the country, among the less educated part of the higher gentry, this feeling often strengthens itself into something little short of actual insanity, and the fortunate adventures of Sir Bysshe Shelley, and the mésalliances of his daughters, were not unlikely to render the Shelleys most incurably mad. The poet was born the 4th of August, 1792, and brought up at Field-Place (his father's residence) till his tenth year with his sisters, and taught the rudiments of Latin and Greek. He was then sent to Sion House, Brentford, where Medwin had been already placed. We did not. The English lawyer's blue books are the numbers of the Law and Equity Reports with which every term oppresses him, and which are becoming each day a more serious grievance. The statesman's blue books are those desperate piles of lumber in which are contained the wisdom of parliamentary committees and royal commissioners, and of every person who wishes to enlighten the nation on the thousand topics which are forever investigated, and still remain as obscure as before. But the Brentford school-boy's blue books are not the blue books of the statesman or the lawyer, "Who does not," says our comic Plutarch, "know what blue books mean? But if there should be any one ignorant enough not to know what those dear dusky volumes, so designated from their covers, contain, be it known that they are or were to be bought for sixpence, and embodied stories of haunted castles, bandits, murderers, and other grim personages-a most exciting and interesting sort of food for boys' minds. Among those of a larger calibre was one which I have never seen since, but which I remember with a recouché delight. It was 'Peter Wilkins.' How much Shelley wished for a winged wife and winged little cherubs of children!"-Medwin, vol. i., p. 29. The school was a cheap bad school, penuriously managed, and the boys for the most part the sons of London shop-keepers. The lady who was supposed to manage the household details was too fine for her business; but as a part of her stock in trade had a pedigree at least as good as Shelley's. She was a cousin to the Duke of Argyle. We Nther like the poor woman the better for this, we own, and though the instincts of self-defence, and the sense of what was due to her family made her perhaps treat the Sussex Squirearchy less deferentially than they expected, her sister, who must have been as nearly related to the duke as herself, was 66 an economist of the first order." After all, if boys of whatever rank are sent to schools selected for their cheapness, they ought not to remember and resent, as if it were the fault of their masters or mistresses, the stinginess of their parents. The usual stories of the sufferings of boys, whose health is in any way infirm or whose spirits are too weak for the kind of ordeal to which their fellow students subject them, are tediously told by "the wearisome captain." The incompetence of the master is proved by his punishing Shelley for some faults in an exercise written for him by Medwin, who had cribbed the bad Latin it seems from Ovid. This incident and the fact that Shelley disliked learning to dance, are the capFrom Brentford school, Shelley went to Eton, tain's sole records of Brentford school. It was where he passed two years. Of this period of his scarce worth making a book for this-and yet in life there seems to be no authentic record. His one point of view Medwin's testimony is not with-school-fellows, with the exception of his reviewer out some value. Shelley's detestation of school in the Quarterly, appear to have preserved no reand the tyranny of the elder boys, has been in gen- collections of him, and we are told that in after eral understood as exclusively to be referred to life he never mentioned them; that he had even Eton, and the effect of his sojourn there. It prob- forgotten their names. At Eton he appears to ably arose from his detestation of this miserable have acquired a taste for boating, which was one place which seems to have been in every possi- of his greatest enjoyments through life. ble point of view, ill-chosen. To these treasures were added the stores of the Brentford circulating library. Mrs. Radcliffe's romances and novels of the Rosa-Matilda school, among which Medwin mentions the name of one in which the devil was the hero-" Zofloya the Moor"-were Shelley's great delight. Shelley believed in ghosts, and was known, once at least, to have walked in his sleep. He was habitually given to waking dreams, from which he was with great difficulty roused. When he did awake, “his eyes flashed, his lips quivered, his voice was tremulous with emotion;-a sart of ecstasy came over him, and he talked more like a spirit or an angel, that a human being."-Medwin, vol. i.. p. 34. His school education ended in 1809, and in the Shelley learned little at school-at least of winter of that year Medwin and he were a good school learning 66 deal together at the house of Shelley's father. They wrote novels and poems, from which Med -Nothing, that my tyrants knew or taught, win gives large extracts; among others a poem Cared I to learn." Still his mind was not inactive "Eager he reads whatever tells Of magic, cabala, and spells." "He was fond of reading, and greedily devoured il the books which were brought to school after he holidays. These were mostly blue books;who does not know what blue books mean?". Medwin. called the "Wandering Jew," which they sent *The "Wandering Jew" seems to have fastened on Shelley's imagination. When he went to Oxford, the first question he asked the librarian at the Bodleian was, "Had he the Wandering Jew?" and in his drama of Hellas, written nearly