|
 The
eldest son of a rich commonplace baronet, SHELLEY arose in his
youth a Revolutionary poet, and even prophesied a modern purely
human piety. From University College, Oxford, he was expelled
for circulating a pamphlet entitled "The Necessity for Athiesm";
and was thereupon cast out by his family. His Gretna-Green marriage
with Harriet Westbrooke (1811), their separation (1814), and
his flight with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin only be mentioned
here; but we must add emphatically that Shelley's nature was
in a high degree both generous and pure. Upon Harriett's sad
death in 1817, Mary became his wife.
In the same year (1817), at the insistance of Mr. Westbrooke,
Shelley was by decree of Lord Chancellor Eldon declared unworthy
to have the charge of his own children. This event, and his suffering
health, made him resolve to quit England. Henceforth he and Mrs.
Shelley lived a wandering life in Italy, where he saw much of
Byron. In 1822 he was drowned
in the bay of Spezzia by the foundering of his boat in a storm.
His remains, cast upon the beach, were solemnly buried by his
friend Trelawny in the presence of Byron and Leigh Hunt. The
coffered ashes were buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome,
not far from the grave of Keats, in whose memory he had written
Adonais. On the tombstone was inscribed "Cor Cordium."
Shelley essentially represented the Revolution of 1789. That
he felt to be the modern crisis of world-wide import: but rightly
judgin the afflicting sequel (not least Napoleon's career), and
looking back gratefully upon the Art of the past, as the books
he loved attest (Homer, Æschylus,
Plato, in a measure Dante and Boccaccio; the Elizabethan dramatists,
Calderon
and Milton), his genius was led to qualify the revolutionary
creed by new features of grace pointing to a wiser faith, although
his own necessarily remained incoherent and unsatisfied to the
end (Adonais, stanzas 31-33). Rebellion against all authority,
especially priest and king; martyrdom; exulting hopes for the
future deliverance and unity of Man--of these he sang with flaming
zeal: but with them he interfused gentle compassion, tender appreciation
of feminine companionship, fetichistic worship of free Nature,
and an impassioned feeling for the ennobling office of art and
beauty in every form. All these, set forth with characteristic
splendour of rhythm, are to be found in his chief work Prometheus
Unbound (1820), a lyrical drama, where, however, the design
is marred by the deliverance coming from a blind demon named
Demogorgon. His Ode to Liberty is especially interesting
as the dithyrambic utterance of a creed striving for a basis
in the history of man. But his most perfect work is in the minor
poems: he was a master of song.
Purchase books
by Shelley
| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
|
