Percy Bysshe Shelley | Page 4

CHAPTER 7.
LAST DAYS.
CHAPTER 8.
EPILOGUE.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES.
1. The Poetical and Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by
Mrs. Shelley. Moxon, 1840, 1845. 1 volume.
2. The Poetical Works, edited by Harry Buxton Forman. Reeves and
Turner, 1876-7. 4 volumes.
3. The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by W.M. Rossetti.
Moxon, 1870. 2 volumes.
4. Hogg's Life of Shelley. Moxon, 1858. 2 volumes.
5. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. Pickering,
1878. 2 volumes.
6. Shelley Memorials, edited by Lady Shelley. Smith and Elder. 1
volume.
7. Medwin's Life of Shelley. Newby, 1847. 2 volumes.
8. Shelley's Early Life, by D.F. McCarthy. Chatto and Windus. 1
volume.

9. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. Smith and Elder.
10. W.M. Rossetti's Life of Shelley, included in the edition above cited,
Number 3.
11. Shelley, a Critical Biography, by G.B. Smith. David Douglas, 1877.
12. Relics of Shelley, edited by Richard Garnett. Moxon, 1862.
13. Peacock's Articles on Shelley in "Fraser's Magazine," 1858 and
1860.
14. Shelley in Pall Mall, by R. Garnett, in "Macmillan's Magazine,"
June, 1860.
15. Shelley's Last Days, by R. Garnett, in the "Fortnightly Review,"
June, 1878.
16. Two Lectures on Shelley, by W.M. Rossetti, in the "University
Magazine," February and March, 1878.

SHELLEY.
CHAPTER 1.
BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.
It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable; yet no man,
probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose dawning
gave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from earth while
yet the light that shone in them was crescent. That the world should
know Marlowe and Giorgione, Raphael and Mozart, only by the
products of their early manhood, is indeed a cause for lamentation,
when we remember what the long lives of a Bach and Titian, a
Michelangelo and Goethe, held in reserve for their maturity and age. It
is of no use to persuade ourselves, as some have done, that we possess
the best work of men untimely slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his

prime, before the composition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged
the fame of his forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios;
had Milton been known only by the poems of his youth, we might with
equal plausibility have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet
how shallow would have been our optimism, how fallacious our
attempt at consolation. There is no denying the fact that when a young
Marcellus is shown by fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn
before his springtime has bought forth the fruits of summer, we must
bow in silence to the law of waste that rules inscrutably in nature.
Such reflections are forced upon us by the lives of three great English
poets of this century. Byron died when he was thirty-six, Keats when
he was twenty-five, and Shelley when he was on the point of
completing his thirtieth year. Of the three, Keats enjoyed the briefest
space for the development of his extraordinary powers. His
achievement, perfect as it is in some poetic qualities, remains so
immature and incomplete that no conjecture can be hazarded about his
future. Byron lived longer, and produced more than his brother poets.
Yet he was extinguished when his genius was still ascendant, when his
"swift and fair creations" were issuing like worlds from an archangel's
hands. In his case we have perhaps only to deplore the loss of
masterpieces that might have equalled, but could scarcely have
surpassed, what we possess. Shelley's early death is more to be
regretted. Unlike Keats and Byron, he died by a mere accident. His
faculties were far more complex, and his aims were more ambitious
than theirs. He therefore needed length of years for their co-ordination;
and if a fuller life had been allotted him, we have the certainty that
from the discords of his youth he would have wrought a clear and lucid
harmony.
These sentences form a somewhat gloomy prelude to a biography. Yet
the student of Shelley's life, the sincere admirer of his genius, is almost
forced to strike a solemn key-note at the outset. We are not concerned
with one whose "little world of man" for good or ill was perfected, but
with one whose growth was interrupted just before the synthesis of
which his powers were capable had been accomplished.

August 4, 1792, is one of the most memorable dates in the history of
English literature. On this day Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field
Place, near Horsham, in the county of Sussex. His father, named
Timothy, was the eldest son of Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, of Goring
Castle, in the same county. The Shelley family could boast of great
antiquity and considerable wealth. Without reckoning earlier and
semi-legendary honours, it may here be recorded