The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1916-08-26 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

SIIELLET.  Oiton-road Men% eosmopolitan tastes are being well catered for just now. On Sunday last the members listened to a most informative and well-delivered let-It:vette on 1 Percy Bysshe Shelley by 'lbex Maggie Adams, to whom WP offer sincere congratulations on a most commendable effort. Miss ' Adams' first appearance at the school in the role of lecturer issued in a demand for another visit. She occupied the whole of the allotted time to a sketch of Shelley's life, and had perforce to leave almost untouched the wonderful poetry that has g:ven him a place among the immorhile. Much of Shelley's life can only be rightly appraised. she said, when it is allowed that he was from the first much mieunderstood. lie was a man who needed sympathy for his true development. At the very outset he, a member of the aristoc.racy, because of his revolutionary views, became alienated from his father, whose many attempts to alter them failed.- Ultimately they became reconciled towards each other. bhotio _ ley's opinions remsined unchanged. The ter to his life was to be found is his opporition to earthing he regarded as tvranny. At school he olgeosed "fagging., His marriage to one beneath him in stetion was said to have been primarily conceived as a means of delivering the lady from the tyranny of Lee father. Ile was careless about diens and slant food, and extmordivarily careless about money. Whilst living iu Wales on a very moderate allowanee he gave money away to more or lees deserving People quite indiscriminately, and thie was eleuacter'elic of him throverhout his short life. Miss Adams touched upon his residence in York, where his wife's Pieter and his friend Hogg laved with him, and in Dublin. where he helped to support the Catholic Emancipation Sig Ms true epiret of tolerance was Stamm at a Ciatholic meeting, where, though Apparently in a !minority of one, lie courageously declared that the toleration Catholics were claiming meet be shown equally by them to Protestants. In London he met William Godwin. who was subsequently to have peat influence upon him, and Leigh Hunt. Here began the trouble that led to Isis leaving his wife and going sway with Mary Godwin to live abroad. Whatever view he taken of the morality of the art, it is only the truth to say that in her he at length found one who understood him and contributed to his development. The suicide of Ins true wife in London, however, gersitinele marred hie hiappiness, as also did the famous Chancery snit which deprived him of the eustedy of his Children. Ile loiter made the acquaintance of Bytom a totally different merit from himself and Keats, who at first we, rather ehy of him, thinking Sholiel. being of aristocratic ossocietiota, could not endoy fellowship with a democrat. He of course soon discovered has nrietake, and a lasting friendship ensued. Shellee'e tragic death from drowning, at the esAY age. of 30. cut short a career of wonderful promise. If he heel lived longer, said WlFte Ademe, he might have act hie himultoos thoughts and ideas into evemetbing like order. As it wee. has Itelvieve.mQn.t; were great. lie was undoubtedly the pre-eninent poet of Jove.