from Shelley's usual compositions. They are specimens of the burlesque and fanciful; but although they adopt a familiar style and homely imagery, there shine through the radiance of the poet's imagination the earnest views and opinions of the politician and the moralist. At my request the publisher has restored the omitted passages of Queen Mab. - I now present this edition as a complete collection of my husband's poetical works, and I do not foresee that I can hereafter add to or take away a word or line. PUTNEY, November 6th, 1839. MEMOIR OF SHELLEY. THE notes of Mrs. Shelley, in the present edition of the poems, contain so much biographical matter, that it will only be necessary to put the reader in possession of such facts as she has omitted either from a natural reserve, or a very pardonable delicacy. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on the 4th of August, 1792, at Field Place, in Sussex. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Baronet, of Castle Goring. His family was an ancient one, and, while one branch of it represented the blood of Sir Philip Sidney, he himself was descended from the Sackvilles, a name inseparably associated with the dawn of the Elizabethan literature. There was also blood of the New World in Shelley's veins. His paternal great-grandfather, Timothy, had emigrated to America, settling at Newark in New Jersey, where he married an American wife, and where Shelley's grandfather, Bysshe, was born. Bysshe carried the family fortunes back to England, succeeded, by means of a handsome person and fine manners, in marrying successively two heiresses, became a baronet, and lived to a great age, an eccentric and miser. Having built Castle Goring at a cost of eighty thousand pounds, he spent the last twenty years of his life in a small cottage, meanly furnished, and frequented a tap-room at Horsham, drinking with the lowest people of the place,—a habit, Captain Medwin suggests, acquired in America. But, as he brought his fine manners from that country, we may conscientiously believe better things. When he died at last, (a very tedious at last it seems to have been to his eldest son Timothy,) ten thousand pounds were found secreted in different hiding-places in his clothes, books, and chamber. Timothy, (the poet's father,) after keeping the legitimate number of terms at University College, Oxford, made the grand tour, and returned, an accomplished disciple of Rochefoucauld and Chesterfield. Of the influence of his example and precepts upon his son we may judge from an anecdote told by Medwin, who says, "he once told his son, Percy Bysshe, in my presence, that he would provide for as many natural children as he chose to get, but that he would never forgive his making a mésalliance.” Under the roof of this estimable parent and mentor, Shelley acquired the first rudiments of Latin and Greek, in company with his two elder sisters, from Mr. Edwards, the clergyman of Warnham, who is described as a good old man of very limited intellects." In his tenth year he was removed to Sion House, Brentford, where 66 |