BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

In a small southwestern room of the old-fashioned country house named Field Place, in Sussex, there stands over the fireplace this inscription:—

-

Here Percy Bysshe Shelley was born, on Saturday, August 4, 1792. He was the eldest child of Timothy and Elizabeth (Pilfold) Shelley. In this home he had for playmates, as he grew up, four younger sisters, and a brother the youngest of all: and on their memories were imprinted some scenes of his early days. He was fond of them, and as a schoolboy, when they came in to dessert, would take them on his knee and tell them romantic stories out of books on which his own imagination was fed; or he would declaim Latin for his father's pleasure; sometimes he led them on tramps through the fields, dropping his little sister over inconvenient fences, or he romped with them in the garden, not without accident, upsetting his baby brother in the strawberry bed, and being reproached by him as 'bad Bit.' St. Leonard's Wood, off to the northeast of the house, was traditionally inhabited by an old Dragon and a headless Spectre, and there was a fabulous Great Tortoise in Warnham Pond, which he made creatures in their children's world; nearer home was the old Snake, the familiar of the garden, unfortunately killed by the gardener's scythe; and, these not being marvels enough, a gray alchemist resided in the garret. He once dressed his sisters to impersonate fiends, and ran in front with a fire-stove flaming with magical liquids, a sport that readily developed with schoolboy knowledge into rude and startling experiments with chemicals and electricity. Altogether he was an amiable brother, mingling high animal spirits with a delightful imagination and a gentle manner. His young pranks were numerous. He delighted in mystification, both verbal and practical; he invented incidents which he told for truth, and he especially enjoyed the ruse of a disguise. A single childish answer survives in the anecdote that when he set the fagot-stack on fire and was rebuked, he explained that he wanted 'a little hell of his own.' He also wished to adopt a child, a fancy which lasted late into life, and thought a small Gypsy tumbler at the door would serve. As child or boy, all our recollections of him are pleasant and natural, with touches of harmless mischief and vivid fancy. There was a spirit of wildness in him. Even before he went away to school, while still a fair, slight boy, with long, bright hair and full, blue eyes, running about or riding on his pony in the lanes, where, after spending his own, he would stop and borrow money of the servant to give the beggars, — he attracted the notice of the villagers at Horsham as a madcap. Toward the end of his boyhood he liked to wander out alone at night, but the servant sent to watch him reported that he only 'took a walk and came back again.' Of all the scenes of this early home life, while it was still untroubled, the most attractive is the picture impressed on his five-year-old sister, Margaret, whose closest childish memory of him was of the day when, being

home ill from Eton, he first went out again, and, coming up to the window where she was, pressed his face against the pane and gave her a kiss through the glass.

