is in some poetic qualities, remains so immature and incomplete that no
conjecture can be hazarded about his future. Byron lived longer, and
produced more than his brother poets. Yet he was extinguished when his
genius was still ascendant, when his "swift and fair creations" were
issuing like worlds from an archangel's hands. In his case we have
perhaps only to deplore the loss of masterpieces that might have
equalled, but could scarcely have surpassed, what we possess. Shelley's
early death is more to be regretted. Unlike Keats and Byron, he died by
a mere accident. His faculties were far more complex, and his aims were
more ambitious than theirs. He therefore needed length of years for
their co-ordination; and if a fuller life had been allotted him, we have
the certainty that from the discords of his youth he would have wrought
a clear and lucid harmony.

These sentences form a somewhat gloomy prelude to a biography. Yet the
student of Shelley's life, the sincere admirer of his genius, is almost
forced to strike a solemn key-note at the outset. We are not concerned
with one whose "little world of man" for good or ill was perfected, but
with one whose growth was interrupted just before the synthesis of which
his powers were capable had been accomplished.

August 4, 1792, is one of the most memorable dates in the history of
English literature. On this day Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field
Place, near Horsham, in the county of Sussex. His father, named Timothy,
was the eldest son of Bysshe Shelley, Esquire, of Goring Castle, in the
same county. The Shelley family could boast of great antiquity and
considerable wealth. Without reckoning earlier and semi-legendary
honours, it may here be recorded that it is distinguished in the elder
branch by one baronetcy dating from 1611, and by a second in the younger
dating from 1806. In the latter year the poet's grandfather received