Both were actors desirous of being mistaken for the characters they assumed; each of them having selected his part in obedience to his natural disposition; Byron wishing to be thought romantically wicked, because wickedness had a fascination for him, whilst Shelley wished to be thought romantically virtuous, because he had a genuine preference for goodness. Insincere on the surface, the affectation of either poet had its source in sincerity. In some respects Byron’s affectation was the more piquant, from being so much more unusual than Shelley’s affectation. Whilst Shelley’s affectation was commonplace hypocrisy, expressing itself in the finest figures of poetry, Byron’s hypocrisy was so much out of the ordinary course of things as to be almost unique. Harness designated it ‘hypocrisy reversed.’ It was hypocrisy turned inside out. And anything, from a philosopher’s argument to a fop’s dress suit, on being turned inside out, is for a while more attractive and entertaining than when it is displayed in the usual and proper way. To hear a man credit himself with virtues he does not possess, one has only to stand with open ears at the corner of any market, where people are noisily employed in over-reaching one another. But it is rare, and because rare it is amusing and piquant, to find a man chiefly desirous of persuading his neighbours that he is a very much worse man than he really is. England will hold her own amongst the nations of the earth for several centuries, without producing another great poet so enamoured and ambitious as Byron was of evil fame; but every generation of her past or future story has produced, or will produce, a poet with Shelley’s disposition to think and speak too well of himself. It may, however, be questioned whether England will, in the coming time, ever produce a poet so supremely great in his art, and at the time so supremely self-righteous as the author of _Laon and Cythna_.