know that arbitrary power never failed to corrupt the heart of man. (Loud applause for several minutes.)

"He had come to Ireland for the sole purpose of interesting himself in her misfortunes. He was deeply impressed with a sense of the evils which Ireland endured, and he considered them to be truly ascribed to the fatal effects of the legislative union with Great Britain.

"He walked through the streets, and he saw the fane of Liberty converted into a temple of Mammon. (Loud applause.) He beheld beggary and famine in the country, and he could lay his hand on his heart and say that the cause of such sights was the union with Great Britain. (Hear, hear.) He was resolved to do his utmost to promote a Repeal of the Union. Catholic Emancipation would do a great deal towards the amelioration of the condition of the people, but he was convinced that the Repeal of the Union was of more importance. He considered that the victims whose members were vibrating on gibbets were driven to the commission of the crimes which they expiated by their lives by the effects of the Union."

The third and longest report of Shelley's speech is as follows. It is taken from The Patriot, Dublin, 2d March, 1812:—

"Mr. Shelley then addressed the Chair. He hoped he should not be accounted a transgressor on the time of the meeting. He felt inadequate to the task he had undertaken, but he hoped the feelings which urged him forward would plead his pardon. He was an Englishman; when he reflected on the outrages that his countrymen had committed here for the last twenty years he confessed that he blushed for them. He had come to Ireland for the sole purpose of interesting himself in the misfortunes of this country, and impressed with a full conviction of the necessity of Catholic Emancipation, and of the baneful effects which the union with Great Britain had entailed upon Ireland. He had walked through the fields of the country and the streets of the city, and he had in both seen the miserable effects of that fatal step. He had seen that edifice which ought to have been the fane of their liberties

converted to a temple of Mammon. Many of the crimes which are daily committed he could not avoid attributing to the effect of that measure, which had thrown numbers of people out of the employment they had in manufacture, and induced them to commit acts of the greatest desperation for the support of their existence.

"He could not imagine that the religious opinion of a man should exclude him from the rights of society. The original founder of our religion taught no such doctrine. Equality in this respect was general in the American States, and why not here? Did a change of place change the nature of man? He would beg those in power to recollect the French Revolution : the suddenness, the violence with which it burst forth, and the causes which gave rise to it.

"Both the measures of Emancipation and a Repeal of the Union should meet his decided support, but he hoped many years would not pass over his head when he would make himself conspicuous at least by his zeal for them."

In these versions of the speech, which are the only ones I have been able to find in the Irish papers of the period, or rather in those of them that are still extant, there is no suggestion that Shelley met with the slightest discourtesy from those he addressed. Indeed, it would be strange if he had. His youth, his enthusiasm, his eloquence, as we will find, delighted the assembly by which, as we are told in The Freeman's Journal, " he was received with great kindness." Some slight interruption he did meet with at the beginning, but that was, as he tells us himself in the unpublished letter we have referred to, when he spoke of “religion.” In this letter, which is dated "17, Grafton Street, Dublin, March 14th, 1812," he says:

66 'My speech was misinterpreted. I spoke for more than an hour. The hisses with which they greeted me when I spoke of religion, though in terms of respect, were mixed with applause when I avowed my mission. The newspapers have only noted that which did not excite disapprobation."

SHELLEY AS AN ORATOR.

The following important letter, now for the first time given in connection with the life of Shelley, settles the interesting question, which has often been raised, of Shelley's probable success as an orator had he devoted himself to the cultivation of eloquence instead of poetry.

Medwin, Trelawny, and Captain Williams the partner of his fate, speak highly of the elevation of Shelley's ordinary conversation, which rose occasionally into an unstudied eloquence. But they never heard him address a public assembly. The only one hitherto recorded-except the anonymous writers subsequently to be mentioned—who had this opportunity, and made some allusion to it, was the late Chief Baron Woulfe. His description leaves the impression that Shelley was a cold, methodical, and ineffective speaker. Chief Baron Woulfe was in bad health when he is reported to have mentioned his recollection of Shelley's manner. Many years had elapsed, and Shelley could have scarcely been recalled to his memory except by an effort. Of far different value is the testimony wrung most reluctantly at the moment from an unwilling witness. That testimony is contained in the following letter, which was published in the Government organ of the day, The Dublin Journal, a paper originally started by George Faulkner, the publisher of Swift :

Shelley as an orator, described by "An Englishman” in 1812.