His education began at the age of six, when he went for the rudiments of Latin and Greek to the Rev. Mr. Edwards, a Welsh parson at Warnham, and got traditional Welsh instruction from the old man. At ten he was sent away from home to Sion House Academy, near Brentford, under Dr. Greenlaw, whom he afterward spoke of 'not without respect,' says Hogg, as ‘a hard-headed Scotchman, and a man of rather liberal opinions.' Shelley was then tall for his years, with a pink and white complexion, curling brown hair in abundance, large, prominent blue eyes, — dull in reverie, flashing in feeling, — and an expression of countenance, says his cousin and schoolfellow, Medwin, ' of exceeding sweetness and innocence.' He was met in the playground, shut in by four stone walls with a single tree in it, by some sixty scholars drawn from the English middle class, who, writes Medwin, pounced on every new boy with a zest proportioned to the ordeal each had undergone in his turn. The new boy in this case knew nothing of peg-top, leapfrog, fives, or cricket. One challenged him to spar, and another to race. His only welcome was 'a general shout of derision.' To all this, continues Medwin, 'he made no reply, but with a look of disdain written in his countenance, turned his back on his new associates, and, when he was alone, found relief in tears.' It was but a step from the boys to the masters. If he idled over his books and watched the clouds, or drew those rude pines and cedars which he used to scrawl on his manuscripts to the end of his life, a box on the ear recalled him; and under English school discipline he had his share of flogging. 'He would roll on the floor,' says Gellibrand, another schoolmate, 'not from the pain, but from a sense of indignity.' He was a quick scholar, but he did not relish the master's coarseness in Virgil, and though he was well grounded in his classics, he owed little to such a moral discipline as he there received. He was very unhappy, and Medwin does not scruple to describe Sion House as 'a perfect hell' to him. He kept much to himself, but he had pleasures of his own. He formed a taste for the wild sixpenny romances of the time, full of ghosts, bandits, and enchantments; and his curiosity in the wonders of science was awakened by a travelling lecturer, Adam Walker, who exhibited his Orrery at the school. He and Medwin boated together on the river, and ran away at times to Kew and Richmond, where Shelley saw his first play, Mrs. Jordan in the Country Girl.' Sport, however, played a small part in such a boyhood. He passed among his schoolfellows,' says Medwin, as a strange and unsocial being, for when a holiday relieved us from our tasks, and the other boys were engaged in such sports as the narrow limits of our prison court allowed, Shelley, who entered into none of them, would pace backwards and forwards, I think I see him now, along the southern wall.' Rennie, another schoolmate, from whom comes the anecdote that Shelley once threw a small boy at his tormentors, adds that, if treated with kindness he was very amiable, noble, high-spirited, and generous' It is noteworthy that at Sion House he first developed the habit of sleepwalking, for which he was punished.

A single fragment of autobiography softens the harshness of these two years. It is Shelley's description of his first boy friendship :

'I remember forming an attachment of this kind at school. I cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which this took place; but I imagine that it must have been at the age of eleven or twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a character eminently generous, brave and gentle; and the elements of human feeling seem to have been, from his birth, genially compounded within him. There was a delicacy and simplicity in his manners inexpressibly attractive. It has

never been my fortune to meet with him since my schoolboy days; but either I confound my present recollection with the delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honor and utility to every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft and winning that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so deep that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred sentiments of friendship. I remember in my simplicity writing to my mother a long account of his admirable qualities and my own devoted attachment. I suppose she thought me out of my wits, for she returned no answer to my letter. I remember we used to walk the whole play-hours up and down by some moss-covered palings, pouring out our hearts in youthful talk. We used to speak of the ladies with whom we were in love, and I remember that our usual practice was to confirm each other in the everlasting fidelity in which we had bound ourselves toward them and toward each other. I recollect thinking my friend exquisitely beautiful. Every night when we parted to go to bed we kissed each other like children, as we still were.'

Shelley went up to Eton, July 29, 1804, being then almost twelve. Dr. Goodall, an amiable and dignified gentleman, was Head Master, and was succeeded in 1809 by Dr. Keate, renowned for flogging, who was previously Master of the Lower School. Shelley went into the house of a writing master, Hecker, and later into that of George Bethel, remembered as the dullest tutor of the school. He found a larger body of scholars, some five hundred, a more regulated fagging system, and a change of masters; but if he was better off than before, it was because of his own growth and of the greater scale of the school, which afforded more freedom and variety and better companionship. He refused to fag, and he brought into the world of boyhood a compound of tastes and qualities that made him strange. He stood apart from the whole school,' says one of his mates, a being never to be forgotten.' In particular the union in him of natural gentleness with a high spirit that could be exasperated to the point of frenzy exposed him to attack; but he was dangerous, and once, according to his own account, struck a fork through the hand of a boy, - an act which he spoke of in after-life as 'almost involuntary,' and 'done on the spur of anguish.' He was called 'Mad Shelley' by the boys, who banded against him. Dowden describes their fun:

