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SHELLEY MEMORIALS.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY LIFE.

AT the close of the last century, the family of the Shelleys had long held a high position among the large landholders of Sussex. Fortunate marriages in the two generations preceding the birth of the poet considerably increased the wealth and influence of the house, the head of which in 1806 was a stanch Whig, and on that ground obtained a baronetcy from the short-lived Whig Administration of that year. Fourteen years previously, -viz., on the 4th of August, 1792, his illustrious grandson drew the first breath of life. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was born on that day at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex. the eldest son of Timothy Shelley, Esq., subsequently the second baronet; and was christened Bysshe after his grandfather. At six years of age, the boy was sent to a day-school near the residence of his parents,

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and at ten left home for the seminary of Dr. Greenlaw, at Brentford, Middlesex. Here he acquired the dead languages, seemingly by intuition; for, during school hours, he would gaze abstractedly at the passing clouds, or would scrawl in his school-books (a habit which he never lost) rude drawings of pines and cedars, in memory of those standing on the lawn of his native home.

He was regarded by his school-fellows as a strange, unsociable person. Never joining in their sports, he passed much of his leisure time in solitude, and on holidays would walk backwards and forwards along the southern wall of the playground, indulging in wild fancies and vague meditations. Still, though he seemingly neglected his tasks, he soon surpassed all his competitors; for his memory was so tenacious that he never forgot what he had once learned. He was very fond of reading, and eagerly perused all the books which were brought to school after the holidays. Stories of haunted castles, bandits, murderers, and various grim creations of fancy, were his favorites; and in after years he began his literary life by writing similar wild romances. When at Field Place during the vacations, his propensity to frolic, always, however, unaccompanied by the infliction of pain on any living creature, his partiality for moonlight walks, and his wonderfully exuberant imagination, came under the notice of his sister, who, in some spirited and graceful letters, has recorded a few of the incidents of this period.

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"Bysshe," writes Miss Shelley, "would frequently come to the nursery, and was full of a peculiar kind of pranks. One piece of mischief, for which he was. rebuked, was running a stick through the ceiling of a low passage, to find some new chamber which could be made effective for some flights of his vivid imagination. The tales to which we have sat and listened, evening after evening, seated on his knee, when we came to the dining-room for dessert, were anticipated with that pleasing dread which so excites the minds of children, and fastens so strongly and indelibly on the memory.

"There was a spacious garret under the roof of Field Place, and a room which had been closed for years, excepting an entrance made by the removal of a board in the garret floor. This unknown land was made the fancied habitation of an alchemist, .old and gray, with a long beard. Books and a lamp, with all the attributes of a picturesque fancy, were poured into our listening ears. We were to go and see him some day,' but we were content to wait; and a cave was to be dug in the orchard for the accommodation of this Cornelius Agrippa.

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"Bysshe was certainly fond of eccentric amusements; but they delighted us, as children, quite as much as if our minds had been naturally attuned to the same tastes; for we dressed ourselves in strange costumes to personate spirits or fiends, and Bysshe would take a fire-stove, and fill it with some inflammable liquid, and carry it flaming into the kitchen and to the back-door;

but discovery of this dangerous amusement soon put a stop to many repetitions.

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'My brother was full of pleasant attention to children, though his mind was so far above theirs. He had a wish to educate some child, and often talked seriously of purchasing a little girl for that purpose. A tumbler, who came to the back-door to display her wonderful feats, attracted him, and he thought she would be a good subject for the purpose. But all these wild fancies came to nought. He would take his pony, and ride about the beautiful lanes and fields surrounding the house, and would talk of his intention; but he did not consider that board and lodging would be indispensable; and this difficulty, probably, was quite sufficient to prevent the talk from becoming reality."

In stature, Shelley was slightly yet elegantly formed; he had deep blue eyes, of a wild, strange beauty,`and a high white forehead, overshadowed with a quantity of dark brown curling hair. His complexion was very fair; and, though his features were not positively handsome, the expression of his countenance was one of exceeding sweetness and sincerity. His look of youthfulness he retained to the end of his life, though his hair was beginning to get gray — the effect of intense study, and of the painful agitations of mind through which he had passed.

At the age of thirteen, Shelley went to Eton, and there began his earnest and life-long struggle with the world. When he entered the college, the practice of fagging flourished in all its vigor under the superin

tendence of Dr. Keate, the head-master. To the hightoned feelings of Shelley, this daily experience of unhappiness and tyranny was most revolting. Won by affection, but unconquered by blows, he was not the kind of youth likely to be happy at a public school. He refused to fag, and was treated by master and boys with the severity of passion and prejudice. But to all the devices of despotism he opposed a brave and dauntless spirit. At the same time, the purity, unselfishness, and generosity of his nature gained him friends among his school-fellows wherever there were any corresponding qualities to appreciate these signs of the nobility of his disposition. The power of fascination was, indeed, possessed by Shelley all through his exist

ence.

Mr. Packe, one of his school-fellows at Eton, relates in a letter that the embryo poet's tutor“. was one of the dullest men in the establishment; " that he did not understand his pupil in the least; that the boys made a point of constantly "goading Shelley into a rage," though they would run away, appalled, directly the storm they had provoked burst forth; that their victim would never deign to pursue them, but would generously assist their dulness when they came to him with petitions to help them in their tasks; and that he would not at any time submit to the trammels of the "gradus." His facility in making Latin verses is described by Mr. Packe as wonderful; but, not being in accordance with rule, these compositions were generally torn up. However, his greatest passion at Eton was for chemistry.

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