INTRODUCTION

LIFE OF SHELLEY

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was born in 1792. His family was an old one, reaching back through a long line of ancestors to Henry Shelley of Worminghurst, Sussex, who died in 1623. Some authorities find members of the family present at the Norman Conquest; others, less easily pleased, mention Henry Shelley, an officer in the court of Henry VII, as a notable representative. The record is perfectly clear so far back as 1623; beyond this there is some confusion.

Sir Bysshe Shelley, the poet's grandfather, was the first member of his own branch of the family to achieve distinction. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, North America, married twice before he was forty years of age, amassed a great fortune, and died in 1806, a crabbed, penurious old man. Timothy, the only son, succeeded to his father's title and estates, but did not inherit the dash and charm nor other striking qualities which made Sir Bysshe in his youth

and early manhood an interesting character. Indeed, there was nothing to distinguish Timothy Shelley from the rank and file of the somewhat stolid and complacent squirearchy of the latter half of the eighteenth century. Mrs. Shelley, whom he married in 1791, was a lady of unusual beauty, not especially interested in books, though a good letter-writer. She appears to have been sensible and kindly, and, though possessed of a rather violent temper, not inconsiderate of her children. Shelley was the oldest in a family of six, two boys and four girls.

At the age of six, under a Welsh parson who taught him chiefly Latin, Shelley's education was begun. Four years later he entered Sion House Academy, near Brentford, where the head master, Dr. Greenlaw, superintended the instruction of fifty or sixty boys in Latin, Greek, French, and the elements of astronomy. After two years here he went to Eton and thence, in 1810, at the age of eighteen, to Oxford.

The chief account of Shelley's early life at home before his entrance at Oxford is given by his younger sister Hellen. The brother John, born in 1806, was too young to be a companion, but the four sisters were associates and eager sympathizers in all his sports and boyish pranks. These were many and curious. A garret, long closed and unused, was "undoubtedly the habitation of an alchemist, old and gray, with venera

ble beard, where by lamplight the sage pored over some magic tome"; the space above a low passage must be investigated in search of a mysterious chamber, the lurking-place of some awful secret. The "Great Tortoise" of a neighboring pond and the "Great Old Snake" that hid in the gardens were subjects of endless tales of enchantment and terror, at whose recital the little girls would shudder and Bysshe would assume the attitude of protector. With the aid of his sisters he sometimes sought to give concrete form to his imaginary world. "They became a crew of supernatural monsters: the little girls in strange garbs were fiends; Bysshe the great devil bearing along the passage to the back door a fire stove flaming with his infernal liquids." Occasionally his boyish spirit found exercise in practical jokes: "At one time a countryman passed the windows of Field Place, with a truss of hay forked over his shoulders; the intruder was recalled, and there stood Bysshe, disguised." At another time "a lad called on Colonel Sergison at the Horsham lawyer's house and asked in Sussex dialect to be engaged as gamekeeper's boy; his suit was successful, and 'then of course there was an explosion of laughter' and the jester stood revealed."

His residence at school furnishes a decided contrast to this happy life at home. His progress under his first teacher was slow, but at Sion Academy he stood