at the close of his life, we have "Ahasuerus" introduced "Oh, that Heaven, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice to Campbell. He good-naturedly read it, and, with | but it is surprising that any one can place the pardonable dishonesty, told them there were two slightest reliance on the record of conversations good lines in it,— Shelley's favorite poet in 1809," says Medwin, was Southey. He had read Thalaba till he almost knew it by heart, and had drenched himself with its metrical beauty. "I have often heard him quote that exquisite passage, where the enchantress winds round the finger of her victim a single hair, till the spell becomes inextricable-the charm cannot be broken. But he still more doted on Kehamah, the curse of which I remember Shelley often declaiming, "And water shall see thee! And this curse shall be on thee Forever and ever.' "I transcribe the passage from memory, for I have never read since that romance he used to look upon as perfect; and was haunted by the witch Loranite, raving enthusiastically about the lines beginning: "Is there a child whose little winning ways, Would lure all hearts, on whom its parents gaze tim et literatim. But why transcribe more of this strange medley? The passage of Thalaba which Shelley so often repeated must have been listened to by the most vacant of all minds, for there is not one word in it of "winding round the finger of her victim a single hair, " "He found a woman in the cave A solitary woman Who by the fire was spinning, And singing as she span. preserved by a memory so little retentive of anything worth remembering. We have, however, to make another remark on the passage that we have just cited, which makes us utterly discard, for any purpose, anything whatever that is stated on no better authority than the kind of gossip of which this very poor book is from beginning to end made up. In one of Miss Edgeworth's works the forgery of a deed is detected by the over-zeal of a witness brought up to prove the circumstances of its execution. He says that he now is the only person living who knows all that actually passed at the time. His gray hairs tremble with emotion as he seeks to confirm his testimony by calling the attention of the court to the fact, that under the seal was placed a silver coin-that if the seal be broken, the coin will be found. The seal is broken the coin is found; but one of a later date than that of the supposed execution of the deed. Now, Mr. Medwin is as anxious as Miss Edgeworth's witness to prove these conversations. He takes especial care to tell you that he transcribes from his recollection; that he has never read the poem or romance, as he calls it, since; and his misspelling the witch's name, and Kehama's too, for that matter, prevents our entertaining the slightest doubt of the accuracy of his statement that he had never read the book, or could in this way have confused in his memory the incidents of one period with those of another. He has a thousand reasons to remember the thing; and yet what he has stated is not-cannot be the fact. Break the seal-the coin is of a later date. "Kehama" was not published for years after the supposed conversation! 66 The only possible object of recording Shelley's early life is that of tracing the unusually early development of his powers; and the value of any part of the record is destroyed by proofs, such as this accident furnishes, that Medwin has composed his book from obscure recollections, in which time, place, and person are confused. For our own part, we think there is almost decisive evidence in Shelley's writings of his not having, at this period, even seen Thalaba," with "the metrical beauty of which" he is said to have already "drenched" himself. The earliest works of a boy almost ne cessarily exhibit close imitations of whatever he most admires. Shelley at this period wrote two novels, both very dull; but in one of them are several poems, in which the cadences of the verse and the forms of language, recall Beattie's Hermit, Scott's Ballads, and Monk Lewis', but in which there is not a single line or thought that for a moment brings to the mind the poem which Medwin says he was then perpetually repeating, and which we know, in a few years after, so possessed his imagination as to have furnished the key-note to That Medwin should have forgotten the passage, the versification of Queen Mab. This fact we and substituted some general recollection for what think absolutely decisive of the question, particuhe had heard Shelley repeat, is not surprising; larly if it be considered in connection with Med The thread the woman drew Was finer than the silkworm's Was finer than the gossamer. The song she sang was low and sweet; And round and round his right hand, He wound the thread so fine." win's exceeding carelessness in such statements, | his locks unconsciously, so that it was singularly as proved by the instance of Kehama. wild and rough. His features were not symmetriIn 1810, Shelley was removed to Oxford. He cal, the mouth perhaps excepted-yet was the effect entered University College. Of his short course enthusiasm and intelligence that I never met with of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed there his friend Mr. Hogg has fortunately given in any other countenance. Nor was the moral us a distinct record. His account was published expression less beautiful than the intellectual, for about twenty years after Shelley's death, in the there was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and New Monthly Magazine; and while his magazine especially (though this will surprise many) that air papers have some of the faults of