A Schedule of Significant Matters--Delusion and Semi-delusion--Certain phenomenal Peculiarities of Shelley’s Mind--The Psychological Problem--The Story that would have opened Southey’s Eyes--How it would be received by Critical Persons--Misconceptions of Field Place--Bootlessness of publishing the Story--Shelley and Socialistic Literature-- Marian Evans’ Great Error--Her Marriage--Mischievous Effects of the Apologies for Shelleyan Socialism--The Homage to which Shelley is entitled--The Homage to which he has no Title. THE REAL SHELLEY. CHAPTER I. WILLIAM GODWIN. Mr. Kegan Paul’s Inaccuracies--Godwin’s Early Story--From Socinianism to Deism--In the Service of Publishers--Hack-Work--_Political Justice_--_Caleb Williams_--Temperance and Frugality--Godwin’s two imprudent Marriages--His consequent Impoverishment--His personal Appearance--His Speech and Manner--His morbid Vanity--His Sensitiveness for his Dignity--His Benevolence and Honesty--Good Husband and good Father--Looking out for a suitable Young Woman--Mary Wollstonecraft--Godwin’s Regard for her--Mary in Heaven--A Blighted Being. To guard against imputations of error, that may be unjustly preferred against this work on the authority of another man of letters, it is needful for me to call attention to certain inaccuracies of Mr. Kegan Paul’s chief literary performance. In Chapter VII., Vol. II., of _William Godwin; his Friends and Contemporaries_, Mr. Kegan Paul remarks, ‘The attraction which Godwin’s society always possessed for young men has often been noticed, nor did it decrease as years passed on. Two young men were drawn to him in the year 1811, fired with zeal for intellectual pursuits, and desiring help from Godwin. They were different in their circumstances, but were both unhappy, and both died young. The first was a lad named Patrickson, the second Percy Bysshe Shelley.’ In this characteristic sentence, Mr. Kegan Paul makes at least three blunders. As Patrickson was corresponding with William Godwin in December, 1810, the youth was drawn to the man of letters before 1811. As Shelley never saw William Godwin, never wrote him a line, before 1812 (though Mr. Denis Florence MacCarthy states otherwise, on the strength of a misread passage of one of the Oxonian Shelley’s epistles), he certainly did not make Godwin’s acquaintance in 1811. As he was corresponding with him for many months before he set eyes on him, Shelley was not in the first instance drawn to the author of _Political Justice_ by his social charms. It is characteristic of Mr. Kegan Paul that the page on which he declares Patrickson to have made Godwin’s acquaintance, no earlier than 1811, faces the very page that exhibits the greater part of a letter from the man of letters to his ill-fated _protégé_, dated ‘Skinner Street, London, December 18th, 1810.’