Percy Bysshe Shelley | Page 9

boy who despised discipline and sought to extort
her secrets from nature by magic, was destined to become the
philanthropist who dreamed of revolutionizing society by eloquence,
and the poet who invented in "Prometheus Unbound" forms of
grandeur too colossal to be animated with dramatic life.
A strong interest in experimental science had been already excited in
him at Sion House by the exhibition of an orrery; and this interest grew
into a passion at Eton. Experiments in chemistry and electricity, of the
simpler and more striking kind, gave him intense pleasure--the more so
perhaps because they were forbidden. On one occasion he set the trunk
of an old tree on fire with a burning-glass: on another, while he was
amusing himself with a blue flame, his tutor came into the room and
received a severe shock from a highly-charged Leyden jar. During the
holidays Shelley carried on the same pursuits at Field Place. "His own
hands and clothes," says Miss Shelley, "were constantly stained and
corroded with acids, and it only seemed too probable that some day the
house would be burned down, or some serious mischief happen to
himself or others from the explosion of combustibles." This taste for
science Shelley long retained. If we may trust Mr. Hogg's memory, the
first conversation which that friend had with him at Oxford consisted
almost wholly of an impassioned monologue from Shelley on the
revolution to be wrought by science in all realms of thought. His
imagination was fascinated by the boundless vistas opened to the
student of chemistry. When he first discovered that the four elements
were not final, it gave him the acutest pleasure: and this is highly
characteristic of the genius which was always seeking to transcend and
reach the life of life withdrawn from ordinary gaze. On the other hand
he seems to have delighted in the toys of science, playing with a solar
microscope, and mixing strangest compounds in his crucibles, without

taking the trouble to study any of its branches systematically. In his
later years he abandoned these pursuits. But a charming reminiscence
of them occurs in that most delightful of his familiar poems, the "Letter
to Maria Gisborne."
While translating Pliny and dabbling in chemistry, Shelley was not
wholly neglectful of Etonian studies. He acquired a fluent, if not a
correct, knowledge of both Greek and Latin, and astonished his
contemporaries by the facility with which he produced verses in the
latter language. His powers of memory were extraordinary, and the
rapidity with which he read a book, taking in seven or eight lines at a
glance, and seizing the sense upon the hint of leading words, was no
less astonishing. Impatient speed and indifference to minutiae were
indeed among the cardinal qualities of his intellect. To them we may
trace not only the swiftness of his imaginative flight, but also his
frequent satisfaction with the somewhat less than perfect in artistic
execution.
That Shelley was not wholly friendless or unhappy at Eton may be
gathered from numerous small circumstances. Hogg says that his
Oxford rooms were full of handsome leaving books, and that he was
frequently visited by old Etonian acquaintances. We are also told that
he spend the 40 pounds gained by his first novel, "Zastrozzi," on a
farewell supper to eight school-boy friends. A few lines, too, might be
quoted from his own poem, the "Boat on the Serchio," to prove that he
did not entertain a merely disagreeable memory of his school life.
(Forman's edition, volume 4 page 115.) Yet the general experience of
Eton must have been painful; and it is sad to read of this gentle and
pure spirit being goaded by his coarser comrades into fury, or coaxed to
curse his father and the king for their amusement. It may be worth
mentioning that he was called "the Atheist" at Eton; and though Hogg
explains this by saying that "the Atheist" was an official character
among the boys, selected from time to time for his defiance of authority,
yet it is not improbable that Shelley's avowed opinions may even then
have won for him a title which he proudly claimed in after-life. To
allude to his boyish incantations and nocturnal commerce with fiends
and phantoms would scarcely be needful, were it not that they seem to

have deeply tinged his imagination. While describing the growth of his
own genius in the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," he makes the
following reference to circumstances which might otherwise be
trivial:--
While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped Thro' many a listening
chamber, cave, and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps
pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I call'd on
poisonous names with which our youth is fed, I was not heard, I saw
them