The Argosy — page 247: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

230 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYs ERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was born in August, 1792, at his father’s country seat of Field Place in Sussex. The Shelleys were a good old family, and young Percy was the heir presumptive to a baronetcy. His grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, who was still alive when he was born, and lived for many years after, is said to have been a man full of quaint, clever eccentricity, a fact which may, ‘in some measure, perhaps, account for his grandson’s genius. Little Percy was, from the first, a strange, unexpected nestling in the home. His parents had never dreamt of having such a son, and from the beginning they did not quite know what to do with him. He was physically delicate; he was sensitive; he was imaginative ; from his earliest childhood he wrote verses instead of playing with his toys; a harsh glance made him cry, and sweetstuff made him sick ; how could such an incomprehensible changeling have found the way into the strictly orthodox nursery at Field Place, mother and nurse and aunt asked themselves in bewildered consternation. The boy was first sent to school at Wareham, then at Brentford. He was bright and intelligent in his studies, and gifted with a most remarkable and retentive memory. He was a great reader, though he never especially excelled in the one aim and object of all school learning in those days, classical knowledge. He was not a great favourite with either his teachers or companions; none of them seem to have understood him; he was too proud, too fanciful, too reserved to be popular. .. From Brentford he went to Eton, where his character was much the same as it had been in his earlier boyhood. He met here, however, among the tutors, with a Dr. Lind, who was probably the first real friend Percy Bysshe Shelley ever had. Dr. Lind, who must have had a keen eye for boys, discerned that there was something uncommon in young Shelley, and took pains to draw him out and develop his mind. He helped him in his chemical studies, of which he was at this period deeply enamoured; he cultivated his taste ; he treated with respect his many strange, sensitive fancies. When, during one of his holidays, the lad had a dangerous fever, which so greatly affected his excitable brain and irritable nervous system that his father talked of sending him, on his convalescence, to a lunatic asylum, Dr. Lind flew to him, and ministered to him so soothingly, and managed him so well, that before very long he took him back with him quite cured, both in mind and body, to Eton. Thus far Dr. Lind’s influence over young Shelley was productive of good ; but in one respect it is to be lamented. The lad had already a sceptical turn, and his master and friend, himself _a_sceptic ene.