August, 1792, at Fieldplace,
in Sussex, England. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, and of
an ancient family, traced back, it is said, to Sir Philip Sidney. When
thirteen years old he was sent to Eton, where he began to display his
revolutionary tendencies by his resistance to the fagging system; and
where he also gave some earnest in writing of his future powers. At the
age of sixteen he entered University College, Oxford, and appeared as a
radical in most social, political, and religious questions. On account of
a paper entitled _The Necessity of Atheism_, he was expelled from the
university and went to London. In 1811 he made a runaway match with Miss
Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of the keeper of a coffee-house, which
brought down on him the wrath of his father. After the birth of two
children, a separation followed; and he eloped with Miss Godwin in 1814.
His wife committed suicide in 1816; and then the law took away from him
the control of his children, on the ground that he was an atheist.

After some time of residence in England, he returned to Italy, where soon
after he met with a tragical end. Going in an open boat from Leghorn to
Spezzia, he was lost in a storm on the Mediterranean: his body was washed
on shore near the town of Via Reggio, where his remains were burned in
the presence of Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and others. The ashes were
afterwards buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome in July, 1822.

Shelley's principles were irrational and dangerous. He was a
transcendentalist of the extreme order, and a believer in the
perfectability of human nature. His works are full of his principles. The
earliest was _Queen Mab_, in which his profanity and atheism are clearly
set forth. It was first privately printed, and afterwards published in
1821. This was followed by _Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude_, in 1816.
In this he gives his own experience in the tragical career of the hero.
His longest and most pretentious poem was _The Revolt of Islam_, published
in 1819. It is in the Spenserian stanza. Also, in the same year, he
published _The Cenci_, a tragedy, a dark and gloomy story on what should
be a forbidden subject, but very powerfully written. In 1820 he also
published _The Prometheus Unbound_, which is full of his irreligious
views. His remaining works were smaller poems, among which may be noted
_Adonais_, and the odes _To the Skylark_ and _The Cloud_.

In considering his character, we must