"To the Editor of The Dublin Journal.

66

"SATURDAY, March 7th, 1812.

SIR, Our public meetings now-a-days, instead of exhibiting the deliberations of men of acknowledged wisdom and experience, resemble mere debating societies, where unfledged candidates for national distinction rant out a few trite and commonplace observations with as much exultation and selfapplause as if they possessed the talents or eloquence of a Saurin or a Burke. This remark is particularly applicable to almost the whole of the meetings which have been assembled

within the last twelve months by the Catholics; at which young gentlemen of this description have constantly intruded themselves upon the public notice, and by the unseasonable and injudicious violence of their language, have not a little prejudiced the cause they attempted to support. Curiosity and the expected gratification of hearing a display of oratory by some of the leading members of the Catholic body led me on Friday, for the first time, to the Aggregate Meeting in Fishamble Street. Being rather late I missed the orations of Mr. Connell [sic] and the leading orators, and only heard a dry monotonous effusion from Counsellor ——, and, to me, a most disgusting harangue from a stripling, with whom I am unacquainted, but who, I am sorry to say, styles himself my countryman- —an Englishman. This young gentleman, after stating that he had been only a fortnight in Ireland, expatiated on the miseries which this country endured in consequence of its connection with his own, and asserted (from the knowledge, I presume, which his peculiar sagacity enabled him to acquire in so short a period) that its cities were depopulated, its fields laid waste, and its inhabitants degraded and enslaved; and all this by its union with England. If it revolted against my principles, Mr. Editor, to hear such language from one of my own countrymen, you will readily conceive that my disgust was infinitely heightened to observe with what transport the invectives of this renegade Englishman against his native country were hailed by the assembly he addressed. Joy beamed in every countenance and rapture glistened in every eye at the aggravated detail: the delirium of ecstasy got the better of prudential control; the veil was for a moment withdrawn. I thought I saw the purpose, in spite of the pretence, written in legible characters in each of their faces, and though emancipation alone flowed from the tongue, separation and ascendancy were rooted in the heart.

"As for the young gentleman alluded to, I congratulate the Catholics of Ireland on the acquisition of so patriotic and enlightened an advocate; and England, I dare say, will spare him without regret. I must, however, remark that as the love of his country is one of the strongest principles implanted in the

breast of man by his Maker, and as the affections are more ardent in youth than in maturer years, that this young gentleman should at so early an age have overcome the strongest impulses of nature, seems to me a complete refutation of the hitherto supposed infallible maxim that Nemo fuit repente turpissimus.

"AN ENGLISHMAN."

The same day, the 7th of March, 1812, on which The Dublin Journal published this sarcastic allusion to the speech of "a stripling" it does not condescend to name, is memorable in the life of Shelley as that on which he is first spoken of openly in terms of enthusiastic admiration and praise. It appeared in The Weekly Messenger, another Dublin journal, but differing very widely in politics from that which contains the letter of "An Englishman." Shelley seems to have been rather proud of the notice, as he sent it at once to Godwin. Writing to the philosopher on the following day, he says, "You will see the account of ME in the newspapers. I am vain, but not so foolish as not to be rather piqued than gratified at the eulogia of a journal."

The following is this very interesting article, the first public notice of Shelley. It is printed exactly as in the original :

From The Weekly Messenger, Dublin, Saturday, March 7th, 1812.
"Pierce Byshe Shelly Esq.

"The highly interesting appearance of this young gentleman at the late Aggregate Meeting of the Catholics of Ireland, has naturally excited a spirit of enquiry, as to his objects and views, in coming forward at such a meeting; and the publications which he has circulated with such uncommon industry, through the Metropolis, has set curiosity on the wing to ascertain who he is, from whence he comes, and what his pretensions are to the confidence he solicits, and the character he assumes. Το those who have read the productions we have alluded to, we need bring forward no evidence of the cultivation of his mind