INDEX TO THE ECLECTIC MAGAZINE.-VOL. XIII. Brooke, His Highness Rajah, Visit to.- January.—The Plate for January is a well execut- Beethoven, Memoir ot.–Bentley's Miscellany, 542 ed mezzotint from a highly popular subject by Ward, derived from an incident in Goldsmith's life, which Boswell narrates in his Life of John- son, as told by himself. “I received,” said John Cowper, the Buckinghamshire Home and son," one morning, a message from poor Gold- Haunts of.- Love's Magazine, . smith that he was in great distress, and begging Camp, Eloquence of._See Eloquence. 194 358 D. 126 ready for the press, which he produced to me. 1 looked into it, and saw its merit, told the landlady minster Review, I should soon return, and having gone to a book- seller, sold it for sixty pounds." This," says Boswell, was the Vicar of Wakefield.” Emerson.-Blackwood's Magazine, February –The subject of this Plate is from a Eloquence of the Camp, Buonaparte. - Dub- French artist, Labouchere, and is a finely con- lin University Magazine, ceived group, consisting of Luther, Melanchon, F. ing the Bible. The attitudes and expression of the different figures are strikingly characteristic. Female Authors, Mrs. Shelley.— Tait's Mag. 167 March.--A beautiful portrait of the poet Tennyson. Forgeries, Literary, of Chatierton. See Chat- terton. 329 R. A., possessing great merits as a work of art, Frederic II., Last Years of.—Quarterly Rev. which have been transferred by the engraver with Fry, Live of Elizabeth.—Quarterly Review, 399 Girondins, Lamartine's History of.—Edin- American Commerce and Statistics.-Edin- burgh Revicu, 75 Gilfillan, Rev. George.-Hogg's Weekly In- Andersen, Han's, Childhood and Youth of._' structor, Animal Instincts.- Westminster Review, 433 Astronomical Observation, Sir John Her- Hobbes, Thomas, Life and writings of.- schel's. See Herschel.- Adelaide, Ma- British Quarterly Review, dame, and Louis Philippe.-Fraser's Ma- Hints upon History. - Fraser's Magazine, 92 512 History of the Girondins. See Girondins. Humboldt's Kosmos --Edinburgh Revicw,. 296 Herschel's Sir John, Astronomical Obser- vations.- Vorth British Review, Buckinghamshire. Home and Haunts of I. J. K. 117 Italy in the Middle Ages.—North British Bonaparte, Eloquence of. See Eloqnence. Battles, the Six Decisive.- Bentley's Miscel- Kosmos.' See Humboldt. 202, 488 Instincts, Animals. See Animal. Bavaria, King of, and Lola Montez.-Fra- James II., and the Protestant Bishops.-- 218 66 . L. Mdile. de Montpensier, 571; The new Archbishop of Canterbury; Reminiscences of Prince Talleyrand; Lord Rosse, a Mechanic; An Author in Difficcul- ties; King Hudson and her Majesty's English, 572. 23 N. Newspaper Press of Spain. See Spain. 0. Old Songs.— Tait's Magazine, 351 Oscar 1. See Sweden. P. Pleasure of Botany and Gardening. See Botany. Paris to Cadiz. See Dumas. Pastoral Cantons of Switzerland. See Swit- 35 zerland. : 173 Prison Discipline.—Quarterly Review. 446 Pius IX.-- Quarterly Review, 210 lace, 137; The Dumb Girl; The Truest Friend; Realization of a Dream; Judge Not, 138; The Charm of Friendship; Memory; Infancy; Princi- ple and Opinion, 139; Visions of u Past; The Return Home, 281 ; A Voice from Nature; Mo- therwell's Grave; Room for the Right, 282; The Remembrance, 283 ; Song of the Watchers on the S. -North British Review, 1 America. tles. 258 An'oid Man's Recollections of the 422 Pastoral Cantons of.- Bentley's Mis., 389 Americans inheriting Separate System, the. See Prison Discipline. 494 , Sir Walter, Visit to.—New Monthly 519 T. 187 Magazine, : 270 Lu- Tennyson, Alfred. — Hogg's Weekly Instructor, 289 V. W. 405 Review, 1. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. SHELLEY. 3 vols. London, 1847. 2. Shelley at Oxford-Papers in the New Monthly Magazine, Vols. 36 and 37. 3. The Life of P. B. Shelley. By Thomas Medwin. 2 vols. London, 1847, 4. Gallery of Literary Portraits. By George GILFILLAN. Edinburgh, 1845. 5. An Address to the Irish People. By Percy Bysshe SHELLEY. Dublin, 1812. The poems of Shelley have been gradual- | in the County of Sussex, and the family of ly assuming a high place in our literature. the poet is traced to the time of Richard The incidents of his life, unimportant ex- II. In 1611, Sir John Shelley of Marescept as they illustrate his writings, have field was created a baronet-and the family been told gracefully and well by Mrs. Shel- of Castle-Goring, now represented by the ley in the notes to her exceedingly beauti- son of the poet, is descended from a youngful edition of his poetical works. His own er son of Sir John Maresfield. Bysshe letters to Mr. Peacock and others have been Shelley, the grandfather of the poet, was published, and everywhere exhibit the born at Newark in North America, in 1731. habits of thinking of a man singular- He began life as a quack doctor, and seems ly truthful, generous, and good. These to have early turned his attention to makletters and Mrs. Shelley's notes form a ing his way in the world by matrimonial perfect memoir of his life from his twenty-speculations. The widow of a miller is second year. His life at Oxford has been said to have been his first wife. However well described by his friend Mr. Hogg, in a this be—for Captain Medwin, who menseries of papers printed in the New Month- tions the fact, does not vouch for its truthly Magazine, some five-and-twenty years we find bim in England soon after, running ago, and Captain Medwin had contributed away with an heiress, through whom the some account of his earlier life to the