: CHAUCER, Shakspeare, Milton, Shelley-these are, I believe, the four sublimest sons of song that England has to boast of among the mighty dead-say rather among the undying, the never-to-die. Let us remember also two exceptional phænomena, an "inspired ploughman," Burns, and an unparalleled poetess, Mrs. Browning, and be thankful for such a national destiny. There are plenty of others: but those four are, if I mistake not, the four. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on the 4th of August 1792 at Field Place, Sussex, the seat of his father, Mr. Timothy Shelley. The family is of high antiquity and distinction, and is at the present day represented by a peer (Lord de L'Isle and Dudley) and two Baronets. Mr. Timothy Shelley was the son of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Bysshe Shelley, a man of talent, handsome presence, varied experiences, and eccentric habits: in the latter years of his life he lived in reat seclusion at Horsham. He had married two heiresses, and had families by both. The former line was represented by Mr. Timothy Shelley, of whom Percy was the eldest child and heir; the later line was represented by Sir John Shelley-Sidney, of Penshurst. Mr. Timothy Shelley married Elizabeth, the beautiful daughter of a gentleman settled at Effingham, Surrey, Mr. Charles Pilfold. Four daughters and a son, in addition to Percy, grew up: three of the daughters are still alive. Mr. Timothy Shelley (who succeeded to the baronetcy, and died, long after his illustrious son, in 1844) was M.P. for Shoreham; a commonplace sort of country-gentleman, kindly enough but some what violent-tempered-in politics, an adherent of the Whig party, and especially of the local magnates, the ducal family of Norfolk. The mother was a woman of good abilities, but not with any literary turn. Shelley grew out of infancy at home, receiving a little schooling at the neighbouring village of Warnham, and afterwards at Sion House School, Brentford. The master here was a hard Scotchman, and the pupils formed an unrefined and ungentle team. Shelley, shrinkingly sensitive and open to all delicate impressions, endured much misery at their hands, and soon found out that the world into which he was born was not exactly his sort of world. We learn from the Dedication to the Revolt of Islam how acutely he felt his isolation and distresses, and how early he resolved to be "wise, and just, and free, and mild." Hence, in his fifteenth year, he passed to Eton, where things went on much the same. Shelley refused with scorn and exasperation_to_submit_to the fagging system: his spirit was not to be bent or broken, and he had his way. A tutor of the school, Dr. James Lind of Eton, was his early friend, and the trainer of his mind towards many high achievements. In especial he inspired the youth with a vivid though transitory love for chemical experiment, and with enlarged ideas of toleration and free enquiry in matters of religion. The anecdote of Shelley's setting fire to a tree on the common, by gunpowder which he lit with a burningglass, is one of the best known in his biography. At one time, being attacked by a fever which affected the brain, he was (or supposed himself to be) in some danger of being sent by his father to a private madhouse: Dr. Lind hurried to Field Place, cured him, and averted the peril. Shelley's career at Eton under Dr. Keate as head master, and amid schoolfellows whom he was perpetually resisting, was a stormy one at last, in 1809, (it has been said, but with uncertain authenticity) he struck a penknife through the hand of one of his young persecutors, and was in consequence withdrawn from the school. He had been, not a diligent scholar, but in some respects a zealous one; translating, for instance, half of Pliny's Natural History, and very ready, though far from scrupulously correct, at Latin verses. He had always a splendid memory and an insatiate love of reading. Shelley was already an author, and now figures as a lover as well. He wrote a number of wild romances in his boyhood, of which one, Zastrozzi, was published about 1809, and another, St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian, at the end of 1810. The merciful hand of Time has suppressed the others, and left only these two outpourings to excite alter nate hilarity at their absurdities, and astonishment at the condition of mind which could induce a publisher to accept -much more to invest in-either of them. Zastrozzi was actually purchased for some £40, and obtained a certain degree of success; St. Irvyne did not go down the public throat so easily. In 1810 Shelley had also made a first appearance in print as a poet. His volume was entitled Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, and some second writer had really a hand