Turned out of his
first home, Shelley went wandering forth by land and sea,--a reed
shaken by the wind, a restless outcast yearning for repose and human
sympathy, and in this way encountering the questionable accidents of
his troubled, unguarded life, and gathering all the feverish
inspiration of his melancholy and unfamiliar poetry.
With a sense of physical infirmity or defect which shaped the
sequestered philosophy of the Cowpers, the Berangers, and others, the
manlier minds of literature, including Byron himself, in some
measure, Shelley felt he was not fit for the shock and hum of men and
the greater or lesser legerdemain of life, and so turned shyly away
to live and follow his plans and reveries apart, after the law of his
being, violating in this way what may be called the common law of
society, and meeting the fate of all nonconformists. He was slighted
and ridiculed, and even suspected; for people in general, when they
see a man go aside from the highway, maundering and talking to
himself, think there must be a reason for it; they suppose him
insane, or scornful, or meditating a murder,--in any case, one to be
visited with hard thoughts; and thus baffled curiosity will grow
uneasily into disgust, and into calumny, if not into some species of
outrage,--and very naturally, after all; for man is, on the whole,
made for society, and society has a sovereign right to take
cognizance of him, his ways and his movements, as a matter of
necessary _surveillance_.
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