. His poetry also has been subject to
very different constructions. During his lifetime it obtained little
notice save for purposes of disparagement and denunciation. Now it is
viewed with extreme enthusiasm by many, and is generally admitted to
hold a permanent rank in English literature, though faulty (as some
opine) through vague idealism and want of backbone. These are all points
on which I shall here offer no personal opinion. I shall confine myself
to tracing the chief outlines of Shelley's life, and (very briefly) the
sequence of his literary work.

Percy Bysshe Shelley came of a junior and comparatively undistinguished
branch of a very old and noted family. His branch was termed the
Worminghurst Shelleys; and it is only quite lately[1] that the
affiliation of this branch to the more eminent and senior stock of the
Michelgrove Shelleys has passed from the condition of a probable and
obvious surmise into that of an established fact. The family traces up
to Sir William Shelley, Judge of the Common Pleas under Henry VII,
thence to a Member of Parliament in 1415, and to the reign of Edward I,
or even to the Norman Conquest. The Worminghurst Shelleys start with
Henry Shelley, who died in 1623. It will be sufficient here to begin
with the poet's grandfather, Bysshe Shelley. He was born at Christ
Church, Newark, North America, and raised to a noticeable height,
chiefly by two wealthy marriages, the fortunes of the junior branch.
Handsome, keen-minded, and adventurous, he eloped with Mary Catherine,
heiress of the Rev. Theobald Michell, of Horsham; after her death he
eloped with Elizabeth Jane, heiress of Mr. Perry, of Penshurst. By this
second wife he had a family, now represented, by the Baron de l'Isle and
Dudley: by his first wife he had (besides a daughter) a son Timothy, who
was the poet's father, and who became in due course Sir Timothy Shelley,
Bart., M.P. His baronetcy was inherited from his father Bysshe--on whom
it had been conferred, in 1806, chiefly through the interest of the Duke
of Norfolk, the head of the Whig party in the county of Sussex, to whose
politics the new baronet had adhered.

Mr. Timothy Shelley was a very ordinary country gentleman in essentials,
and a rather eccentric one in some details. He was settled at Field
Place, near Horsham, Sussex, and married Elizabeth, daughter of Charles
Pilfold, of Effingham, Surrey; she was a beauty, and a woman of good
abilities, but without any literary tur