18. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (+1792-1822+),-- who has, like Spenser, been called “the poet’s poet,”-- was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex, in the year 1792. He was educated at Eton, and then at University College, Oxford. A shy, diffident, retiring boy, with sweet, gentle looks and manners-- like those of a girl-- but with a spirit of the greatest fearlessness and the noblest independence, he took little share in the sports and pursuits of his schoolfellows. Obliged to leave Oxford, in consequence of having written a tract of which the authorities did not approve, he married at the very early age of nineteen. The young lady whom he married died in 1816; and he soon after married Mary, daughter of William Godwin, the eminent author of ‘Political Justice.’ In 1818 he left England for Italy,-- like his friend, Lord Byron, for ever. It was at Naples, Leghorn, and Pisa that he chiefly resided. In 1822 he bought a little boat-- “a perfect plaything for the summer,” he calls it; and he used often to make short voyages in it, and wrote many of his poems on these occasions. When Leigh Hunt was lying ill at Leghorn, Shelley and his friend Williams resolved on a coasting trip to that city. They reached Leghorn in safety; but, on the return journey, the boat sank in a sudden squall. Captain Roberts was watching the vessel with his glass from the top of the Leghorn lighthouse, as it crossed the Bay of Spezzia: a black cloud arose; a storm came down; the vessels sailing with Shelley’s boat were wrapped in darkness; the cloud passed; the sun shone out, and all was clear again; the larger vessels rode on; but Shelley’s boat had disappeared. The poet’s body was cast on shore, but the quarantine laws of Italy required that everything thrown up on the coast should be burned: no representations could alter the law; and Shelley’s ashes were placed in a box and buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome. 19. Shelley’s best long poem is the +Adonaïs+, an elegy on the death of John Keats. It is written in the Spenserian stanza. But this true poet will be best remembered by his short lyrical poems, such as +The Cloud+, +Ode to a Skylark+, +Ode to the West Wind+, +Stanzas written in Dejection+, and others. --Shelley has been called “the poet’s poet,” because his style is so thoroughly transfused by pure imagination. He has also been called “the master-singer of our modern race and age; for his thoughts, his words, and his deeds all sang together.” He is probably the greatest lyric poet of this century.