The catastrophe of expulsion from Oxford would have been impossible in a well-regulated university, but Percy Bysshe Shelley could not have fitted easily into any system.Born at Field Place, Horsham, Sussex, on August 4, 1792, simultaneously with the French Revolution, he had more than a drop of wildness in his blood.The long pedigree of the Shelley family is full of turbulent ancestors, and the poet's grandfather, Sir Bysshe, an eccentric old miser who lived until 1815, had been married twice, on both occasions eloping with an heiress.Already at Eton Shelley was a rebel and a pariah.Contemptuous of authority, he had gone his own way, spending pocket-money on revolutionary literature, trying to raise ghosts, and dabbling in chemical experiments.As often happens to queer boys, his school-fellows herded against him, pursuing him with blows and cries of "Mad Shelley." But the holidays were happy.There must have been plenty of fun at Field Place when he told his sisters stories about the alchemist in the attic or "the Great Tortoise that lived in Warnham Pond," frightened them with electric shocks, and taught his baby brother to say devil.
There is something of high-spirited fun even in the raptures and despairs of his first love for his cousin, Harriet Grove.
He tried to convert her to republican atheism, until the family, becoming alarmed, interfered, and Harriet was disposed of otherwise."Married to a clod of earth!" exclaims Shelley.
He spent nights "pacing the churchyard," and slept with a loaded pistol and poison beside him.
He went in to residence at University College, Oxford, in the Michaelmas term of 1810.The world must always bless the chance which sent Thomas Jefferson Hogg a freshman to the same college at the same time, and made him Shelley's friend.The chapters in which Hogg describes their live at Oxford are the best part of his biography.In these lively pages we see, with all the force of reality, Shelley working by fits in a litter of books and retorts and "galvanic troughs," and discoursing on the vast possibilities of science for ****** mankind happy; how chemistry will turn deserts into cornfields, and even the air and water will year fire and food; how Africa will be explored by balloons, of which the shadows, passing over the jungles, will emancipate the slaves.In the midst he would rush out to a lecture on mineralogy, and come back sighing that it was all about "stones, stones, stones"! The friends read Plato together, and held endless talk of metaphysics, pre-existence, and the sceptical philosophy, on winter walks across country, and all night beside the fire, until Shelley would curl up on the hearthrug and go to sleep.He was happy because he was left to himself.With all his thoughts and impulses, ill-controlled indeed, but directed to the acquisition of knowledge for the benefit of the world, such a student would nowadays be a marked man, applauded and restrained.But the Oxford of that day was a home of "chartered laziness." An academic circle absorbed in intrigues for preferment, and enlivened only by drunkenness and immorality, could offer nothing but what was repugnant to Shelley.He remained a solitary until the hand of authority fell and expelled him.
He had always had a habit of writing to strangers on the subjects next his heart.Once he approached Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne (afterwards Mrs.Hemans), who had not been encouraging.Now half in earnest, and half with an impish desire for dialectical scores, he printed a pamphlet on 'The Necessity of Atheism', a single foolscap sheet concisely proving that no reason for the existence of God can be valid, and sent it to various personages, including bishops, asking for a refutation.It fell into the hands of the college authorities.Summoned before the council to say whether he was the author, Shelley very properly refused to answer, and was peremptorily expelled, together with Hogg, who had intervened in his behalf.
The pair went to London, and took lodgings in a house where a wall-paper with a vine-trellis pattern caught Shelley's fancy.
