Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822
wife, and her two children, Claire and Charles Clairmont, the offspring
of a previous union. From this connexion with the Godwin household
events of the gravest importance in the future were destined to arise,
and already it appears that Fanny Imlay had begun to look with perilous
approval on the fascinating poet. Hogg and Mr. Peacock, the well-known
novelist, described by Mrs. Newton as "a cold scholar, who, I think, has
neither taste nor feeling," were his only intimates.
Mrs. Newton's unfair judgment of Mr. Peacock marks a discord between the
two chief elements of Shelley's present society; and indeed it will
appear to a careful student of his biography that Hogg, Peacock, and
Harriet, now stood somewhat by themselves and aloof from the inner
circle of his associates. If we regard the Shelleys as the centre of an
extended line, we shall find the Westbrook family at one end, the
Boinville family at the other, with Hogg and Peacock somewhere in the
middle. Harriet was naturally drawn to the Westbrook extremity, and
Shelley to the Boinville. Peacock had no affinity for either, but a
sincere regard for Harriet as well as for her husband; while Hogg was in
much the same position, except that he had made friends with Mrs.
Newton. The Godwins, of great importance to Shelley himself, exercised
their influence at a distance from the rest. Frequent change from
Bracknell to London and back again, varied by the flying journey to
Edinburgh, and a last visit paid in strictest secrecy to his mother and
sisters, at Field Place, of which a very interesting record is left in
the narrative of Mr. Kennedy, occupied the interval between July, 1813,
and March, 1814. The period was not productive of literary masterpieces.
We only hear of a "Refutation of Deism", a dialogue between Eusebes and
Theosophus, which attacked all forms of Theistic belief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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