Athe-| bunch of his descendants with whom we næum, which has, we believe, been reprinted are chiefly concerned are possessed of the in a separate volume. From these means of estate of Horsham. In some short time information, what is now called the “Life of Sir Bysshe finds himself an active widower, Shelley” is compiled by the last mentioned and lays siege to the heart of Miss Sidney writer. The book is hastily and carelessly Perry—the heiress of Penshurst, the estate put together, and adds nothing to what is of Sir Philip Sidney. The present Lord already known. De Lisle and Dudley represents this branch The name of Shelley is an ancient one of Sir Bysshe's descendants. Through Vol. XIII. No. I. 1 tells us, some mistake the poet Shelley is repeatedly minds of the family was ancestral pride. represented-even by such writers as Mr. The one great and irreparable offence which Howitt,* as a descendant of Sir Philip Shelley could commit against the family Sidney. The sole connexion between them was to unite himself in marriage unsuitably. -if it can be called such--was that which In remote parts of the country, among the we have stated. It, however, gratified the less educated part of the higher gentry, imagination of the poet. this feeling often strengthens itself into Bysshe Shelley was raised to the baronet- something little short of insanity, and the age in 1806. He died in 1815. Medwin fortunate adventures of Sir Bysshe Shelley, and the mésalliances of his daughters, were not unlikely to render the Shelleys most “I remember Sir Bysshe in a very advanced incurably mad. age, a remarkably handsome man, fully six feet The poet was born the 4th of August, in height, and with a noble and aristocratic bear 1792, and brought up at Field-Place (his ing, Nil fuit unquam sic impar sibi. His manner of life was most eccentric, for he used to frequent father's residence) till his tenth year with daily the tap-room of one of the low inns in Hors- his sisters, and taught the rudiments of ham, and there drank with some of the lowest Latin an Greek. He was then sent to citizens, a habit he had probably acquired in the Sion House, Brentford, where Medwin had New World. Though he had built a castle been already placed. (Goring-Castle) that cost bim upwards of £80,- The school was a cheap bad school, penu000, he passed the last twenty or thirty years of his existence in a small collage looking on the riously managed, and the boys for the most River Arun, at Horsham, in which all was mean part the sons of London shop-keepers. The and beggarly-the existence indeed of a miser lady who was supposed to manage the enriching his legatees at the expense of one of his household details was too fine for her busisons, by buying up. bis postobits.”—Medwin's ness; but--as a part of her stock in trade Life of Shelley, vol. i., p. 8. -had a pedigree at least as good as Shel ley's. She was a cousin to the Duke of Medwin was related to one of Sir Bys- Argyle. We rather like the poor woman she's wives, and his account of a family the better for this, we own, and though the whom he must have known perfectly well is instincts of self-defence, and the sense of far from favourable to any of them. He de- what was due to her family, made her perscribes Timothy Shelley, the poet's father, haps treat the Sussex Squirearchy less deas watching with impatience for his father's ferentially than they expected, her sister, death, and he speaks of two of Sir Bysshe's who must have been as ncarly related to daughters as marrying without his consent; the Duke as herself, was an economist of of which he availed himself—for so we un- the first order." derstand the statement—to avoid giving After all, if boys of whatever rank are fortune whatever. sent to schools selected for their cheapness, “ He died at last, and in his room were found if it were the fault of their masters or mis they ought not to remember and resent, as bank-notes to the amount of £10,000, some in the leaves of the few books he possessed, others in tresses, the stinginess of their parents. the folds of his sofa, or sewed into the lining of The usual stories of the sufferings of boys, his dressing gown."-MEDWIN, p. 9. whose health is in any way infirm or whose spirits are too weak for the kind of ordeal Shelley's father is described as a man to which their fellow students subject them, whose early education had been much neg- are tediously told by “the wearisome Caplected. He had, however, taken a degree tain.” The incompetence of the master is at Oxford-made the grand tour, and sat proved by his punishing Shelley for some in Parliament for a family borough. Med- faults in an exercise written for him by win's recollections of hiin are unfavourable. Medwin, who had cribbed the bad Latin, it He tells us that he was a man who “ re- seems, from Ovid. This incident, and the duced all politeness to forms, and moral fact that Shelley disliked learning to dance, virtue to expediency.” In short he was a are the Captain's sole records of Brentford man very like other men of whom there is school. It was scarce worth making a book little to be said that can furnish a page to for this and yet in one point of view the biographer. The one feeling which Medwin's testimony is not without some seems to have absorbed all others in the value. Shelley's detestation of school and * "Visits to Remarkable Places,” vol.; and the tyranny of the elder boys, has been in also "Homes and Haunts of the Poets." general understood as exclusively to be re them any |