473 



SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE. 



SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE. 



it is but fair to remember the injuries and sufferings that he had him- 

 self undergone. He rejected the proposal of an amicable conference, 

 and told the Presbyterian divines, " That not the bishops, but they 

 had been seekers of the conference, and desired alterations in the 

 Liturgy ; and that therefore there was nothing to be done till they 

 had brought in all they had to say against it in writing, and all the 

 additional forms and alterations which they desired." During the 

 course of that conference he did not appear often, and did not engage 

 in all the disputation, and yet was well known to have a principal hand 

 in disposing of all such affairs. 



In 1663 he was translated to the archbishopric of Canterbury, 

 vacant by the death of the Archbishop Juxon. In 1665, during the 

 time of the Great Plague, he firmly continued at Lambeth, notwith- 

 standing, the extremity of the danger, and with his diffusive charity 

 preserved great numbers alive that would otherwise have perished. 

 Also by his affecting letters to all the bishops he procured great sums 

 to be returned out of all parts of his province. The same year he 

 was one of those who promoted the Corporation or Five Mile Act 

 On the removal of Lord Clarendon from the chancellorship of the 

 University of Oxford he was chosen to succeed him, on December 20, 

 1667, but resigned that office the 31st of July, 1669. He had before 

 honourably lost the king's confidence by advising him to put away his 

 mistress Barbara Villiers, and he never recovered it. He soon after 

 retired from public business, and for the last years of his life he 

 resided chiefly at his palace at Croydon. He died at Lambeth, 

 November 9, 1677, in the eightieth year of his age ; and, according to 

 his own direction, was buried in Croydon church in Surrey, where a 

 stately monument was soon after erected to his memory by his nephew 

 and heir Sir Joseph Sheldon. 



Dr. Sheldon's character has been represented with the discordance 

 that must be expected in the reports of contending parties. Dr. 

 Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford, who had been his chaplain, says in 

 his ' Commentarii de Rebus Sui Temporis,' that " he was a man of 

 undoubted piety ; though he was very assiduous at prayers, yet he 

 did not set so great a value upon them as others did, nor regarded so 

 much worship as the use of worship, placing the chief point of religion 



in the practice of a good life He had a great aversion to all 



pretences to extraordinary piety, which covered real dishonesty, but 

 had a sincere affection for those whose religion was attended with 

 integrity of manners." Bishop Burnet, in his ' History of his own 

 Time,' does not give him so favourable a character. He says that he 

 was a very dexterous man in business, had a great quickness of appre- 

 hension, and a very true judgment, but thinks he engaged too deeply 

 in politics. " He had an art, that was peculiar to him, of treating all 

 that came to him in a most obliging manner; but few depended much 

 on his profession or friendship. He seemed not to have a deep sense 

 of religion, if any at all ; and spoke of it most commonly as of an 

 engine of government and a matter of policy." In public spirit and 

 munificence he sustained after an exemplary manner the character of 

 a great prelate. He expended large sums upon the Episcopal houses 

 of the stes of London and Canterbury, and particularly the palace at 

 Lambeth, where he rebuilt the library and made additions to its con- 

 tents. At Oxford, besides several sums given to different Colleges, he 

 immortalised his bounty to that university by the erection at his sole 

 expense of the celebrated theatre which bears his name. The architect 

 employed was Sir Christopher Wren ; the building was completed in 

 about five years, and was opened with great solemnity, July 9, 1669, 

 before the vice-chancellor, heads of houses, &c. The expense of this 

 building was more than fourteen thousand pounds, and he bequeathed 

 "two thousand more, to be employed," says Wood, "in buying land, 

 whose revenue might support the fabric, and the surplusage be applied 

 to the learned press." In this theatre are held public meetings of the 

 university for an annual commemoration of the benefactors and the 

 recitation of prize compositions, and occasionally for conferring degrees 

 on distinguished personages. We are assured that from the time of 

 Sheldon's being bishop of London to that of his death, it appeared in 

 his book of accounts that upon public, pious, and charitable uses he 

 had bestowed sixty-two (or according to other accounts seventy-two) 

 thousand pounds. As a writer he is only known by 'A Sermon 

 preached before the King, at Whitehall, upon June 28, 1660, being the 

 day of Solemn Thanksgiving for the Happy Return of his Majesty, on 

 Psalm xviii. 49,' London, 4to, 1660. 



SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE, was born at Field Place, near 

 Horsham, in Sussex, on August 4. 1792, the eldest son of Sir Timothy 

 Shelley, the representative of a family of ancient standing in that 

 county. His mother was a daughter of Charles Pilfold of Effingham 

 Place. He was brought up with his sisters till ten years of age, being 

 instructed in Greek and Latin by Mr. Edwards, the clergyman of 

 Warnham, in which parish Field Place is situated. He was next, a 

 delicate shy boy with an almost feminine softness of manners and 

 appearance, sent to school at Sion House near Brentford, where he 

 suffered much from the discipline of the master and the oppression of 

 the elder boys " the harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes," 

