It having been discovered that Shelley suffered keenly from the ridicule of the playing-fields, he was selected evening after evening for this particular 'baiting.' Evening after evening the cry was raised of 'Shelley, Shelley, Shelley!' As he ran the gauntlet of derisive faces and voices, fingers were pointed at him. Not seldom he came in for rougher usage. If he was carrying books under his arm, a blow from behind scattered them on the ground. His clothes were pulled and torn. More than once a muddy football, deriving its impetus from a well-planted kick, came with the force of a spent shot down the narrow alley of deriders, caught him in his shirt-front, and bounding upwards, made his face as dirty as his frill. Mr. Middleton was assured by an eye-witness of these scenes that the fury, to which Shelley was goaded by his tormentors, 'made his eyes flash like a tiger's, his cheeks grow pale as death, his limbs quiver, and his hair stand on end.' It is probable that the boy's shrill screeches of rage, wild gesticulations, and frantic appearance, whilst he was thus baited and ridiculed by the whole school, first suggested to his persecutors that 'mad' was the fittest epithet to put before his surname. Anyhow, he was known in the school as 'Mad Shelley,' both before and after he had earned the less opprobrious designation of 'The Atheist.'
At a time when 'Mad Shelley' was the butt of the playing-grounds, Eton was visited by an itinerant lecturer, who received permission to deliver a course of lectures on astronomy, chemistry, electricity, and mechanics, to the boys of the school. Familiarly designated 'Old Walker,' this vagrant professor used to go about the country with his assistant-demonstrator, orrery, solar microscope, electrical machine, and other scientific apparatus; lecturing at the superior boys' schools and girls' schools of the provincial towns. Without Medwin's testimony to the point, it would have been safe to assume that the wandering lecturer, who was permitted to enlighten the boys of the most aristocratic of our great public schools, had also the honour of rendering the same service to the boys of Dr. Greenlaw's academy. Medwin, however, speaks so precisely of the visit Old Walker paid Sion House during Bysshe's second or third year at the school, and of the lively interest taken by Shelley in the professor's demonstrations, that he is not, in consideration of his frequent inaccuracies, to be declared guilty of error on the main facts of this part of his narrative. It is, of course, conceivable that blundering Tom Medwin assigned to the great room of the Brentford Academy incidents of a later date and another scene. But it is more probable he was guiltless of the mistake. Anyhow, Shelley had not long suffered under imputations of madness at Eton, when he heard Old Walker's course of lectures for the second time, if Medwin was right--for the first time, if Medwin was wrong in the matter.