A little consideration will show us that Shelley really
has a great subject-matter--what ought to be; and that he has a real
humanity--though it is humanity in the seed, humanity in its internal
principle, rather than in those deformed expressions of it which can
flourish in the world.
Shelley seems hardly to have been brought up; he grew up in the
nursery among his young sisters, at school among the rude boys,
without any affectionate guidance, without imbibing any religious or
social tradition. If he received any formal training or correction, he
instantly rejected it inwardly, set it down as unjust and absurd, and
turned instead to sailing paper boats, to reading romances or to
writing them, or to watching with delight the magic of chemical
experiments. Thus the mind of Shelley was thoroughly disinherited; but
not, like the minds of most revolutionists, by accident and through
the niggardliness of fortune, for few revolutionists would be such if
they were heirs to a baronetcy. Shelley's mind disinherited itself out
of allegiance to itself, because it was too sensitive and too highly
endowed for the world into which it had descended. It rejected
ordinary education, because it was incapable of assimilating it.
Education is suitable to those few animals whose faculties are not
completely innate, animals that, like most men, may be perfected by
experience because they are born with various imperfect alternative
instincts rooted equally in their system.
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