abolish all the evil done under the sun was to destroy bigotry,
intolerance, and persecution as represented by religious and
monarchical institutions. At first this influence combined
with his misguided literary passions only to heighten the whole
absurdity, as when he exclaims, in a letter about his first
disappointed love, "I swear, and as I break my oaths, may
Infinity, Eternity, blast me--never will I forgive
Intolerance!" The character of the romance is changed indeed;
it has become an epic of human regeneration, and its emotions
are dedicated to the service of mankind; but still it is a
romance. The results, however, are momentous; for the hero,
being a man of action, is no longer content to write and pay
for the printing: in his capacity of liberator he has to step
into the arena, and, above all, he has to think out a
philosophy.

An early manifestation of this impulse was the Irish enterprise
already mentioned. Public affairs always stirred him, but, as
time went on, it was more and more to verse and less to
practical intervention, and after 1817 he abandoned argument
altogether for song. But one pamphlet, 'A Proposal for putting
Reform to the Vote' (1817), is characteristic of the way in
which he was always labouring to do something, not merely to
ventilate existing evils, but to promote some practical scheme
for abolishing them. Let a national referendum, he says, be
held on the question of reform, and let it be agreed that the
result shall be binding on Parliament; he himself will
contribute 100 pounds a year (one-tenth of his income) to the
expenses of organisation. He is in favour of annual
Parliaments. Though a believer in universal suffrage, he