uch details are not
without a certain value, inasmuch as they prove that the poet, who won
for his ancient and honourable house a fame far more illustrious than
titles can confer, was sprung from a man of no small personal force and
worldly greatness. Sir Bysshe Shelley owed his position in society, the
wealth he accumulated, and the honours he transmitted to two families,
wholly and entirely to his own exertions. Though he bore a name already
distinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to make
his own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born in
North America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is
also a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person of
obscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the
beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his
will, that he succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes of two English
heiresses; and, having begun the world with nothing, he left it at the
age of seventy-four, bequeathing 300,000 pounds in the English Funds,
together with estates worth 20,000 pounds a year to his descendents.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was therefore born in the purple of the English
squirearchy; but never assuredly did the old tale of the swan hatched
with the hen's brood of ducklings receive a more emphatic illustration
than in this case. Gifted with the untameable individuality of genius,
and bent on piercing to the very truth beneath all shams and fictions
woven by society and ancient usage, he was driven by the circumstances
of his birth and his surroundings into an exaggerated warfare with the
world's opinion. His too frequent tirades against:--

The Queen of Slaves,
The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead,
Custom,--

owed much of their asperity to the early influences brought to bear upon
him by relatives who prized their position in society, their wealth, and
the observance of conventional decencies, above all other things.

Mr. Timothy Shelley was in no sense of the word a bad man; but he was
everything which the poet's father ought not to have been. As member for
the borough of Shoreham, he voted blindly with his party; and that party
looked to nothing beyond the interests of the gentry and the pleasure of
the Duke of Norfolk. His philosophy was limited to a superficial
imitation of Lord Chesterfield, whose style he pretended to affect in
his familiar correspondence, thoug