VOL. XI No. 2

WHOLE No. 62

W

HEN Shelley's private life is mentioned, most frequently it happens that the only things remembered about him are that he was sent down from Oxford for preaching atheism, and that he set the marriage law of England flagrantly at defiance. No one perhaps has suffered more from his Own recklessness than Shelley. That there was very much in his conduct which cannot be extenuated is true, but it is equally true that in spite of his failures he was one of the noblest and most unselfish of men. It is to vindicate this side of his character that the present article is written; for Shelley, among all the English poets, comes nearest to the Indian mind in his intellectual idealism and his his supreme imaginative power. It would be a distinct loss to India in her awakening if his character were misunderstood. He has also, as the prophet of a great revolution period, a distinct message for India in the revolution of thoughts and ideas which she is now experiencing. His poetry is too lofty, his ideals are too noble, for him to suffer under the lurking suspicion that his private life did not correspond with his public utterance.

Fortunately we have abundant contemporary testimony with regard to Shelley's habits and manner of living. The most vivid sketches have been handed down to us by men famous in literature and by his own personal friends. From these a fairly complete picture may be drawn of this

And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.' Professor J. A. Symonds, when starting to write a criticism of Shelley the poet, declares that he found it necessary to give his work the narrative rather than the essay form. For Shelley acted out what he thought and felt with a directness so unique, that his life was the key to his poetry itself. Great as was his poetic power, his life in spite of its terrible lapses was somehow greater still.

Both

Never in all literary history did a stranger anomaly appear than the birth of Shelley in the home of a rich and worldly Tory Sussex squire towards the latter end of the eighteenth century in England. parents of the poet were common-place people, conventional English gentle-folk, with all the vast prejudices, the low ideals, the ingrained bigotry, that marked the period. One is reminded of the story of the ugly duckling appearing in the mother hen's brood, only here it is no ugly duckling but-

"A pard-like Spirit, beautiful and swift, A Love in desolation masked,-a Power Girt round with weakness."