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The Literary History of England in the End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Century
The Literary History of England in the End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Century Author:Margaret Oliphant Volume: 3 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1889 Original Publisher: Macmillan and Co. Subjects: English literature History / General Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illu... more »strations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. SHELLEY BYRON. Shelley and his companions left Lake Leman in the end of the summer of 1816, leaving Lord Byron there to pursue his course southwards a little later. In November of that same year the tragic incidents to which we have before alluded threw gloom and additional reproach upon the life of the younger poet. Harriet, his young wife, whom he had abandoned nearly two years before, and who in the interval had not lived too wisely or purely, according to the vague accounts given of her by the biographers of Shelley,. committed suicide. That this miserable event gave him intense pain almost all agree ; as indeed it is impossible to imagine that a being so sensitive could have been indifferent to such a catastrophe. But it certainly cleared his path of an incumbrance, and in six weeks after, his connection with Mary Godwin was legitimatised by marriage. Thus the theory of Godwin's philosophical sect against marriage as an institution was finally disposed of. Godwin himself had married more than once, notwithstanding his opinions. Shelley, in honourable superiority to them, had married Harriet when she put herself in his power; but the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, already his unwedded companion, might have helped him to maintain his theoretical standard of superiority to all bonds of law, if ever woman could. Thepair, however, visionary as they were, followed the beaten way of law and order, ag...« less