had been won, he threw over it the aegis of Great Britain, declaring that no other European power should reimpose the yoke which Spain had not been able to maintain." [Sidenote: Death of Shelley] At the time that Canning made British liberalism respected abroad, literary England suffered another irreparable loss by the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley. The last few weeks had been spent by Shelley in Italy in the company of Trelawney, Williams and Lord Byron. Before this Maurokordatos, now battling in Greece, had been their constant companion. In June Leigh Hunt arrived. Shelley and Williams set out in a boat to meet him at Leghorn. The long parted friends met there. On July 8, Shelley and Williams set sail for the return voyage to Lerici. Their boat was last seen ten miles out at sea off Reggio. Then the haze of a summer storm hid it from view. Ten days later Shelley's body was washed ashore near Reggio. It was identified by a volume of Sophocles and of Keats's poems found on his person. In the presence of Byron, Trelawney and Leigh Hunt, Shelley's remains were cremated on the shore. His ashes were buried in the same burial ground with Keats, hard by the pyramid of Caius Cestius in Rome. [Sidenote: Lyric quality of his work] [Sidenote: Shelley's career] [Sidenote: Shelley's threnody] Shelley's poetry belongs primarily to the Revolutionary epoch in modern history. Though he wrote several long narrative poems and one great tragedy, he was above all a lyric poet--according to some the greatest lyric poet of England. His life, like his poetry, was almost untrammelled by convention. Both gave great offence to the stricter elements of English society. In some respects Shelley was peculiarly unfortunate. At the age of eighteen, after his expulsion from Oxford University, he married Harriet Westbrook, a girl of sixteen, and then found himself unable to support her. Later he abandoned her and eloped with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Within a year his first wife committed suicide, and, three weeks later, Shelley married Mary Godwin. The tragedy stirred up much feeling among his friends. Among others the poet-laureate, Southey, remonstrated with Shelley. Shelley replied: "I take God to witness, if such a Being is now regarding both you and me, and I pledge myself, if we meet, as perhaps you expect, before Him after death, to repeat the same in His presence--that you accuse me wrongfully. I am innocent of ill, either done or intended." Next came Shelley's trouble with the Chancery. Lord-Chancellor Elden refused to give to Shelley the custody of his own children on the ground that Shelley's professed opinions and conduct were such as the law pronounced immoral. Shelley replied with his famous poetical curse "To the Lord Chancellor." While the poem stands as a masterpiece of lyric invective it did not mend matters for Shelley in England. In many of his other poems his detractors saw nothing but the glorification of revolution, incest, and atheism.