It might indeed be argued that the defects of his great qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works.

But while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent.

A cautious critic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St.Irvyne" for wondering how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a germ apparently so barren.

There is even less of the real Shelley discernible in these productions, than of the real Byron in the "Hours of Idleness." In the Michaelmas Term of 1810 Shelley was matriculated as a Commoner of University College, Oxford; and very soon after his arrival he made the acquaintance of a man who was destined to play a prominent part in his subsequent history, and to bequeath to posterity the most brilliant, if not in all respects the most trustworthy, record of his marvellous youth.

Thomas Jefferson Hogg was unlike Shelley in temperament and tastes.