Meadow, and among the attractions
was Professor Adams with his "school of undefeated champions." The
plural is in the grand manner, giving the lie to Cashel Byron's pathetic
plaint:--

It is a lonely thing to be a champion.

Avoiding Professor Adams, and walking due west, one comes after a couple
of miles to Broadbridge Heath, where is Field Place, the birthplace of
the greatest of Sussex poets, and perhaps the greatest of the county's
sons--Percy Bysshe Shelley. The author of _Adonais_ was born in a little
bedroom with a south aspect on August 4, 1792. His father's mother,
_nee_ Michell, was the daughter of a late vicar of Horsham and member of
an old Sussex family; another Horsham cleric, the Rev. Thomas Edwards,
gave the boy his first lessons. Field Place is still very much what it
was in Shelley's early days--the only days it was a home to him. It
stands low, in a situation darkened by the surrounding trees, a rambling
house neither as old as one would wish for aesthetic reasons nor as new
as comfort might dictate. There is no view. In the garden one may in
fancy see again the little boy, like all poetic children, "deep in his
unknown day's employ." Indeed, like all children, might be said, for is
not every child a poet for a little while? In the _Life of Shelley_ by
his cousin Thomas Medwin is printed the following letter to a friend at
Horsham, written when he was nine, which I quote not for any particular
intrinsic merit, but because it helps to bring him before us in his
Field Place days, of which too little is known:--

"_Monday, July 18, 1803._
"MISS KATE,
"HORSHAM,
"SUSSEX.

"DEAR KATE,--We have proposed a day at the pond next Wednesday, and if
you will come to-morrow morning I would be much obliged to you, and if
you could any how bring Tom over to stay all the night, I would thank
you. We are to have a cold dinner over at the pond, and come home to eat
a bit of roast chicken and peas at about nine o'clock. Mama depends upon
your bringing Tom over to-morrow, and if you don't we shall be very much
disappointed. Tell the bearer not to forget to bring me a fairing, which
is some ginger-bread, sweetmeat, hunting-nuts, and a pocket-book. Now I
end.

"I am not
"Your obedient serva