that kind of of profound religious veneration that characterizes writing, we think that with some little condensa- the best works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into tion they would form a very interesting supplement masters of Florence and of Rome. I recognized the these they infused their whole souls) of the great to any future edition that may be published of very peculiar expression in these wonderful producShelley's works. The acquaintanceship of Mr. tions long afterwards, and with a satisfaction mingled Hogg and the poet commenced at their college with much sorrow, for it was after the decease of commons, where they dined at the same table. him in whose countenance I had first observed it. It was Shelley's first appearance in the hall. His This is a fine fellow, said I to myself, figure was slight; his aspect, even among young account,) but I could never bear his society. I (we continue to transcribe from Mr. Hogg's men, was remarkably youthful. He was thought-shall never be able to endure his voice. It would ful and absent in manner, and seemed to have no kill me. What a pity it is!" acquaintance with any one. Some accident led The voice of the stranger was excruciating. him and Mr. Hogg into conversation. Shelley praised the originality of the German writers. of the most cruel intension; it was perpetual and "It was intolerably shrill, harsh, and discordant; Hogg asserted their want of nature. modern literature will you compare with them?" said Shelley, with a discordant scream that excoriated the ears of his opponent. The Italian was named. Shelley waxed angry and argumentative. The dialogue had little interest for any one but the disputants, who soon found themselves alone in "What ing at the features and figure of the stranger. * without any remission; it excoriated the ears." and chafing his hand over the fire. He had come 666 What did the man talk about?' said Hogg. 'About stones! about stones!' he answered; ' about stones, stones, stones! nothing but stones, and so dryly! It was wonderfully tiresome; and stones are not interesting things in themselves.'" In the course of the evening Shelley dwelt on the advantages which the future generations of men may derive from the cultivation of science, and especially chemistry. He anticipated from the triumphs of science the release of the laboring classes from the unceasing toil now required to earn a mere subsistence. We are now unable to the hall. The servants now came in to clear the tables. Hogg invited the stranger to continue the discussion at his rooms. He eagerly assented. The dialogue, however, did not continue; for when the young men became better acquainted, they acknowledged that they knew nothing whatever of either German or Italian ; and Shelley said that the study of languages, ancient or modern, was but waste of time-learning the names of things instead of things themselves. Physical science, and especially chemistry, should rather be the objects of pursuit. Hogg began to feel his new friend something of a bore, and took to look-determine in what part of the substances we consume as food the nutritive property exists; this analysis may yet detect. The cause which occa"It was a sum of many contradictions. His fig- sions the fertility of some soils, and the hopeless ure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and sterility of others, is now unknown. The differjoints were large and strong. He was tall, but yet ence probably consists in something very slight. he stooped so much that he seemed of low stature. By chemical agency the philosopher may create a His clothes were expensive and made according to the most approved mode of the day, but they were total change, and transmute an unfruitful region tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were into one of exuberant plenty. Water is, like air, abrupt and sometimes violent, occasionally even composed of certain gases; why not expect to be awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. able, by some scientific process, to manufacture it, His complexion was delicate, almost feminine-of and then transform the deserts of Africa into rich the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and meadows? The generation of heat is unknown; freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed, as he said, the autumn in shooting. His features, his but a time may come when we may communicate whole face and particularly his head, were unusu-warmth to the coldest and most ungenial climate, ally small, yet the last appeared of a remarkable with as much ease and certainty as we now vary bulk, for his hair was long and bushy. In the the temperature of a sitting room. What a mighty agony of declamation he often rubbed it fiercely instrument would electricity be !-what wonders with his hands or passed his fingers quickly through * *Leigh Hunt, speaking of Keats, says, "His head was a puzzle for the phrenologists, being remarkably small in the skull: a singularity which he had in common with Lord Byron and Mr. Shelley-none of whose hats I could get on."-Hunt's Byron, &c. Vol. i., p. 408. has not the galvanic-battery already effected!—and the balloon-"why not despatch aëronauts to cross Africa in every direction, and to survey the whole peninsula in a few weeks? The shadow of the first balloon, which a vertical sun would project precisely under it, as it glided silently over that hitherto unhappy country, would virtually emancipate every slave, and would annihilate slavery forever!" 