The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. OXFORD. Chap, ii; Eighteen hundred and ten, the year in which he removed Apr. isio- from Eton to Oxford, was one of the most joyous periods of Mar. 1811. . ' ' h Shelley's life, until the closing days of that year were darkened by the shadow of disappointed love. It was a happiness to pass from the gregarious school-life and such rigorous discipline as that of Keate to the freedom and seclusion of college chambers. During 1810 Shelley's bodily health seems to have been unusually good, and his spirits unusually buoyant. In the Christmas vacation, 1809-10, he walked the Sussex fields and woods with vigorous step, a gun upon his shoulder, his cousin Medwin by his side. Mr. Timothy Shelley was a keen sportsman, and his son did not now abhor that recreation which in More's " Utopia" is left to be the employment of butchers; he was an excellent shot, exciting his cousin's envy by his successful practice made against the snipes of Field Place pond. The stimulating air and bright skies and stirring of the blood quickened his brain and set his tongue agoing. " On such days," says Medwin, " Shelley's spirits used to run riot; his ' sweet and subtletalk' was to me inebriating and electric." Later in the Chap, u. year hope spanned with a double rainbow the interval APr-181- At the opening of this chapter I wish to acknowledge how largely the portion of my life of Shelley which tells of his residence at Oxford is indebted to Hogg's papers on Shelley at Oxford, reprinted in his " Life of Shelley." I have throughout endeavoured, as far as possible, to retain the words of Hogg, while reducing the scale of the narrative chiefly by omission of what does not relate to Shelley. 1 Mar. 1811. between Eton and Oxford?first the hope of a youthful poet and romancer, and ...