him the acutest pleasure: and this is highly characteristic of the
genius which was always seeking to transcend and reach the life of life
withdrawn from ordinary gaze. On the other hand he seems to have
delighted in the toys of science, playing with a solar microscope, and
mixing strangest compounds in his crucibles, without taking the trouble
to study any of its branches systematically. In his later years he
abandoned these pursuits. But a charming reminiscence of them occurs in
that most delightful of his familiar poems, the "Letter to Maria
Gisborne."

While translating Pliny and dabbling in chemistry, Shelley was not
wholly neglectful of Etonian studies. He acquired a fluent, if not a
correct, knowledge of both Greek and Latin, and astonished his
contemporaries by the facility with which he produced verses in the
latter language. His powers of memory were extraordinary, and the
rapidity with which he read a book, taking in seven or eight lines at a
glance, and seizing the sense upon the hint of leading words, was no
less astonishing. Impatient speed and indifference to minutiae were
indeed among the cardinal qualities of his intellect. To them we may
trace not only the swiftness of his imaginative flight, but also his
frequent satisfaction with the somewhat less than perfect in artistic
execution.

That Shelley was not wholly friendless or unhappy at Eton may be
gathered from numerous small circumstances. Hogg says that his Oxford
rooms were full of handsome leaving books, and that he was frequently
visited by old Etonian acquaintances. We are also told that he spend the
40 pounds gained by his first novel, "Zastrozzi," on a farewell supper
to eight school-boy friends. A few lines, too, might be quoted from his
own poem, the "Boat on the Serchio," to prove that he did not entertain