y
Wollstonecraft Godwin (_see_ Shelley, Mrs. M.W.), _dau._ of William
Godwin (_q.v._), with whom he eloped to Italy in 1814, and whom he _m._
in 1816, his first wife having drowned herself. The custody of his two
children, whom he had left with their mother, was refused him by the
Court of Chancery. In Switzerland he had made the acquaintance of Byron,
with whom he afterwards lived in intimacy in Italy. Returning to England
in 1815 he wrote his first really great poem, _Alastor_ (1816), followed
by the _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_, _Prince Athanase_, _Rosalind and
Helen_, and _Laon and Cythna_, afterwards called the _Revolt of Islam_
(1817). In 1818 he left England never to return, and went to Italy, and
in the next two years--while at Rome--produced his two greatest works,
the tragedy of _The Cenci_ (1819) and _Prometheus Unbound_ (1820). He
removed to Venice in 1820 in the company of Byron, and there wrote
_Julian and Maddalo_, a poetic record of discussions between them.
_Epipsychidion_, _Hellas_, and _Adonais_, a lament for Keats, were all
produced in 1821. After a short residence at Pisa he went to Lerici on
the Gulf of Spezzia, where he indulged in his favourite recreation of
boating, and here on July 8, 1823, he went, in company with a friend, Mr.
Williams, on that fatal expedition which cost him his life. His body was
cast ashore about a fortnight later, and burnt, in accordance with the
quarantine law of the country, on a pyre in the presence of Byron, Leigh
Hunt, and Trelawny. His ashes were carefully preserved and buried in the
Protestant cemetery at Rome near those of Keats. The character of S. is a
singularly compounded one. By the unanimous testimony of his friends, it
was remarkable for gentleness, purity, generosity, and strong affection:
on the other hand he appears to have had very inadequate conceptions of
duty and responsibility, and from his childhood seems to have been in
revolt against authority of every kind. The charge of Atheism rests
chiefly on _Mab_, the work of a boy, printed by him for private
circulation, and to some extent repudiated as personal opinion. As a poet
he stands in the front rank: in lyrical gift, shown in _Prometheus_,
_Hellas_, and some of his shorter poems, such as "The Skylark," he is
probably unsurpassed, and in his _Cenci_ he exhibits dramatic power of a
high order. Among his shorter poems are some which reach perfection, such
as the sonnet on "Ozymandias," "Music when so