The Real Shelley. New Views of the Poet's Life. Vol. 1 (of 2)Jeaffreson, John Cordy
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The Real Shelley. New Views of the Poet's Life. Vol. 1 (of 2)
Jeaffreson, John Cordy
Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822
But what was Lady Shelley about, when she--drawing her information from
'authentic sources,' and proclaiming the superiority of her book to all
Shelleyan biographies from 'unauthentic sources'--allowed the three lines
of Mr. Packe's letter, and other equally faulty lines of it, to go before
the public as sure and trustworthy information? If biographies from
'authentic sources' are made up in this fashion, readers may with reason
come to prefer biographies 'from unauthentic sources.' As Lady Shelley has
forced her literary method and address into contrast with those of the man
of letters, whom she discharged with strange discourtesy, she must not
resent the assurance that the comparison she has provoked is not to Mr.
Hogg's disadvantage.
In the sufficient evidences respecting Shelley at Eton, critical readers
make the acquaintance of two very different Shelleys:--the girlish Shelley
(of Mr. Walter Halliday's letter) who 'was not made to endure the rough
and boisterous pastime at Eton,' never 'joined in the usual sports of the
boys, and, what is remarkable, never went out in a boat on the river,' but
preferred to ramble about Clewer, Frogmore, and Stoke Park, by himself, or
with a single companion of congenial gentleness; and the combative
Shelley, whose unruliness and contumacious behaviour to his masters gained
for him the office and title of 'The Atheist' of the school. Differing
little from the moping and discontented lad of his last year at Sion
House, the girlish Etonian exhibits several points of resemblance to Byron
in the earlier part of his unhappy time at Harrow; and in like manner when
he has risen to be the arch-rebel of the school, the saucy and combative
Etonian reminds one of the combative Byron, leading the riotous
Harrovians, and rising with atheistical impudence against Dr. Butler's
authority.
In one respect Shelley entered Eton under circumstances far more
advantageous than those that caused Byron to hate his public school in the
opening terms of his connexion with it. Unlike Byron, who went to Harrow,
so badly prepared for its studies, that, had it not been for Dr. Drury's
sympathetic consideration, he would have been put (to his poignant
humiliation) in a form of quite little boys, much younger than himself,
Shelley went to his public school well grounded in Latin and Greek. 'He
had,' says Medwin, 'been so well grounded in the classics, that it
required little labour for him to get up his daily lessons.' Medwin's
testimony on this point is sustained by the evidence of Messrs. Packe and
Halliday, two of the poet's contemporaries at Eton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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