66 They spoke of mathematics. Of mathematics, Shelley said he knew nothing. Of metaphysics Aye, metaphysics-the analysis of mind-not of mere matter;" and he rose from his chair and declaimed with animation of a future state, and a former state. He had heard of Plato's doctrine of preexistence and suspended consciousness. But the candles were now burned out-the fire had sunk into ashes-and he started to find how long into the night he and his companion had sat. They arranged to meet the next day at Shelley's rooms; and at parting Mr. Hogg for the first time heard the name of the stranger, who had interested him so much. Hogg returned the visit the next day. The same contradictions that Shelley's dress exhibited struck him in the appearance of his rooms and furniture. Everything new and of an expensive kind, but thrown about in indescribable confusion. Books, boots, philosophical instruments, pistols, money, clothes, were scattered here and there. The carpet, with stains of various hues, proclaimed that the young chemist had been busy with his manipulations. Books lay open on a table-a bundle of pens and a razor, that had been employed as a knife-soda-water, sugar, and pieces of lemon were there, and, resting on a double pile of books, the tongs supported a glass retort above an argand lamp. The liquor boiled over-adding fresh stains to the table, and rising in fumes with a most fiendish smell. Then followed some tricks with the galvanic-battery. Hogg was made to work the machine till Shelley was filled with the fluid, and his long wild locks bristled and stood on end. Hogg passed the evening with him, and during their short stay at Oxford they were very much together. Both were early risers-both attended college chapel in the mornings; but they did not afterwards meet till about one o'clock in the after noon, when Mr. Hogg generally went to Shelley's rooms. They dined in the college hall, and past their evenings together. Hogg's studies were little interrupted by this arrangement. Shelley was fatigued with his morning's reading, and was generally overcome with drowsiness. He used to stretch on the rug before a large fire like a cat, exposing his little round head to such a heat, that his friend wondered how he could bear it. Hogg tried often to interpose some shelter, but in vain; for he would turn round in his sleep, and roll himself to the warmest place. In the midst of the most earnest conversation he would suddenly take to his rug, sleep for several hours-then, towards ten o'clock, start up, rub his eyes with violence, and passing his fingers through the tangles of his long wild hair, enter into argument, recite verses, his own or others', with an energy that was quite painful. Hogg read, while Shelley was thus hid in his vacant interlunar cave, and even when he was quite awake the studies of the friends were often separately pursued. They, however, 1‹nd many books together, and their walks in the open air were frequent. Shelley's preparation for a walk was often ominous. He would take out with him a pair of duelling-pistols, and amuse himself with firing at marks. His friend contrived to disappoint this dangerous pastime, by often taking care that powder or flints should be left behind. When they came to a stream or pond, Shelley loved to linger, making paper boats, and watching their course upon the water. One of his admirers tells of his having hazarded, in the absence of any less valuable scrap of paper, a fifty-poundnote in this amusement, but Hogg treats this as a mythic legend. Fable, however, soon passes into history, and Medwin tells us of a ten-pound-note thus ventured-reducing the amount of the note to increase we suppose the probability of the incident. Hogg gives an account of one of their evenings, in which the conversation turned on the advantages to society of the universities, and the old foundations for education. Even in the very lowest estimate of these advantages, they secured to the student an exemption from the interruption of secular cares. The regularity of academical hours cut off that dissipation of time and thought which prevails when the daily course is not preärranged. We gather, too, that they agreed in thinking, that the salutary attendance in chapel imposed duties conducive to habits of industry :— "It was requisite not merely to rise, but to leave our rooms, to appear in public, and to remain long enough to destroy the disposition to indolence, which might still linger, if we were permitted to remain by the fire-side." This was no doubt a low view of a very important subject; but there must have been great faults in the actual government of the college to which these young men belonged, to have rendered it necessary to deprive them of advantages which they were disposed to view in such a favorable aspect. "It would be a cruel thing," said Shelley," to be compelled to quit our calm and agreeable retreat ;" and he then expressed regret that the period of college residence was limited to four years, and those years interrupted and broken by frequent vacations. The seclusion of college life was felt by him as its great charm: "and then," said he, "the OAK-the OAK is such a blessing!" The oak, in the dialect of Oxford, is the outer door, against which the bore may knock and kick, and call in vain. "Who invented the oak?"—"Who but the monks, the inventors of the science of living in chambers?" It is a sad thing to think that poor Shelley's quiet was so soon interrupted; but before we record this, we must first state, from Mr. Hogg's account, something of their country excursions. Shelley was entirely unobservant of flowers : "He was able, like the many, to distinguish a violet from a sun-flower, and a cauliflower from a peony, but his botanical knowledge was more limited than that of the least skilful and common observers for ne was neglectful of flowers. He and position of his family, and that in which ho was incapable of apprehending the delicate distinc- would have to expect less competition than in any tions of structure which form the basis of the beau- other occupation of his taients. The duke failed tiful classification of modern botanists."