‘Shelley's “Wandering Jew”’

Percy Bysshe Shelley was sceptical, and with more sincerity, with a conviction, perhaps, that disbelief of Christianity was a duty; he also was eccentric, but he was gentle-hearted, self-denying, a lover of his species, a yearner after its improvement. He too wrote poetry, some of it embodying his anti-Christian views,—a paradise, in which the Tree of Life had been cut down, but certainly containing less to pollute the imagination, poison the spring of action, and sear virtuous emotions, than many of the writings of his noble friend and contemporary. The reason why Shelley’s erroneous sentiments are comparatively innoxious, is, that by altering the names of his metaphysical agents, the cipher finds a key, becomes intelligible, and is found, when interpreted, to speak the truth. Christianity is this key. ‘The Wandering Jew,’ written when Shelley was seventeen, people agree with the essayist in Fraser, in thinking “a wonderful attempt,” containing, with all its schoolboyism, the germ of the "Prometheus"

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