Home Life of Great Authors

by Hattie Tyng Griswold

SHELLEY.

The beautiful face of Shelley is one that is familiar to all students of literary biography, and contends with that of Byron for the distinction of being the handsomest among the men of letters of his day. Burns was also a picture of manly beauty, whose features have long been familiar in engravings; but Byron and Shelley look the ideal poet far more than their sturdier Scottish brother. The face of Schiller was also one of great charm, and Tennyson and Longfellow in their youth were also beautiful; but the world is more familiar with the representations of their later years, and has almost forgotten the alluring eyes and the flowing locks of the youthful bards.

Shelley always had a girlish look, caused perhaps by a feeble constitution, and he suffered much from poor health, which added to the delicacy of his face. But there was a wonderful charm about his countenance even in childhood, and his eyes seemed like wells into which one might fall. There was rare sweetness in his smile, too. He was a tall man and very slender, with a certain squareness of shoulder, and great bodily litheness and activity. He had an oval face and delicate features. His forehead was high. His fine dark-brown hair disposed itself in beautiful curls over his brow and around the back of his neck. The eyes were brown, and the coloring of his face as soft as that of a girl's, in youth, though he bronzed somewhat during his life in Italy.

His countenance changed with every passing emotion; his usual look was earnest, but when joyful he was very bright and animated in expression. When sad there was something peculiarly touching in his face, and there was sometimes expressed in his look a mournful weariness of everything. But there was something noble and commanding in his aspect through all changes, something hinting of his high and noble birth, as well as of his genius. He had a peculiar voice, not powerful, but musical and expressive, and fine agreeable manners when once the shyness of youth had worn off.

That youth was a period of great unhappiness in many ways. He was irritable and sensitive, and much given to reading and brooding, at which the other children—or, as he called them "the little fiends—scoffed incessantly." He had thoughts beyond his years, and found in these his greatest happiness. He was impatient and full of impulse, with a strong dash of egotism, like most men of genius.

That he was eccentric beyond the usual eccentricities of genius is known to all the world. That he set out fully determined to live the ideal life and to reform the world, is as well known; also, that he failed in both these attempts,—partly through the limitations of his own nature, and partly that the contract was too large, even for a man of his undoubted genius.

Shelley was born in the County of Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. His most characteristic childish amusement seems to have been the making of chemical experiments; and his brothers and sisters were often terrified at the experiments in electricity which he tried upon them. He was also fond of making the children personate spirits or fiends, while he burned some inflammable liquid.

He was full of cheerful fun, and had all the comic vein so agreeable in a household. His benevolent impulses displayed themselves in his earliest childhood in his wish to educate some child; and he talked seriously of purchasing a little girl for that purpose, and actually entered into negotiations to that effect with a tumbler who came to the back door. His hatred of tyranny also showed itself at the earliest age, in rebellion against the rule of the old schoolmistress who educated his sisters.

He was exceedingly precocious, and was thus sent to Eton at an age much younger than other boys. He was perhaps a little proud of his birth and breeding; but it was probably more from his inborn hatred of tyranny than from the former reason, that he utterly refused to "fag" for the older boys, and in this way got himself at once into trouble in the school. Neither the cruel vituperation of his fellows nor menaces of punishment upon the part of his superiors could bend his will to an obedience which could only be yielded at the expense of self-respect. He was soon withdrawn from Eton, and was afterwards sent to Oxford. Here his first great enthusiasm was for chemistry; and the appearance of his room is thus described by a fellow-student:—

"Books, boots, papers, shoes, philosophical instruments, clothes, pistols, linen, crockery, ammunition, and phials innumerable, with money, stockings, paints, crucibles, bags, and boxes, were scattered on the floor and in every place; as if the young chemist, in order to analyze the mystery of creation, had endeavored first to reconstruct the primeval chaos. The tables, and especially the carpet, were already stained with large spots of various hues, which frequently proclaimed the agency of fire. An electrical machine, an air-pump, the galvanic trough, a solar microscope, and large glass jars were conspicuous amidst the mass of matter. More than one hole in the carpet could elucidate the ultimate phenomena of combustion,—especially a formidable aperture in the middle of the room, where the floor had also been burned by spontaneous combustion; and the horrible wound was speedily enlarged by rents,—for the philosopher as he hastily crossed the room in pursuit of truth, was frequently caught in it by the foot."