tion that he should write the Life of Bolingbroke, but no one can doubt that such was the intention of the statesman when he bequeathed to him property which realised £10,000 in value. Every one knows the huge witticism of Dr. Johnson, who accused Bolingbroke of cowardice, under the simile of loading a blunderbuss, and then leaving a Scotchman half-a-crown to fire it when he was out of the way. When those posthumous works appeared, the grand jury of Westminster presented them to the judicial authorities as subversive of religion, morality, and government. They were burnt by the common hangman.

With difficulty we give a quotation from Bolingbroke's ideas of a Future Life. In vol. IV., p. 348, he says, 'I do dot say, that to believe in a future state is to believe in a vulgar error; but this I say, it cannot be demonstrated by reason: it is not in the nature of it capable of demonstration, and no one ever returned that irremediable way to give us an assurance of the fact.'

Again, he speaks personally in reference to himself, Pope, and Wollaston, whom he had been opposing.

* * *

'He alone is happy, and he is truly so, who can say, Welcome life whatever it brings! welcome death whatever it is! If the former, we change our state. * * That you, or I, or even Wollaston himself, should return to the earth from whence we came, to the dirt under our feet, or be mingled with the ashes of those herbs and plants from which we drew nutrition whilst we lived, does not seem any indignity offered to our nature, since it is common to all the animal kind: and he who complains of it as such, does not seem to have been set, by his reasoning faculties, so far above them in life, as to deserve not to be levelled with them at death. We were like them before our birth, that is nothing. So we shall be on this hypothesis, like them too after our death, that is nothing. What hardship is done us? Unless it be a hardship, that we are not immortal because we wish to be so, and flatter ourselves with that expectation.

'If this hypothesis were true, which I am far from assuming, I should have no reason to complain, though having tasted existence, I might abhor non-entity. Since, then, the first cannot be demonstrated by reason, nor the second be reconciled to my inward sentiment, let me take refuge in resignation at the last, as in every other act of my life: let others be solicitous about their future state, and frighten or flatter themselves as prejudice, imaginative bad health, or good health-nay, a lowering day, or a clear sunshine shall inspire them to do: let the tranquillity of my mind rest on this immovable rock, that my future, as well as my present state, are ordered by an Almighty Creator, and that they are equally foolish, and presumptuous, who make imaginary excursions into futurity, and who complain of the present.'

Lord Bolingbroke died in the year 1751, after a long and painful illness, occasioned by the ignorance of a quack. While lying on his death-bed he composed a discourse, entitled 'Considerations on the State of the Nation.' He died in peace-in the knowledge of the truth of the principles he had advocated, and with that calm serenity of mind, which no one can more fully experience than the honest Freethinker. He was buried in the church at Battersea. He was a man of the highest rank of genius, far from being immaculate in his youth, brave, sincere, a true friend, possessed of rich learning, a clear and sparkling style, a great wit, and the most powerful Freethinker of his age. 'A. C.'

JOHN WATTS, PRINTER, 147, FLEET STREET.

WITH THE

FREETHINKERS.

EDITED BY 'ICONOCLAST,' ANTHONY COLLINS, & JOHN WATTS.

No. 4.]

Saturday, November 15, 1856.

[Price 1d.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (the son and heir of a wealthy English baronet, Sir Timothy Shelley, of Castle Goring, in the county of Sussex) was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in that county, on the 4th of August, 1792. Ushered into the world in the midst of wealth and fashion, with all the advantages of family distinction, the future of Shelley's life appeared a bright one; but the sunshine of the morning only served to render the darkness which came over his noontide more dark, and to make poor Shelley still more susceptible of the hardships he had to encounter. First educated at Eton, his spirit there manifested itself by an unflinching opposition to the fagging system, and by revolt against the severe discipline of the school; in his Revolt of Islam' Shelley has thus portrayed his feelings:

'I do remember well the hour which burst

My spirit's sleep: a fresh May dawn it was
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass
And wept, I knew not why: until there rose
From the near schoolroom voices that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes,
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

And then I clasped my hands and looked around,
And none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground:
So, without shame, I spake-"I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power, for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannise
Without reproach or check."

And from that hour did I, with earnest thought,
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
I cared to learn, but from that secret store
Wrought linked armour for my soul, before
It might walk forth to war among mankind.'

From Eton Shelley went to Oxford, and while there he, scarce at the age of eighteen, published a volume of political rhymes, entitled 'Margaret [Published Fortnightly.]

