read omnivorously--Hogg says as much as sixteen hours a day. He
would walk through the most crowded streets poring over a volume,
while holding another under one arm.

His mind was full of fancies. He had begun what was afterward
called "his passion for reforming everything." He despised most of
the laws of England. He thought its Parliament ridiculous. He
hated its religion. He was particularly opposed to marriage. This
last fact gives some point to the circumstances which almost
immediately confronted him.

Shelley was now about nineteen years old--an age at which most
English boys are emerging from the public schools, and are still
in the hobbledehoy stage of their formation. In a way, he was
quite far from boyish; yet in his knowledge of life he was little
more than a mere child. He knew nothing thoroughly--much less the
ways of men and women. He had no visible means of existence except
a small allowance from his father. His four sisters, who were at a
boarding-school on Clapham Common, used to save their pin-money
and send it to their gifted brother so that he might not actually
starve. These sisters he used to call upon from time to time, and
through them he made the acquaintance of a sixteen-year-old girl
named Harriet Westbrook.

Harriet Westbrook was the daughter of a black-visaged keeper of a
coffee-house in Mount Street, called "Jew Westbrook," partly
because of his complexion, and partly because of his ability to
retain what he had made. He was, indeed, fairly well off, and had
sent his younger daughter, Harriet, to the school where Shelley's
sisters studied.