n. Their first child was the
poet, Percy Bysshe, born at Field Place on Aug. 4, 1792: four daughters
also grew up, and a younger son, John: the eldest son of John is now the
Baronet, having succeeded, in 1889, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, the
poet's only surviving son. No one has managed to discover in the parents
of Percy Bysshe any qualities furnishing the prototype or the nucleus of
his poetical genius, or of the very exceptional cast of mind and
character which he developed in other directions. The parents were
commonplace: if we go back to the grandfather, Sir Bysshe, we encounter
a man who was certainly not commonplace, but who seems to have been
devoid of either poetical or humanitarian fervour. He figures as intent
upon his worldly interests, accumulating a massive fortune, and spending
lavishly upon the building of Castle Goring; in his old age, penurious,
unsocial, and almost churlish in his habits. His passion was to domineer
and carry his point; of this the poet may have inherited something. His
ideal of success was wealth and worldly position, things to which the
poet was, on the contrary, abnormally indifferent.

Shelley's schooling began at six years of age, when he was placed under
the Rev. Mr. Edwards, at Warnham. At ten he went to Sion House School,
Brentford, of which the Principal was Dr. Greenlaw, the pupils being
mostly sons of local tradesmen. In July, 1804, he proceeded to Eton,
where Dr. Goodall was the Head Master, succeeded, just towards the end
of Shelley's stay, by the far severer Dr. Keate. Shelley was shy,
sensitive, and of susceptible fancy: at Eton we first find him
insubordinate as well. He steadily resisted the fagging-system, learned
more as he chose than as his masters dictated, and was known as 'Mad
Shelley,' and 'Shelley the Atheist.' It has sometimes been said that an
Eton boy, if rebellious, was termed 'Atheist,' and that the designation,
as applied to Shelley, meant no more than that. I do not feel satisfied
that this is true at all; at any rate it seems to me probable that
Shelley, who constantly called himself an atheist in after-life,
received the epithet at Eton for some cause more apposite than
disaffection to school-authority.

He finally left Eton in July, 1810. He had already been entered in
University College, Oxford, in April of that year, and he commenced
residence there in October. His one very intimate friend in Oxford was
Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a student from the c