18 AUGUST 1888, Page 23

Percy Bysshe Shelley. By H. S. Salt. (Swan Sonnenschein and

Co.)—Mr. Salt complains that none of Shelley's biographers, "with the possible exception of Leigh Hunt, have been heartily in accord with his social and moral doctrines." This fault he proposes to remedy in the volume now published. This looks 943 if Mr. Salt thought that a man's life, to be written fairly, must be written by a partisan. We cannot swept the dogma; and in•Shelley's case, we

do not think that to be "heartily in accord" with theories so destructive of the well-being of society is any recommendation. What Mr. Salt calls the "social fetich of Respectability," has something more in it than he seems to think. We do not see that he has any other claim to write about Shelley.