periences. The boy had a certain measure of awe for his grandfather, though that his respect for him could only have been superficial is evident from the fact that he was wont to overhear-and on occasion to startle or shock strangers by imitating-the old man's unseemly vehemence of speech.

Sir Bysshe's son Timothy married, in 1791, Elizabeth Pilfold, a woman, by all accounts, of rare beauty; and, so far as can be ascertained amid many prejudiced narratives, of well-balanced mind and temper. After the birth of Percy there succeeded five children; four girls, named respectively Elizabeth, Mary, Hellen, and Margaret; and a boy, christened John. It was natural that of such a union the offspring should be pleasant of aspect, but the eldest child was something more than merely comely. Of exceptionally fair complexion, the beauty of his face lay mainly in the sensitive mouth and the large blue eyes; long locks of dull-gold hair curled to his neck; and he seems to have had that peculiar poise of the head which partly is due to refinement of race, and is partly, it would seem, a characteristic of very sensitive natures. Though in youth and manhood the features were somewhat irregular, the expression which animated them became of such rare sweetness and refinement that a famous painter declared it was simply impossible to paint the poet's portrait, as he was too beautiful."

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From very early childhood Shelley was an imaginative and mentally restless child. Trifles unnoticed by most children seem to have made keen and permanent impression upon him—the sound of wind, the leafy whisper of trees, running water. The imaginative faculties came

memory was remarkable. Hellen Shelley records, on the authority of her and Bysshe's mother, that, when a small child, Gray's lines on the Cat and the Goldfish were repeated by him word for word after a single reading. Shelley's earliest regular instruction commenced when he was six years old. Till his tenth year he remained under the educational guidance of the Rev. Mr. Edwards, of Warnham; though these four intervening years were mainly spent in gaining bodily vigour. It is a common mistake to suppose that the poet was an ethereal being from his infancy onward; at no period (as his most discerning admirers will emphatically agree in insisting) was he too far removed from common humanity to be other than a genuine creature of flesh and blood. At a time when the author of the "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Cenci" was intensely mentally occupied with dreams of splendid poetic achievement, we find him. following with vivid interest and practical good sense the public affairs which were then perturbing the whole nation, and even writing to a friend to be cautious about investments in home funds at a season of such universal disturbance and political uncertainty. Shelley seems to have naturally been of a vigorous constitution, though he had always more or less of that appearance of delicacy which is so far from rare among emotional and imaginative young folk of either sex. That he suffered considerably in his later years is undeniable, but certainly the mysterious pains which affected him in Italy were for the most part the penalties incurred by his habitual neglect of the body, by his occasional use of narcotics, and by a fitful asceticism which was undoubtedly the

shadow of the spiritual and intellectual light in which he habitually lived.

Every student of Shelley's poetry must recollect his love of making fragile craft out of paper or iris-flags, and setting them a-sail on stream or pond. How early this sport, for a sport of irresistible fascination it always was with him, was habitually indulged in is uncertain; but the poet certainly had himself as a very young child in view when, in "Rosalind and Helen," he wrote

"He was a gentle boy,

And in all gentle sports took joy;

Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,

With a small feather for a sail,

His fancy on that spring would float,
If some invisible breeze would stir
Its marble calm: "

When Bysshe-the name invariably used by his home circle, probably out of deference to "Uncle Bysshe" -was ten years old he was promoted from Mr. Edwards' care to that of a Dr. Greenlaw, who presided over some three score youngsters at Sion House, Brentford. Although with the commencement of his second decade Shelley began to experience the inequalities and petty bitternesses of life, the time spent at Sion House was by no means a wretched one, though the boy certainly was not happy. One of his biographers, who was also a second cousin to the poet, was contemporaneously at Sion House, and it is to Captain Medwin's published reminiscences that we owe the most interesting facts concerning this period of Shelley's early

life. Young as he was, that mental fever, that splendid intellectual delirium as it might more adequately be termed when referred to in connection with his maturer years, which is the common heritage of genius, had filled him with the spirit of unrest, dissatisfaction, and inquiry. For one thing, the mental stimulus too strongly dominated the physical energies for him to care much for the ordinary sports of boyhood, sports habitually indulged in by his companions whether in the mood for them or not, and taken almost equally as matters of routine as the less congenial lessons. Again, Sion House Academy was frequented by the sons of tradesmen, between whom and Shelley there was the shadow of a mutual, if never very clearly defined or very militant antagonism—a half-suspicious, half-jealous resentment on the one hand, and on the other a quick scorn for certain trifling, though none the less real, vulgarities. While Shelley was still a youth he lost all perception of class distinctions, and gladly took for granted the essential equality of all men who could meet on common intellectual ground. But that even genius cannot always free itself of conventional bonds is evident from the fact that Keats undoubtedly resented Shelley's superior birth, when circumstances brought them together, and never felt quite at his ease with one whom he was ever prone to suspect of condescen sion. Keats must have been one of the most lovable, and, in general, one of the most sociable of men, but his somewhat arrogant and patronizing way of speaking of Shelley is not to his credit. In fairness, however, it must be added that the elder poet's declamatory

emphasis on political and social rights and wrongs alienated Keats' sympathies more than any real cr fancied implication of social superiority on Shelley's part.

The latter's almost feminine beauty, his look of natural gentleness and innocence, tempted the boys of Sion House to affront and torment one whom they at first considered a milksop. The poor lad, well-bred, sensitive, already a dreamer of dreams, an alien among his fellows, experienced many unhappy hours during his stay at Dr. Greenlaw's academy. The majority of the boys considered him as fair prey: fagging was then an institution in full force, and all the petty tyrannies which that evil system permits were exercised upon the unfortunate youngster.

Shelley's faculty for the acquirement of knowledge, more especially knowledge of foreign languages, was quite exceptional. He was in this way all the more a cause of astonishment to his comrades from the fact that he never seemed to study, but to pass most of his time in reverie and watching the clouds, in scribbling sketches of cedars and other trees, and in "mooning." Books, especially fiction, and more particularly Mrs. Radcliffe's and other weird and sombre tales of the supernatural and the horrible, were his chief delight. This morbid literature sowed seeds in Shelley's mind which at first resulted in a sterile and valueless harvest, but which later on became fruitful indeed. Every spare moment he could secure for himself was spent in solitary reading or musing.

I might have laid more stress on Shelley's unhappiness at Sion House Academy, for undoubtedly