appeal to her to return to him, and beg her to "pity if thou canst not love." Shelley had in the meantime met Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of William Godwin, a political writer for whom he entertained the most extravagant admiration, and of Mary Wollstonecraft, the gifted author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. By June the new friends had become very much attached to each other. Mary had grown up in an atmosphere wherein hostility to the marriage institution was a philosophic creed, and Shelley had given voice to this sentiment years before. Early in July the pair determined to unite. Shelley summoned Harriet to London, told her of his determination, made certain settlements with her regarding property, and on July 28th left England for the Continent with Mary, accompanied by Jane Clermont, the daughter of Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage. September 13th they returned, settling in London. His grandfather dying in January, 1815, a settlement of Shelley's succession to the estate was made, the poet having been made to relinquish the greater part in favor of a younger brother. He now paid Harriet's debts and allowed her $1,000 a year. In August he took a house near Windsor Park, and in May, 1816, Sheiley, Mary, Jane Clermont, and the child, William (born January, 1816) made another trip to the Continent. At Lake Geneva they met Lord Byron, and Jane Clermont renewed the intrigue begun in London, the fruit of which was the child, Allegra, born after the return of the party to England, where they arrived September 7th. It seems certain that this intrigue was unknown to the Shelleys until shortly before the birth of the child. On December 16th Shelley learned that Harriet, who in the meantime had made another alliance and had been deserted, had drowned herself, and on December 30th he formally married Mary. He tried to recover from the Westbrooks the two children born to Harriet (Ianthe and Charles Bysshe), but a Chancery action was determined against him on account of his "atheistical and immoral principles" and practices. Early in 1817 Shelley settled in Marlow, and on March 12, 1818, the household left England for Italy, reaching the Baths of Lucca in May. Alastor had appeared in the Autumn of 1816, and The Revolt of Islam in January, 1818. The great volume of his poetical production came from him during the four remaining years of his life—a product which for amount, excellence, and range of power, is held by many to be unparalleled in the history of the world's literature. In August the household removed to Byron's villa of Este, near Venice, and Allegra was put under the care of her father. Clara (Shelley's youngest child) died in Venice, September 24, 1818; and William at Rome, June 7, 1819. At Florence his last child (Percy Florence) was born, November 12, 1819 (died, 1889). January 27, 1820, the household removed to Pisa, and henceforth until Shelley's death lived in that neighborhood. Between April 26 and May 1, 1822, the Shelleys and two friends, Edward and Jane Williams, moved into the house Casa Magni, on the Gulf of Spezzia, near Lerici. Shelley's friend, Leigh Hunt, was to arrive at Leghorn in July, and on July 1st, Shelley, Williams, and a sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, sailed for that city in Shelley's boat, the Ariel, to meet him. They arrived next day, Shelley met Hunt, and saw him settled, and on July 8th the three started to return. A terrific squall struck the water shortly after they set sail, and the boat was never seen again. Shelley's and Williams's bodies were cast ashore July 18th, and a few days later the body of the sailor-boy. The bodies of the two friends were cremated on the shore August 17th and 18th, Byron, Hunt, and Edward John Trelawny, and some natives alone being present. Trelawny snatched Shelley's unconsumed heart from the flames. The ashes of the poet were deposited in the English buryingground at Rome, where Trelawny placed a slab in the ground, inscribed: PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. COR CORDIUM. Natus iv. Aug. MDCCXCII. "Nothing of him that doth fade Into something rich and strange." The dates of the writing of Shelley's principal poems are as follows: Queen Mab, 1809–13; Alastor, 1815; Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, 1816; The Revolt of Islam, 1817; Rosalind and Helen, 1817-18; Julian and Maddalo, 1818; Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1818; Stanzas Written in De jection, Near Naples, 1818; Prometheus Unbound, 1818-19; Masque of Anarchy, 1819; The Cenci, 1819; Ode to the West Wind, 1819; The Sensitive Plant, 1820; Letter to Maria Gisborne, 1820; The Skylark, 1820; The Cloud, 1818 (?)-20; The Witch of Atlas, 1820; Epipsychidion, 1821; Adonais, 1821; Hellas, 1821; Charles the First, 1821-22; The Triumph of Life, 1822. A great change in the attitude of the literary world toward Shelley's genius and character has taken place since his death. The fierce assaults have, in a large measure, turned to extravagant eulogies, though of modern writers of distinction Principal Shairp has dismissed him with scant praise and much blame, and Matthew Arnold, in an essay rightly termed by Saintsbury "the most crotchety of all his essays," has called Shelley "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." In the early part of the century Southey considered himself a benefactor of society in denouncing him. Hazlitt said that he had "a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic; " Charles Lamb could see nothing of value in him; Coleridge was indifferent, and so for a long time was Wordsworth; the reviews, particularly the Quarterly, gave him no mercy. Later, a better view began to be taken. De Quincey, while regretting Shelley's tone, spoke in the highest terms of the qualities of his mind; Macaulay said that the words bard and inspiration, which appeared so cold and false when applied to most poets, were justly applied to Shelley, and that had he lived he would doubtless have given to the world a work of the very highest design and execution; Bagehot wrote of him with guarded, but yet high, praise; Browning was an enthusiastic Shelleyan; so was Tennyson for a part of his life, though in his later period he fell away somewhat in his liking; and Swinburne has paid to the "Eternal Child" the highest tributes. The real Shelley comes to us through the work of William Michael Rossetti, Professor Edward Dowden, Richard Garnett, H. Buxton Forman, H. S. Salt, and Professor George Edward Woodberry. The latter has given, perhaps, the best understanding of the poet's beliefs, the relation of those beliefs to his life, and his influence in the world's thought. Of Shelley the man, a few words will suffice. Everyone who knew him bears witness to the matchless lovableness and high integrity of his character. Leigh Hunt applied to him the phrase engraved on the slab that marks the resting-place of his ashes: Cor cordium-" heart of hearts"; Byron speaks of him as the gentlest and best man he had ever known. Medwin, Hogg, Peacock, Trelawny, Williams tell us the same story. "His mistakes," said Edmund Clarence Stedman, "were those of poetic youth and temperament, and he grew in love, justice, pity, according to his light." Doubtless the best picture of him is to be found in Edward John Trelawny's Adventures of a Younger Son. As a poet he is to be studied from two viewpoints as a champion of democracy and social |