 as he termed such evils in the iutroductory stanzas pf ' The Revolt 

 of Islam.' But he was fond of reading, quick of apprehension, and 

 amidst an apparent neglect of his tasks and the consumption of a vast 

 amount of trashy tales and romances, contrived to secure a tolerable 

 amount of scholarship. At thirteen he was removed to Eton, where 



his refusal to fag brought upon him the anger of the other boys and 

 the reprehension of the masters. But though a shy and diffident 

 boy, ho possessed a spirit of unconquerable boldness, and the attempts 

 to subdue him only produced a vehement hatred of the injustice, 

 which he did not scruple to record in his poems in after-life. He 

 gained no distinction at Eton, though he improved his Grtek and 

 Latin, particularly Latin, in which he wrote hexameters with great 

 facility. He voluntarily translated several books of Pliny's ' Natural 

 History,' but stopped at the astronomy. In Greek he read the ' Sym- 

 posium ' of Plato, with Dr. Lind, one of the Eton masters, of whom he 

 makes favourable exception as to his behaviour towards him, and 

 whom he is said to have depicted in the old man who liberates Laon 

 in the ' Revolt of Islam,' and in the hermit in ' Prince Athanase.' He 

 also learned French and German, and paid considerable attention to 

 chemistry, for which he always retained a liking. In 1808 he left 

 Eton and returned home ; here he completed two romances, begun at 

 Eton, ' Zastrozzi,' an extravagant fiction, and ' St. Irvyne, or the 

 Rosicrusian,' a feeble imitation of Godwin's ' St. Leon ; ' and he fell in 

 love with a cousin, to whom he addressed some rather pretty verses, 

 and to whom he subsequently dedicated his ' Queen Mab.' He also 

 in conjunction with his relation Captain Medwin, wrote a poetical 

 romance called ' Ahasuerus, or the Wandering Jew,' which was sent 

 to Campbell, with a view to publication, but which Campbell returned, 

 saying there were only two good lines in it, and which was thrown 

 aside, found, and four cantos of it ultimately published in ' Frazer's 

 Magazine 'in 1831. While at Field Place, struck with the beauty of 

 some of the productions of Mrs. Hemans (then Felicia Browne) he 

 opened a correspondence with her, but the subjects he chose were 

 such that her mother requested the correspondence might cease, and 

 it did. 



At Michaelmas term 1810 he went to Oxford, and was entered at 

 University College. He studied and wrote incessantly. Soon after his 

 arrival he published anonymously a volume of poems entitled ' Post- 

 humous Poems of my Aunt, Margaret Nicholson,' in which he ridiculed 

 the sentimentality affected by many of the persons most conspicuous 

 for their atrocities in the French revolution. It was altogether a 

 worthless production, and he never claimed it, though it was well 

 known to be his. Mr. Hogg, the author of a series of papers which 

 appeared in the ' New Monthly Magazine' in 1832, under the title of 

 ' Shelley at Oxford,' is the authority for this. In his second year at 

 Oxford he had printed in London anonymously 'A Defence of Atheism.' 

 It appears to have been a scholastic thesis, intended to excite discussion, 

 rather than a serious avowal of confirmed opinions, and as such copies 

 were forwarded to the heads of colleges. His secret was not kept; he 

 was known as the author ; and at Lady-Day in 1811 he was summoned 

 before the master and two or three fellows of his college, a copy of 

 the pamphlet was produced, and he was asked if he were the author. 

 He declined acknowledging, though he would not deny it, and he was 

 expelled. He always complained of this as a great injustice, and it 

 embittered his feelings towards the institutions of his countiy and 

 those who supported them. His father was greatly displeased, for 

 some time refusing to receive him, the interval being passed by him 

 in London, where he employed himself, actuated to a considerable 

 degree by resentment, by completing his ' Queen Mab,' but which was 

 not printed till 1812. In August he returned to his father, who, 

 without the slightest sympathy with his pursuits, or any just appre- 

 ciation of his qualities, was yet proud of his son's talents. He desired 

 now that he should adopt politics as a pursuit, a course utterly opposed 

 to Shelley's feelings and opinions ; and he finally offended his father 

 irreconcileably by marrying, in August 1811 at Gretna Green, Miss 

 Harriet Westbrooke, the daughter of a retired hotel-keeper. The 

 marriage was unfortunate ; the parties had not seen each other above 

 half-a-dozen times before the match was concluded, and they soon found 

 that they were not at all adapted for each other. Shelley's father 

 refused to advance funds, and the newly-married pair were involved 

 in pecuniary difficulties. Shelley seems to have always treated her 

 with kindness, though his poems contain many allusions to his intel- 

 lectual sufferings during their union. At length, in 1813, by mutual 

 consent they separated, Shelley delivering her into the hands of her 

 father. In 1814 he visited the Continent in company with Mary 

 Wollstonecraft, the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstone- 

 craft, who afterwards became his wife, with whom he traversed France, 

 Switzerland, and Germany, and returned to England in the autumn. 

 Early in 1815 he came to an arrangement with his father, by which he 

 secured an income of 800Z. a year. He lived for a time in Devonshire, 

 and then removed to Bishopsgate, near Windsor, where in 1815 he wrote 

 his ' Alastor.' Two children had been the issue of his first marriage, 

 who had been left with their mother, and in the care of her father. 

 In 1816 his wife drowned herself, and he went to Bath to claim his 

 children ; but Mr. Westbrooke refused to give them up, and commenced 

 a suit in Chancery, alleging that from the atheistical doctrines pro- 

 pounded in ' Queen Mab,' he was not a proper person to have the 

 custody of them. In March 1817 Lord Chancellor Eldon pronounced 

 his judgment, committing the children to the care of the grandfather, 

 and restraining the father from intermeddling with them, but ordering 

 that he should pay the expense of maintaining them. After the 

 decision he again left England for Geneva, and in passing through 

 Switzerland met and formed an intimacy with Lord Byron. 