in it. Somehow-but nobody now knows with whom the true responsibility rested-some compositions by M. G. Lewis had been pirated into this volume, and it was immediately suppressed, and remains extinct. Much about the same time that he left Eton, Shelley fell in love with his beautiful young cousin Harriett Grove, the daughter of a clergyman in Wiltshire. received his homage graciously, and the two families were ready to look upon the affair as a match. Soon, however, the sceptical tone of Shelley's mind and correspondence excited alarm in Miss Grove's parents, and in her own tepid bosom as well; and, after the catastrophe which befell Percy at Oxford in the Spring of 1811, the courtship was broken off, and Harriett soon married another suitorleaving her cousin to ponder suicide, to denounce bigotry, and gradually to cicatrize his wounded affections. She In the autumn of 1810 he went to University College, Oxford, and at once struck up an extreme intimacy with a fellow-student, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg. The bond between them was a common love of intellectual enquiry and of literature. Probably also Mr. Hogg, like Shelley, had a sceptical turn in religious matters; but the enthusiastic and revolutionary elements of the poet's mind found no counterpart in his friend's, whose writings on the contrary exhibit him to us in the quality of a high Tory, an easy man of the world, and one habituated to regard all things from a caustic, and even a somewhat cynical, point of view. With vigorous and little supervised study, an intimate friendship, active habits, the simplest tastes, and (according to the best testimony) the purest habits in morals, Shelley greatly enjoyed the period of his Oxford studentship: but it was not to last long. Soon after his arrival at the university he showed Hogg some poems he was proposing to publish. Hogg saw that they were poor stuff, and told him as much; and eventually he and Shelley set to work at converting their juvenilities into intentional and caricatured extravagances. In this altered form the book was published as Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, edited by John Fitzvictor; the supposititious authoress being a crazy washerwoman who had attempted the life of George the Third, and who was now not in reality dead, but vegetating in a madhouse. This farrago of burlesqued revolutionary commonplaces was accepted in good-faith, and even admired, by university men. Shelley had contracted at Eton, under the influence of Dr. Lind, a habit of writing pseudonymously to varicus literary personages on speculative and other subjects. At Oxford he continued this practice, and drew up a little syllabus which he termed The Necessity of Atheism, and which he circulated, enclosed in letters (of course not avowing his real name) wherein he professed to have come across the pamphlet, and to be unable to refute its arguments. It is, I think, futile to deny that the author of The Necessity of Atheism was himself, when he wrote it, an atheist : he had indeed been named "Shelley the Atheist" at Eton, though some controversy as to the true origin of that term has arisen. A breakdown was likely to ensue, and did ensue. Shelley was denounced to the authorities of his College as the probable author of the atheistic pamphlet ; was summoned to admit or deny the charge; and, on refusing to do either, was expelled. Hogg, who had been his confidant and coadjutor, shared the same fate. Shelley and Hogg left Oxford for London on the 26th of March 1811, and soon separated, as the latter had to go to York to study conveyancing. Shelley was in the first instance excluded from his paternal home, and lived mainly on the pocket-money which his sisters goodnaturedly hoarded, and sent round to him by a schoolfellow, Harriett Westbrook. After a short while, however, his father relented, and allowed the delinquent £200 per annum. must be added that Percy was the reverse of a dutiful son. Difference of ideas and of character, and the frequent conflicts of circumstance, inspired him with a strong antipathy to his father, transcending to all appearance the bounds of reason, and certainly those of filial respect and obligation. It Harriett Westbrook now becomes the most important figure in Shelley's singular and chequered career. She was a very pretty blonde, aged sixteen, the daughter of a retired Hotel-keeper in easy circumstances. Shelley visited at her father's house, and soon talked Harriett out of the ordinary routine of religious and moral assumptions. Afterwards, while he was on a visit to a cousin in Wales, Harriett corresponded with him, alleging many horrors of petty persecution on her father's part, and she volunteered to "throw herself on his protection." Shelley returned to London. |