SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE, the eldest son of sir Timothy Shelley, bart. the represent ativc of an old Sussex family, was born at Field Place, near Ilorsham, in that county, on Aug. 4, 1792. His earlier education he received at home with his sisters. About the age of ten he was sent to a school near Breutford, and thence, three years after, trans ferred to Eton. Shy and sensitive, yet self-wilied and nnsubmissive, he suffered much from the harsh discipline of masters and the tyranny of his ruder associates. In his refusal to fag at Eton lie gave early indication of that Ossionate impatience of every form of constituted authority not apprgaing itself to his reason which continued through life to distinguish him, and to liud expMssion in his wriltigs. In 1808 he left school, and after two years passed at home he was sent to University college, Oxford. Even thus early lie hail become a freethinker of a somewhat advanced kiml, and a pamphlet, entitled A I kt; nse of Atheism, which he circulated during the second year of Ids college course, led to his expulsion from Oxford. This so irritated his father, that for some time lie declined to receive him; an I on his rash marriage, in Aug., 1811, to a Miss Harriet AVesthrook, the daughter of a r tired innkeeper, the estrangement between them became dual and complete, the old gsmilenian consenting to allow his son a liberal yearly income, but never after having any intercourse with him. Shelley's marriage was in its issue tragical. In 1813 a separation took place Hetween him and his wife, who, with two children, returned to the care of her father; and three years after the unhappy woman drowned herself. The refinements of intellectual sympathy which poets desiderate in their spouses, Shelley failed to find in his wife, but for a.titue he seems to have lived with her not unhappily; nor to the last had he any fault to allege against her, except such negative ones as might be implied in his meeting a woman he liked better. This was Mary Godwin, daughter of the celebrated William Godwin and Mary Woll stoneeraft, with whom, in 1814, he traveled in France and Switzerland, and who after ward became his second wife. Such excuse of his conduct in the matter as the theory of •• congenial souls" may afford in the eye of the moralist must to the full be allowed for Shelley, whose later union was of almost ideal felicity and completeness. On the
death of his first wife he laid claim to his children; but this their grandfather, Mr. Westbrook, strange as it may now scent, successfully resisted at law on the ground of his atheism, as exhibited in the poem of Queen Meth, which a year or two before lie had printed, though only for private circulation, In 1815, while living at Bishopsgate, near Windsor, he wrote his Alastor, one the most finished and characteristic of his works; which was followed by The Revolt rf Lsbon, composed in 1817 at During the interval, in the course of a tour in Switzerland, he had formed the acquaintance of lord Byron, with whom afterward in Italy he had much intimate intercourse. In Mar., 1818, lie left England linully—as it proved—to proceed to Italy; and during that and the following year, chiefly while a resident in Rome, he produced what may rank as his two finest poems—the grand lyrical drama of Prometheus Unbound and the tragedy of The Cenci.. While at Venice with lord Byron in 1820 he wrote Julian and Maddalo, record in enduring verse of an interesting conversation of the discussional kind between the noble poet and himself. Ills other works of chief importance are: Rosalind and Helen, begun before he left England; The Witch ef the Atlas, written in 1819; ETT.T ehidiun ; Adonais (a lament on the death of Keats); and Hellas (a lyrico-d•amutic burst of exultation on the outbreak of the Greek war of liberty)—all three produced in 1821. The winter of 1822 Shelley passed at Pisa; and in the April following lie established himself near Lerici, in the gulf of Spezia. His fondness for boating MO through life amounted to a passion, and here he indulged it to the full. On July 8, 1823, in the company of an ex-naval friend, Mr. Williams, he sailed from Leghorn, whither he had gone to welcome his friend, Mr. Leigh Hunt, to Italy, and was lost in a sudden squall on his voyage homeward. The bodies were, after sonic Lime, washed ashore, and were burned. as the quarantine law of the country required, in presence of lord Byron, Mr. Leigh Hunt, and another intimate friend, fir. Trelawne•: Shelley's ashes were carefully preserved, and lie buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, near the grave of Keats.