'Sometimes he would escape by flight, and before he was lost sight of the gamesome youths would have chased him in full cry and have enjoyed the sport of a "Shelley-bait" up town. At other times escape was impossible, and then he became desperate. "I have seen him," wrote a schoolfellow, "surrounded, hooted, baited like a maddened bull, and at this distance of time I seem to hear ringing in my ears the cry which Shelley was wont to utter in his paroxysm of revengeful anger." In dark and miry winter evenings it was the practice to assemble under the cloisters previous to mounting to the Upper School. To surround "Mad Shelley" and "nail" him with a ball slimy with mud, was a favorite pastime; or his name would suddenly be sounded through the cloisters, in an instant to be taken up by another and another voice, until hundreds joined in the clamor, and the roof would echo and reëcho with "Shelley ! Shelley! Shelley!" Then a space would be opened, in which as in a ring or alley the victim must stand to endure his torture; or some urchin would dart in behind and by one dexterous push scatter at Shelley's feet the books which he had held under his arm; or mischievous hands would pluck at his garments, or a hundred fingers would point at him from every side, while still the outcry "Shelley! Shelley!" rang against the walls. An access of passion - the desired result would follow, which, declares a witness of these persecutions, "made his eyes flash like a tiger's, his cheeks grow pale as death, his limbs quiver."'

Shelley, however, though private, was not a recluse. He took part in the school life on its public side as well as in his studies. He boated, marched in the Montem procession as pole-bearer or corporal, and declaimed a speech of Cicero on an Election Monday. He once appeared in the boys' prize ring, but panic surprised him in the second round. He became an excellent Latin versifier and began that thoughtful acquaintance with Lucretius and Pliny's Natural History, which afterwards showed its effect in his early writings, and he learned something of Condorcet, Franklin and Godwin. Why he was called the 'atheist,' as the tradition is, cannot be made out, as there is no other trace of the word in the Eton vocabulary. His scientific interest was reinforced by a visit of the same itinerary Adam Walker who first revealed the mechanism of the heavens to him; and he bought an electrical machine from the philosopher's assistant, which the dull tutor, Bethel, unexpectedly felt the force of, when he undertook to investigate his lodger's instruments for raising the devil,' as Shelley boldly proclaimed his occupation to be at the moment. The willow stump which he set on fire with gunpowder and a burning glass is still shown, and there are other waifs of legend or anecdote which show his divided love for the ghosts of the cheap romances and incantations of his own invention. Chemistry, his favorite amusement, was forbidden him, and from these escapades of a youthful search for knowledge, doubtless, some of his undefined troubles with the masters arose. In the six years he passed at Eton his native intellectual impulse was the strongest element in his growth. He began authorship, and there wrote 'Zastrozzi,' his first published story, and with the proceeds of that romance he is said to have paid for the farewell breakfast he gave to his Eton friends at the same time that he presented them with books for keepsakes.

The reminiscences of these friends, several of whom have spoken of him, relieve the wilder traits of his Eton career. Halliday's description is the most full and heartfelt :

'Many a long and happy walk have I had with him in the beautiful neighborhood of Idear old Eton. We used to wander for hours about Clewer, Frogmore, the Park at Windsor, the Terrace; and I was a delighted and willing listener to his marvellous stories of fairyland and apparitions and spirits and haunted ground; and his speculations were then (for his mind was far more developed than mine) of the world beyond the grave. Another of his favorite rambles was Stoke Park, and the picturesque graveyard, where Gray is said to have written his "Elegy," of which he was very fond. I was myself far too young to form any estimate of character, but I loved Shelley for his kindliness and affectionate ways. He was not made to endure the rough and boisterous pastime of Eton, and his shy and gentle nature was glad to escape far away to muse over strange fancies; for his mind was reflective, and teeming with deep thought. His lessons were child's play to him. . . . His love of nature was intense, and the sparkling poetry of his mind shone out of his speaking eyes when he was dwelling on anything good or great. He certainly was not happy at Eton, for his was a disposition that needed especial personal superintendence to watch and cherish and direct all his noble aspirations and the remarkable tenderness of his heart. He had great moral courage and feared nothing but what was base, and false, and low.'

