Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792 - 1822) U.K.
Poet
Lyric poet, a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Born at Somers Town, in Sussex, he was educated at Eton and University Collee, Oxford, where his collaboration in a pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism (1811), written with his friend T.J. Hogg, caused his expulsion. While living in London he fell in love with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, whom he married in 1811.
He visited Ireland and Wales writing pamphlets defending vegetarianism and political freedom, and in 1813 published privately Queen Mab, a poem with political freedom as its theme. Meanwhile he had become estranged from his wife and in 1814 left England with Mary Wollencraft Godwin, whom he married in 1816 after Harriet had drowned herself.
Alastor (1815) was followed by the epic The Revolt of Islam, and by 1818 Shelley was living in Italy. Here he produced the tragedy The Cenci, the satire on Wordsworth Peter Bell the Third (1919), the lyric dramas Prometeus Unbound (1820) and Hellas (1822). In July 1822 Shelley was drowned while sailing near La Spezia, and his ashes were buried in Rome.
About male friendship Shelley, in his fragmentary Essay on Friendship - stated by his friend Hogg to have been written "not long before his death" says:
"I remember forming an attachment of this kind at school. I cannot recall to my memorv the precise epoch at which this took place; but I imagine it must have been at the age of eleven or twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a character eminently generous, brave and gentle, and the elements of human feeling seemed to have been, from his birth, genially compounded within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manners, inexpressibly attractive. It has never been my fortune to meet with him since my schoolboy days; but either I confound my present recollections with the delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honor and utility to every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft and winning, that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so
deep that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred sentiments of friendship."
It may be noted that Hogg takes the reference as to himself !
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