Before quitting, once and for all, the arid region
of genealogy, it may be worth mentioning that Sir
Bysshe Shelley by his second marriage with Miss Elizabeth
Jane Sydney Perry, heiress of Penshurst, became the
father of five children, the eldest son of whom assumed
the name of Shelley-Sidney, received a baronetcy,
and left a son, Philip Charles Sidney, who was created
Lord De l’Isle and Dudley. Such details
are not without a certain value, inasmuch as they
prove that the poet, who won for his ancient and honourable
house a fame far more illustrious than titles can
confer, was sprung from a man of no small personal
force and worldly greatness. Sir Bysshe Shelley
owed his position in society, the wealth he accumulated,
and the honours he transmitted to two families, wholly
and entirely to his own exertions. Though he bore
a name already distinguished in the annals of the
English landed gentry, he had to make his own fortune
under conditions of some difficulty. He was born
in North America, and began life, it is said, as a
quack doctor. There is also a legend of his having
made a first marriage with a person of obscure birth
in America. Yet such was the charm of his address,
the beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing,
and the vigour of his will, that he succeeded in winning
the hands and fortunes of two English heiresses; and,
having begun the world with nothing, he left it at
the age of seventy-four, bequeathing 300,000 pounds
in the English Funds, together with estates worth
20,000 pounds a year to his descendents.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was therefore born in the purple
of the English squirearchy; but never assuredly did
the old tale of the swan hatched with the hen’s
brood of ducklings receive a more emphatic illustration
than in this case. Gifted with the untameable
individuality of genius, and bent on piercing to the
very truth beneath all shams and fictions woven by
society and ancient usage, he was driven by the circumstances
of his birth and his surroundings into an exaggerated
warfare with the world’s opinion. His too
frequent tirades against:—
The Queen of Slaves,
The hood-winked Angel of the
blind and dead,
Custom,—
owed much of their asperity to the early influences
brought to bear upon him by relatives who prized their
position in society, their wealth, and the observance
of conventional decencies, above all other things.
Mr. Timothy Shelley was in no sense of the word a
bad man; but he was everything which the poet’s
father ought not to have been. As member for
the borough of Shoreham, he voted blindly with his
party; and that party looked to nothing beyond the
interests of the gentry and the pleasure of the Duke
of Norfolk. His philosophy was limited to a superficial
imitation of Lord Chesterfield, whose style he pretended
to affect in his familiar correspondence, though his
letters show that he lacked the rudiments alike of
logic and of grammar. His religious opinions might
be summed up in Clough’s epigram:—