* "I never was able," adds Mr. Hogg, "to impart even a to persuade him. "How often," said Shelley. glimpse of the merits of Ray or Linnæus, or to "have I gone with my father to the House of encourage a hope that he would ever be able to see Commons, and what creatures did I see there' the visible analogies that constitute the marked, yet What faces! what an expression of countenance ! mutually approaching genera, into which the pro- what wretched beings! And what men did we ductions of nature, and especially vegetables, are meet about the house-in the lobbies and pasdivided." sages and my father was so civil to all of themto animals that I regarded with unmitigated disgust!" Shelley must have known something more of these things a few years after, for Mrs. Shelley tells us- "That he was unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural objects; he knew every plant by its name, and was familiar with the history and the habits of every production of the earth. Hogg's record of Shelley's college life, and their studious evenings, brings back to us Cowley's lines "Say, for ye saw us, ye immortal lights, How oft, unwearied, have we spent the nights, We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine, thine."t There is evi Shelley had brought with him from Eton the habit of composition in Latin verse; and Mr. Hogg tells us that he took great pains in the study of everything connected with metre. dence in his English poetry of the mysteries of versification having been more the subject of study with him than we have any right to infer from the statements of his friends. They seem anxious to represent his power as if it were purely a gift, and owing nothing to assiduous cultivation. Logic the Aristotelic logic-is one of the great studies Shelley, we have said, was disputative. of Oxford, and the poet was a logician, according to mode and figure. He seems to have teased his friends by his disputativeness. His text-book for awhile was Hume's Essays. He had reasoned Arts which I loved-for they, my friend, were himself into all the conclusions of the sceptical philosophy. Hogg indoctrinated him with Plato, and Shelley appears to have believed both systems Shelley was a singularly pure-hearted, singleminded man. Of home he thought with intense-however irreconcilable they may seem. Of affection; and it was not without manifest delight Plato, the knowledge of our young philosophers that he received a letter from his mother or his was then derived from an English translation of sisters. Still, we can easily learn that at home Dacier's French translation; but this did its busithere was some feeling of disappointment about ness, when the business after all was little more the young student. His removal from Eton was than exercising the opening faculties of young earlier than usual; and it is plain that his conduct men's minds. From Plato or from Dacier, Shelthere did not satisfy either the authorities of the ley learned the doctrine of preëxistence, and it was place or his father-whose dreams for him were a favorite topic with him. One day he and Hogg of political advancement. Shelley, while an Ox- met a young gypsy girl, a child of six years of ford student, read at all times-at table, in bed, age-slight, bareheaded, barefooted, and in rags. and while walking. He read not only in the She was gathering snail-shells. "How much streets of Oxford, but in the most crowded thor-intellect is here!" said Shelley, "and what an oughfares of London. Out of the twenty-four occupation for one who once knew the whole cirhours he frequently read sixteen. His food was simple as that of a hermit. He already preached, and soon began―irregularly, however to practise abstinence from animal food. Bread was his chief food, to which he sometimes added raisins. He had a school-boy's taste for fruit, gingerbread, and sugar. Honey was a delicacy he relished. This abstemiousness increased in after life, but was probably unwise, as his friends appear to have observed an improvement in his health whenever accident led him to adopt for a few days a more generous diet. Shelley's detestation of the plans of life proposed for him by his family was almost unbounded. The Duke of Norfolk had recommended the study of politics to him as his business in life-that to which he was naturally called by the circumstances *This our readers must remember was written in 1832. Ode on the Death of Harvey. 66 cle of the sciences; who has forgotten them all, it is true, but who could certainly recollect them though it is most probable she never will!" A brother of the child's was near, and Shelley wanted Hogg to propose to him some mathematical question: "Your geometry, you know, is so plain and certain, that if it be once thoroughly understood, it can never be forgotten." The young gypsies did not return any answers to Shelley's questions. They understood him better when he drew an orange from his pocket, and rolled it along the grass before the retreating children. "Every true Platonist," he said, "must be fond of children; for they are our masters in philosophy. The mind of a new-born child is not, as Locke says, a sheet of blank paper—on the contrary, it is an Elzevir Plato-say rather an Encyclopædia, comprising all that ever was or all that ever will be discovered." |