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I made two attempts when I was young myself—each time I was a strict Vegetarian for three months—but it made me very fat and I gave it up. That was my only reason, and it took me several days to overcome my disgust for animal food when I returned to it.—Yours, very
sincerely, Percy F. Shelley.
II.
For Shelley to hold a doctrine was to desire its active diffusion and general acceptance. It may be well here to give specific references to passages in which Shelley speaks of Vegetarianism. There is the passage in "Queen Mab," 1813 (viii., 211); the "Vindication of Natural Diet," 1813; "Laon and Cythna," 1818 (canto v., stanza li.); the opening lines of "Alastor," 1816; and a passage in the "Refutation of Deism," 1814, which includes a quotation from Plutarch. Shelley writes from Edinburgh to Hogg, on Nov. 26th, 1813: "I have translated the two essays of Plutarch, περî ςαρκοΦαγíας which we read together. They are very excellent. I intend to comment ubon them and to reason in my preface concerning the Orphic and Pythagoric system of diet."—(Dowden's "Life," I., p. 396.) This translation does not appear to have been printed. When "Queen Mab" was in the printer's hands he added to it a note which was also published in pamphlet form, as "A Vindication of Natural Diet." (London, 1813.) This was written under the influence of John Frederick Newton, the author of the "Return to Nature." "It is," observes Shelley, "from that book, and from the conversation of its excellent and enlightened author, that I have derived the materials which I here present to the public." He adopts Newton's explanation of the myth of Prometheus that it had reference to the first use of animal food, and of fire by which to render it more digestible and pleasing to the taste. In the same way he explains the consequences of eating of the tree of evil by Adam and Eve as an allegory that disease and crime have flowed from unnatural diet. Shelley points out that man resembles no carnivorous animal; that physiology indicates him to be a vegetable feeder; and that his loss of instinct in the matter of food can be paralleled by instances of other animals trained to reject their natural aliment. Man's adoption of a wrong diet brings him a diseased system. "Crime is madness: madness is disease." By a return to a natural