Such guidance as he had he received from Dr. Lind, a physician of Windsor, a man of humane disposition and independent thought, but of unconventional ways. Shelley always spoke of him in later years with veneration, and idealized him in his verse, but his influence can be traced only slightly in the habit Shelley learned from him of addressing letters to strangers. At one time, when Shelley was recovering from a fever at Field Place, and thought, on the information of a servant, that his father was contemplating

sending him to an asylum, he sent for Dr. Lind, who came, and, at all events, relieved him of his fears.

While Shelley was still an Eton schoolboy Medwin spent the Christmas vacation of 1809 at Field Place, and recalls walks with him in St. Leonard's Wood, and snipe-shooting at Field Place Pond. He envied the marksmanship of Shelley, who was a good shot, pistol-shooting being a favorite amusement with him through life. Shelley was already in the full flow of his early literary faculty, which was first practised in collaboration with his friends. At Eton he at one time composed dramatic scenes with a schoolmate, and acted them before a third lower-form boy in the same house. His sister Helen says that he also sent an original play to Mathews, the comedian. He had written 'Zastrozzi,' and he now began a similar romance with Medwin, The Nightmare,' and also a story, having the Wandering Jew for its hero, which was immediately reworked by the joint authors into the juvenile poem of that title. By April 1, 1810, he had completed his second published romance, St. Irvyne,' and before fall came he had, in company with his sister Elizabeth, produced the poems of Victor and Cazire,' of which he had 1480 copies printed at Horsham. Sir Bysshe, his grandfather, is said to have given him money to pay this village printer, but just how Shelley used this liberality is unknown. Shelley was always in haste to publish. He had sent 'The Wandering Jew' to Campbell, who returned it with discouragement, but the manuscript was, nevertheless, put into the hands of Ballantyne & Co., of Edinburgh. Shelley had begun, too, his knight-errantry in behalf of poor and oppressed authors, and while at Eton had accepted bills for the purpose of bringing out a work on Sweden, by a Mr. Brown, who, to take his own account, had been forced to leave the navy in consequence of the injustice of his superior officers. He undertook also on Medwin's introduction a correspondence with Felicia Brown, afterwards well known as Mrs. Hemans, but it was stopped on the interference of her mother, who was alarmed by its skeptical character. These were all noticeable beginnings, marking traits and habits that were to continue in Shelley's life; but the most important of all the events of the year was the attachment which was formed between him and his cousin, Harriet Grove, during a summer visit of the Grove family to Field Place, and a continuance of the intimacy at London, where the whole party, excepting Shelley's father, immediately went. Shelley's attraction toward his cousin, who is described as a very beautiful girl, amiable and of a lively disposition, was sincere if not deep. The match was seriously considered by the two families, and at first no hindrance was thrown in its way.

Shelley went up to Oxford in the fall of 1810 at the age of eighteen, with a cheerful and happy mind. He had signed his name in the books of University College, where his father had been before him, on April 10, and, returning to Eton, had finished there in good standing. His father accompanied him to his old college and saw him installed; and Mr. Slatter, then just beginning business as an Oxford publisher, a son of Timothy's old host at the Inn, remembered a kindly call from him in company with Shelley, in the course of which he said: 'My son here has a literary turn. He is already an author, and do, pray, indulge him in his printing freaks.' Shelley had already a publisher in London, Stockdale, afterwards notorious, whom he had induced to take the 1480 copies of the poems of Victor and Cazire' off the hands of the Horsham printer; but Stockdale, however, undertook 'St. Irvyne,' and brought it out at the end of the year, and he considered 'The Wandering Jew,' which Ballantyne had declined; but events moved too rapidly to admit of his issuing the poem.

Shelley found at Oxford the liberty and seclusion best fitted for his active and explor