Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/815

Rh the principle of "reversion," and the example just cited proves that the same effect is produced in species as well as in "races,"—indicating the essential identity of both,—the only real difference being that " species " are more differentiated than are "races," or that the distinction between them, instead of being (as many writers, some of the first repute, have maintained) qualitative, is merely quantitative, or one of degree.

The genus Tadoma, as shewn by its tracheal characters, seems to be most nearly related to Chenalopex, containing the bird so well known as the Egyptian Goose, C. ægyptiaca, and an allied species, C. jubata, from South America. For the same reason the genus Plectropterus, composed of the Spur-winged Geese of Africa, and perhaps the Australian Anseranas and the Indian and Ethiopian Sarcidiornis, also appear to belong to the same group, which should be reckoned rather to the Anatine than to the Anserine section of the Anatidæ.

SHELLEY,  (1797-1851), the second wife of the poet (q.v.), born in London, August 30, 1797 (see vol. x. p. 717), deserves some notice on her own account, as a writer of romance, chiefly imaginative. When she was in Switzerland with Shelley and Byron in 1816 (see below), a proposal was made that various members of the party should write a romance or tale dealing with the supernatural. The result of this project was that Mrs Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Byron the beginning of a narrative about a vampyre, and Dr Polidori, Byron's physician, a tale named The Vampyre, the authorship of which used frequently in past years to be attributed to Byron himself. Frankenstein, published in 1818, when Mrs Shelley was at the utmost twenty-one years old, is a very remarkable performance for so young and inexperienced a writer; its main idea is that of the formation and vitalization, by a deep student of the secrets of nature, of an adult man, who, entering the world thus under unnatural conditions, becomes the terror of his species, a half-involuntary criminal, and finally an outcast whose sole resource is self-immolation. This romance was followed by others: Valperga, or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823), an historical tale written with a good deal of spirit, and readable enough even now; The Last Man (1826), a fiction of the final agonies of human society owing to the universal spread of a pestilence,—this is written in a very stilted style, but bears some traces of the imagination which fashioned Frankenstein; The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830); Lodore (1835); and Falkner (1837). Besides these novels there was the Journal of a Six Weeks' Tour (the tour of 1814 mentioned below), which is published in conjunction with Shelley's prose-writings; also Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840-42-43 (which shows an observant spirit, capable of making some true forecasts of the future), and various miscellaneous writings. After the death of Shelley, for whom she had a deep and even enthusiastic affection, marred at times by defects of temper, Mrs Shelley in the autumn of 1823 returned to London. At first the earnings of her pen were her only sustenance; but after a while Sir Timothy Shelley made her an allowance, which would have been withdrawn if she had persisted in a project of writing a full biography of her husband. She was a loving and careful mother, and shared the prosperous fortunes of her son, when, upon the death of Sir Timothy in 1844, he succeeded to the baronetcy. She died in February 1851.

SHELLEY,  (1792-1822), was born on 4th August 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex. He was the eldest child of Timothy Shelley, M.P. for Shoreham, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilfold, of Effingham, Surrey. Mr Timothy Shelley became in 1815 Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart., upon the decease of his father Bysshe, who was created a baronet in 1806. This Bysshe Shelley was born in Christ Church, Newark, North America, and married two heiresses, the former, the mother of Timothy, being Mary Catherine, heiress of the Rev. Theobald Michell, of Horsham. He was a handsome man of enterprising and remarkable character, accumulated a vast fortune, built Castle Goring, and lived in sullen and penurious retirement in his closing years. None of his talent seems to have descended to Timothy, who, except for being of a rather oddly self-assertive character, was undistinguishable from the ordinary run of commonplace country squires. The mother of the poet is described as beautiful, and a woman of good abilities, but not with any literary turn; she was an agreeable letter-writer. The branch of the Shelley family to which the poet Percy Bysshe belonged traces its pedigree to Henry Shelley, of Worminghurst, Sussex, who died in 1623. Beyond that point the genealogical record is not clear; yet no substantial doubt exists that these Worminghurst or Castle Goring Shelleys are of the same stock as the Michelgrove Shelleys, who trace up to Sir William Shelley, judge of the common pleas under Henry VII., thence to a member of parliament in 1415, and to the reign of Edward I., or even to the epoch of the Norman Conquest. The Worminghurst branch was a family of credit, but not of distinction, until its fortunes culminated under the above-named Sir Bysshe.

In the character of Percy Bysshe Shelley three qualities become early manifest, and may be regarded as innate: impressionableness or extreme susceptibility to external and internal impulses of feeling; a lively imagination or erratic fancy, blurring a sound estimate of solid facts; and a resolute repudiation of outer authority or the despotism of custom. These qualities were highly developed in his earliest manhood, were active in his boyhood, and no doubt made some show even on the borderland between childhood and infancy. At the age of six he was sent to a day school at Warnham, kept by the Rev. Mr Edwards; at ten to Sion House School, Brentford, of which the principal was Dr Greenlaw, while the pupils were mostly sons of local tradesmen; at twelve (or immediately before that age, 29th July 1804) to Eton. The headmaster of Eton, up to nearly the close of Shelley's sojourn in the school, was Dr Goodall, a mild disciplinarian; it is therefore a mistake to suppose that Percy (unless during his very brief stay in the lower school) was frequently flagellated by the formidable Dr Keate, who only became headmaster after Goodall. Shelley was a shy, sensitive, mopish sort of boy from one point of view, from another a very unruly one, having his own notions of justice, independence, and mental freedom; by nature gentle, kindly, and retiring,—under provocation dangerously violent. He resisted the odious fagging system, exerted himself little in the routine of school-learning, and was known both as "Mad Shelley" and as "Shelley the Atheist." Some writers try to show that an Eton boy would be termed atheist without exhibiting any propensity to atheism, but solely on the ground of his being mutinous. However, as Shelley was a declared atheist a good while before attaining his majority, a shrewd suspicion arises that, if Etonians dubbed him atheist, they had some relevant reason for doing so.

Shelley entered University College, Oxford, in April 1810, returned thence to Eton, and finally quitted the school at midsummer, and commenced residence in Oxford