Nicholson's Remains,' the said Margaret being a woman who tried to assassinate George III. He also wrote a pamphlet in defence of Atheism. A copy of this pamphlet he caused to be sent to the head of each of the colleges in Oxford, with a challenge to discuss and answer. The answer to this was the edict which expelled Shelley from Oxford, and at the same time placed a wide chasm between him and his family. This breach was still further widened in the following year by his marriage, at the age of nineteen, with a beautiful girl named Westbrook. Although Miss Westbrook was respectably connected, Shelley's aristocratic family regarded this as a mésalliance, and withdrew his pecuniary allowance; and had it not been for the bride's father, who allowed the young couple £200 a-year, they would have been reduced to actual poverty. This was an unfortunate marriage for both. After having two children, disagreements arose, and Shelley was separated from his wife. She (like all beautiful women) was soon attacked by the busy tongue of slander, and, unable to bear the world's taunts, committed suicide by throwing herself into a pond, just four years from the date of their marriage. Shelley, on this account, suffered much misery and misrepresentation, and this misery was much increased by his family, who applied to the Court of Chancery, and obtained a decree, by which Shelley was deprived of the custody of his children, on the ground of his Atheism. The same spirit even now pervades the Shelley family, and scarce a copy of his poems can be found in the neighbourhood of his birth-place. Shelley afterwards contracted a second marriage with the daughter of Godwin, the author of Caleb Williams,' and Mary Wollstonecraft (who died in giving birth to Shelley's wife), and for some time the poet resided at Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, where he composed the Revolt of Islam;' and it is a strong proof of the reality of Shelley's poetical pleadings for the oppressed amongst the human race-that he was indefatigable in his attentions to the poor cottagers of his neighbourhood; and that he suffered severely from an attack of ophthalmia, which was originated in one of his benevolent visits. Nearly the first of Shelley's poems was his 'Queen Mab,' in which (having in vain struggled to devote himself to metaphysics apart from poetry)_he blended his metaphysical speculations with his poetical aspirations. The following quotations are taken from that poem, in which his wonderful command of language is well shown:

'There's not one atom of yon earth
But once was living man;
Nor the minutest drop of rain,
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
But flowed in human veins:
And from the burning plains
Where Lybian monsters yell,
From the most gloomy glens
Of Greenland's sunless clime,
To where the golden fields
Of fertile England spread
Their harvest to the day,
Thou can'st not find one spot
Whereon no city stood.

How strange is human pride;
I tell thee that those living things,
To whom the fragile blade of grass,
That springeth in the morn

How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing,
How swift the step of reason's firmer tread,
How calm and sweet the victories of life,
How terrorless the triumph of the grave!

How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm,
Vain his loud threat and impotent his frown!
How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar!
The weight of his exterminating curse,
How light! and his affected charity,
To suit the pressure of the changing times,
What palpable deceit!-but for thy aid,
Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,

Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,
And heaven with slaves!

Thou taintest all thou lookest upon!-The stars,
Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,
Were gods to the distempered playfulness
Of thy untutored infancy: the trees,

The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea,
All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly,
Were gods: the sun had homage, and the moon
Her worshipper. Then thou becamest a boy,
More daring in thy frenzies: every shape,
Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,
Which, from sensation's relics, fancy culls;
The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,
The genii of the elements, the powers
That give a shape to nature's varied works,
Had life and place in the corrupt belief

Of thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful hands
Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave
Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain;
Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene,
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride
Their everlasting and unchanging laws

Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stood'st
Baffled and gloomy; then thou did❜st sum up

The elements of all that thou did'st know;
The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign.
The budding of the heaven-breathing trees,
The eternal orbs that beautify the night,
The sunrise, and the setting of the moon,
Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease,
And all their causes, to an abstract point,
Converging, thou did'st bend, and called it GOD;
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,

The merciful, and the avenging God!
Who, prototype of human misrule, sits

High in Heaven's realm, upon a golden throne,

Even like an earthly king: and whose dread work,
Hell gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves

Of fate, whom he created in his sport,

To triumph in their torments when they fell!

Earth heard the name; earth trembled, as the smoke Of his revenge ascended up to Heaven,

Blotting the constellations: and the cries

Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence

And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds

Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths,

Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land;
Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,
And thou did'st laugh to hear the mother's shriek
Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel

Felt cold in her torn entrails!

Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime;
But age crept on: one God would not suffice
For senile puerility; thou fram❜dst

A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut
Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend
Thy wickedness had pictured might afford
A plea for sating the unnatural thirst
For murder, rapine, violence, and crime,

That still consumed thy being, even when

Thou heard'st the step of fate:-that flames might light

Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks

Of parents dying on the pile that burned

To light their children to thy paths, the roar
Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries
Of thine apostles, loud commingling there.

Might sate thy hungry ear
Even on the bed of death!

But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs;
Thou art descending to the darksome grave,
Unhonoured and unpitied, but by those
Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds
Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun
Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night
That long has lowered above the ruined world.'