Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/63

Rh occasion, but that, while at Eton, he [Shelley] had already become possessed by a dark suspicion concerning him [his father]. This is proved by the episode of Dr. Lind's visit during his fever. Then and afterwards he expected monstrous treatment at his [father's] hands, although the elder gentleman was nothing worse than a muddle-headed squire." In fact, Shelley believed that his father intended to put him in a madhouse (p. 17). Again, p. 5: "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. . . . His morality in like manner was purely conventional, as may be gathered from his telling his eldest son [Shelley] that he would never pardon a mésalliance, but that he would provide for as many illegitimate children as he chose to have." Yet young Oxford accounts Mr. Timothy in no sense of the word a bad man; but Shelley must have felt as outraged and disgusted as was Marius in "Les Misérables" at a similar hint from his well-to-do relative of l'ancien régime. After the expulsion from Oxford, the father forbade his return home and cut off supplies, and after the mésalliance with Harriet Westbrook (a sort of compromise having been patched up in the meantime) he did the same. Afterwards (p. 53), "Mr. Timothy Shelley was anxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates, which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. . . . he proposed to make him an immediate allowance of £2,000 [per annum] if Shelley would but consent to entail the land on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. Shelley recognised the truth that property is a trust far more than a possession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command over labour, such incalculable potentialities of social good