Their development has been hindered by obstacles
which will be understood when I have proceeded a little farther, and
even within the compass of this brief sketch I hope that I shall be
able to make readers on both sides of the Atlantic work their own way
a little closer to the truth.
Shelley is still regarded by the majority, either as a victim of
persecution, or a rebel against authority, or both,--his friends
probably inclining to hold him up as a philosopher-patriot, whose
resistance to intellectual oppression placed him in the condition of
a martyr and robbed him of his fair share of life. My own earliest
memory presents him very much in that aspect. I first recall him
pale and slender, worn with anxiety, openly alluding to the marks of
premature age in his own aspect, bursting with aspirations against
tyranny of all kinds, and yielding to fits of dreadful despondency
under sufferings inflicted by the dignitaries of the land at the
instance of his own family. The circumstances by which he was
surrounded contributed to this guise of martyrdom.
My own earliest recollections began in prison, where my father[A]
was incarcerated for critical remarks which at the present day would
scarcely attract attention, and which were put forth in no impulse of
personal hostility, but under the strongest sense of duty, with the
desire to vindicate the constitutional freedom of England against the
perverted control of faction and the influences of a corrupt court.
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