SHELLEY 



5346 



SHELLEY 



Siege Gun Projectiles. For siege guns, in- 

 tended to batter down forts and permanent 

 positions, great weight of metal is needed, and 

 as has been proved by the effect of the big 

 German siege guns, the shells fired have been 

 brought to such perfection that no armor plate 

 can resist their destructive effects. 



The 4.7 siege guns of the United States army, 

 called the 60-pounder, hurls a shell of sixty 

 pounds weight a distance of 7,500 yards (over 

 four miles) with great effect. The charge is 5.94 

 pounds of smokeless powder. The British 6-inch 

 howitzer fires a shell weighing 122 pounds and 

 has an effective range of 7,000 yards. From the 

 commencement of the War of the Nations in 

 1914 it has been apparent that heavy siege artil- 

 lery must undergo great improvements to com- 

 pete with the huge guns just completed, to the 

 surprise of the world, by the Krupps, the great 

 German manufacturers of ordnance. Ranges of 

 11,000 and 12,000 yards (at least seven miles) 

 and even more have been obtained, and shells 

 at that range have wrought terrible havoc, a 

 thing unheard of on land before the outbreak 

 of the last war. Naval guns of largest caliber 

 project shells with deadly effect from ten to 

 eleven miles. F.ST.A. 



References: Any book published prior to 1914 

 is worthless as a record of improvement in the 

 manufacture of ammunition. The War of the 

 Nations changed every standard of warfare. 



The reader is referred to the following articles 

 in these volumes : 

 Ammunition Projectile 



Navy Shrapnel 



SHELLEY, shel'i, PERCY BYSSHE (1792-1822), 

 an English poet of the Romantic Age of Eng- 

 lish literature. He was born at Field Place, 

 near Horsham, Sussex, of a family recently 

 raised to a baronetcy. In his school life from 

 his earliest years he displayed a hatred of op- 

 pression of 'all kinds which clearly indicated 

 the tendencies most noticeable in his later life. 

 In 1810 he entered Oxford, where he soon gave 

 evidence of his literary gifts, but his* publica- 

 tion of a pamphlet on The Necessity of Athe- 

 ism caused his expulsion from the university. 

 This event was a keen disappointment to his 

 family, and led to the cutting off of his allow- 

 ance. For a time, then, Shelley lived in Lon- 

 don, supported by what his sisters could save 

 from their allowances, but at length his father 

 relented so far as to give him $1,000 a year. 



His Two Marriages. Shelley's elopement 

 with Harriet Westbrook, a pretty school friend 

 of his sisters and a daughter of a former tav- 



ern keeper, again turned his family against him, 

 and he was forced to make his own way. After 

 two years spent in traveling through England 

 and Ireland, he became estranged from his 

 wife, and soon afterward visited the continent 

 with Mary God- 

 win. Two years 

 later his wife com- 

 mitted suicide by 

 drowning, and 

 Shelley, whether 

 from remorse or 

 from grief alone, 

 suffered keenly. 

 He married Mary 

 Godwin, however, 

 and with her and 

 their children 

 went to Italy. Of 



the children of Biiglish'"poets"Tnsp"ired by"the 



V>i first rnarvi'Qo-o French Revolution; a man 

 his nrst marriage who could face infarnv and 



he had been de- defy the conventionalities of 

 , . , the world. Shelley failed to 



pnved because of adjust himself to the customs 

 and laws of his actual sur- 

 roundings. He was calumni- 



SHELLEY 



He was one of the most ar- 

 dent, independent and reckless 



his atheism. In 



Itaiv Shellev was ated and despised by the pub- 

 lic at large, and almost idol- 

 associated with ized by his intimate friends. 



Byron and with 



Leigh Hunt, and there he produced some of 

 his best work. In June, 1822, he went with a 

 friend for a sail on the Mediterranean, but the 

 boat was overtaken by a storm and both Shel- 

 ley and his companion were drowned. The 

 bodies were recovered and cremated, and the 

 ashes were buried in the Protestant cemetery 

 at Rome. 



His Ideals. From his early youth Shelley 

 had to endure persecution because of his ex- 

 tremely revolutionary tendencies and his inde- 

 pendence of spirit. He longed to establish an 

 ideal state of society, based upon the principle 

 of uniyersal brotherhood and having as its ob- 

 ject the development of individuality rather 

 than the upholding of institutions. Naturally, 

 he lived in continual rebellion against existing 

 conditions was what Matthew Arnold called 

 "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in 

 the void his luminous wings in vain." 



In Queen Mob, The Revolt of Islam and 

 Prometheus Unbound, his theme is the com- 

 plete liberation of the world. His views, how- 

 ever, were not clearly defined, nor had he any 

 idea of practicable methods. The poems which 

 most completely set forth his ideals and aspira- 

 tions seem to the average reader enveloped in 

 mystery. Most obscure of all his poems are 

 The Witch of Atlas and Epipsychidion. There 



