nt,
"P. B. SHELLEY."

[Sidenote: SHELLEY IN SUSSEX]

We are proud to call Shelley the Sussex poet, but he wrote no Sussex
poems, and a singularly uncongenial father (for the cursing of whom and
the King the boy was famous at Eton) made him glad to avoid the county
when he was older. It was, however, to a Sussex lady, Miss Hitchener of
Hurstpierpoint, that Shelley, when in Ireland in 1812, forwarded the box
of inflammatory matter which the Custom House officers
confiscated--copies of his pamphlet on Ireland and his "Declaration of
Rights" broadside, which Miss Hitchener was to distribute among Sussex
farmers who would display them on their walls. These were the same
documents that Shelley used to put in bottles and throw out to sea,
greatly to the perplexity of the spectators and not a little to the
annoyance of the Government. Miss Hitchener, as well as the
revolutionary, was kept under surveillance, as we learn from the letter
from the Postmaster-General of the day, Lord Chichester:--"I return the
pamphlet declaration. The writer of the first is son of Mr. Shelley,
member for the Rape of Bramber, and is by all accounts a most
extraordinary man. I hear he has married a servant, or some person of
very low birth; he has been in Ireland for some time, and I heard of his
speaking at the Catholic Convention. Miss Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint,
keeps a School there, and is well spoken of; her Father keeps a Publick
House in the Neighbourhood, he was originally a Smuggler and changed his
name from Yorke to Hitchener before he took the Public House. I shall
have a watch upon the daughter and discover whether there is any
Connection between her and Shelley."

[Sidenote: "THE SUSSEX MUSE"]

There Shelley's connection with Sussex may be said to end. Yet a poet,
whether he will or no, is shaped by his early surroundings. In some
verses by Mr. C. W. Dalmon called "The Sussex Muse," I find the
influence of Shelley's surroundings on his mind happily recorded:--

"When Shelley's soul was carried through the air
Toward the manor house where he was born,
I danced along the avenue at Denne,
And praised the grace of Heaven, and the morn
Which numbered with the sons of Sussex men
A genius so rare!
So high an honour and so dear a birth,
That, though the Horsham folk may little care
To laud the favour of his birthplace there,