BEFORE HIS AGE.

SHELLEY'S biographers are neither many nor select. So far as we know, there is not a single readable life of the poet. The largest and most pretentious of those which we have seen, is an incomplete one by Thomas Jefferson Hogg, from whom, as having been the poet's most intimate friend, we might have expected something good. It is, with few exceptions, the worst biography in the English language. The author's aim is apparently twofold-to deify Shelley and to praise himself. His admiration of the poet is only inferior to his love for the poet's friend, and the volumes might with perfect propriety have been entitled " Hogg's Autobiography." There are many difficulties in the way of writing a good life of Shelley, not a few of which arise from his own careless and erratic habits. His manuscripts, like the Sibylline leaves, were left to the mercy of every wind, and his books, which, if collected, would have formed a really fine library, were scattered over Europe. Of himself we catch but flying glimpses. He is always settling down in some place where he vows he will live for ever, and ere a week has passed he has packed up and is off, or has gone off without packing up. Always on the move, giving way to every passing whim or casual fancy, at the Lakes of Killarney this week, in Edinburgh the next, making engagements he never means to keep, and keeping engagements he never meant to make, at times economical, yet oftener reckless in the spending of his means, bold and retiring, vigorous and weak, borrowing and lending within

the same hour, guileless, passionate, dreamy, mad—Shelley stands out in bold relief from among his literary compeers, as the most striking character in that brilliant group of authors, whose writings and genius have rendered illustrious the close of the last, and the beginning of the present century. Unfortunate in being the son of his father, whom he despised—misguided, misunderstood, and tyrannised over when at school-unjustly and hastily expelled from college —only less unfortunate in his enemies than in his friends— avoided by his sisters-forbidden the house by his father— driven from his country by the hisses of an outraged society-his short, sad, troubled life, life all of sorrow and dream, found a fitting close in a tragic death.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, near Horsham, on August 4th, 1792. He was the eldest child in a family of five, all remarkable for their beauty. He came of an old and honourable stock, which could trace back its origin to the time when Sir Guyon de Shelley rendered the family name famous by his prowess in the Crusades. Shelley's father was one Timothy Shelley, M.P., eldest son and heir of Sir Bysshe Shelley, Bart. When six years of age Percy was sent daily to learn Latin at a clergyman's house, from which he was removed when ten years old to Dr. Greenland's, under whose charge he remained for five years, when he was sent to Eton. As a child he was eccentric, delighting in amateur chemistry and practical jokes. His memory was singularly retentive, and on one occasion when only a few years of age he repeated correctly Gray's lines on "The Cat and the Gold Fish," after reading them once. His imagination was so vivid that he used to give the most circumstantial details of events which had never occurred. We shall see farther on how this trait in his character developed itself in after life. When but children at school, he and his eldest sister secretly composed a play, which they sent to Matthews the comedian, who considered it not unworthy of criticism, but

returned it as unsuited for acting. Stories of hobgoblins, Monk Lewis' Poems, fairy tales, and anything, indeed, that afforded scope for the exercise of his imagination, had always a great attraction for Percy. His singular mania for writing to wellknown authors, by whose works he had been attracted, developed itself very early, for we find him when still but a boy writing to Miss Browne (afterwards Mrs. Hemans).

While at Eton he had the misfortune to be under the harsh and cruel régime of that terrible boy thrasher, Old Keate, whose stupid cruelty, combined with the harshness and tyranny of the fagging system, then at its worst, repelled and disgusted Percy's young and sensitive mind, giving it a bent which it unfortunately never afterwards lost. Percy would not fag-enforced obedience was foreign to his nature. The effect of his school experiences on his mind, and the distorted impression which it gave him of life and human nature must be carefully borne in mind, in order rightly to understand the moral and mental peculiarities of his manhood. In 1809 he left Eton and returned to Field Place. Very pleasant must the change have been to him from the misery and awful solitariness of school life, to the sunny meads and blissful indolence of Horsham, not to mention the happy lovers' walks and moonlight trysts with his first love, cousin Harriet. In 1810 he was sent to University College, Oxford. His life at the university, as elsewhere, was like that of no one else. He eat, studied, walked, talked, slept, and looked, after a fashion of his own. That madness which is so akin to genius showed itself in his action and speech. He was so fond of making paper boats, and watching the tiny flotillas flowing down the stream, that he would tear up his private papers and letters, and on one occasion even-though the story seems too fabulous-made use of a £50 Bank of England note, in order to indulge his paper mania. He would pass hours in the depth of winter, engrossed in throwing stones into

pools and dreamily watching the ripples on the surface; and at other times would take a fit of pistol shooting, and would saunter along the roads pistol in hand, discharging it at the first available object, gate, tree, stone or window, or sometimes even into the air. Nor was this eccentricity confined to his actions, but manifested itself in his dress and general appearance. "His figure," writes Hogg, though not quite in these words, "was slight and fragile, yet his bones and joints were large and strong-he was tall, but stooped so much as to appear of low stature. His gestures were abrupt and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost feminine in its pure pink and white." His face and head were unusually small, though the latter from the bushiness and length of the hair looked large. The expression of his face was peculiarly gentle, delicate, and soft, his clothes were expensive and in the height of fashion, but rumpled and dusty. At a time when hair was worn short the length of his locks gave him an eccentric appearance, and, to add to his peculiarities, his voice—though in after life musical as is Apollo's lute—was harsh and discordant. His room, though luxuriously furnished, was a chaos of disorder, and nothing annoyed him more than the attempts of his scout to put things to rights; books, boots, chemical instruments, pistols and crockery, retorts, phials, money and soda water bottles, lay strewed upon the tables and floor.

He had a

As a student Shelley wrought incessantly. book in his hand in season and out of season, not only in bed and at table, but even when threading the busiest thoroughfares of London. He seemed to live two lives in one, constantly hovering between dreamland and the land of facts. He had no idea of time, turning night into day and day into night as the whim possessed him. He would collapse in the midst of an animated discussion, and coiling himself up catlike on the hearthrug fall fast

asleep. Locke and Hume were his favourites in philosophy; Plutarch, Plato, and Euripides, without notes (for he read Greek with marvellous facility), were his ordinary companions. In his living he was most abstemious, bread (with which his pockets were generally stored) and water being his chief means of sustenance. He hated politics and public meetings. Of controversy he was passionately fond, and kept up a continual argumentative correspondence on metaphysical and theological questions with such of his friends or even strangers as could be seduced into argument. Thus did the young student pass his time, studying hard, living purely and abstemiously, discussing and writing, when all of a sudden his University career was brought to a close. The story of his expulsion is well known. In the spring of 1811 he published a pamphlet, which was little more or less than a résumé of Hume's Essays, in which he discussed spiritual matters in a free and inquisitive tone. A copy of this production he sent anonymously to some of the college authorities, by whom he and his friend Hogg were summoned to attend an inquisitorial meeting, and on their refusing either to admit or deny the authorship of the pamphlet were summarily expelled. We shall not discuss at any length the propriety or impropriety of the authorities in using measures so extreme and unexpected. In all probability they acted conscientiously and according to their light, but the day is coming-though it has not yet come-when each man will be allowed a larger liberty of thought and speech, and no young, ardent inquirer after truth will be punished as Shelley was, and have his prospects to a large extent blasted, for attempting in all honesty the solution of a theological difficulty.

When we bear in mind Shelley's peculiar temperament, the yearning after truth which possessed his spirit, his natural scepticism which a study of Aristotle had not tended to remove, his aversion to injustice and tyranny, his