character we may trace the principal traits of the
son: a strong scientific bent, a fondness for poetic dreams, an
invincible independence, were predominant in both. The character of
Lovell Beddoes' poetry was the natural outgrowth of his early studies.
His schoolfellows at the Charterhouse speak of him at the age of
fourteen as already thoroughly versed in the best English literature and
a close student of the dramatists, from the Elizabethan to those of his
own day. He was always ready to invent and carry out any acts of
insubordination, which he informed with so much wit and spirit that the
very authorities were often subdued by their own irresistible laughter.
It was one phase of his dramatic genius, that seemed to be constantly
impelling him to get up some striking situation wherein he might pose as
a youthful Ajax defying the lightnings. At Oxford his restless
independence was continually prompting him to affront his tutors. He was
always in opposition to the spirit of the occasion, whatever it might
be.

This spirit of rebellion inspired him with an intense interest in German
literature and German politics, as representing the ultra-liberal
tendencies of the day. Shelley, too, the rejected of Oxford, whose name
was scarcely to be mentioned to the British Philistine of the moment,
was one of Beddoes' idols, and he joined with two other gentlemen in the
expense of printing the first edition of the poet's posthumous works in
1824, afterward withdrawn by Mrs. Shelley. Byron was the popular poet
then, and universal Young England was turning down its shirt-collars in
a mockery of woe. But this boy of twenty, with his sturdy independence,
would judge for himself, and wrote to a friend: "I saw ---- (the
greatest fool within the walls of my acquaintance) the other night at
Oxford, repeating the whole of the _Deformed_ in raptures. God forgive
him!"

In 1821, while yet a freshman, he published a little volume of poems
called _The Improvisatore_, of which he was soon ashamed. Long before he
left Oxford he used to hunt the unfortunate volume through the libraries
of his acquaintance, and cutting out all the pages leave the binding
intact, a hollow mockery, upon their shelves. The next year, however, he
published _The Brides' Tragedy_, a drama of very great originality and
power, and a most extraordinary production for a boy of nineteen. The
_Edinburgh Review_ and the _London Magazine_. then at the height of
their power, c