composed as the poet glided down the purple waters; sometimes

at night when the sea was calm, and the moon free from clouds, he would go alone in his little shallop to some of the caves that opened from the rocky precipices on the bay, and would sit weaving his wild verses to the measured beating of the waves, as they crept up towards the shore." It was on a sultry afternoon in July that Shelley set sail in that

"The atmosphere," we read, "was heavy and moveless, and a profound stillness spread over the ocean. By half-past six it was almost dark. The sea looked like lead with an oily scum on the surface, the wind began in short panting gusts, and big drops struck the water, rebounding as they fell. There was a commotion in the air made up of many threatening sounds coming from the sea, the vessels in the harbour were in hurried movement, and soon the tempest came crashing and glaring in fury of thunder and lightning, wind and rain." The storm lasted only about twenty minutes, but when it cleared there was one ship less on the surface of that sea. Some days after, all that was mortal of Shelley was washed ashore, and burnt on the beach. A tombstone in the protestant cemetery at Rome marks where the ashes of Alastor lie side by side with the remains of Adonais. It bears the inscription "Cor cordium," the unconsumable heart, and the lines from Ariel's song—

SHENSTONE, William, the poet, was the son of a gentleman-farmer of Hales Owen, Shropshire, on whose estate there, the Leasowes, he was born on the 18th November, 1714. He was taught to read by the village dame, who sat for the schoolmistress in his pleasing poem of that name. In 1732 he was sent to Pembroke college, where he cultivated poetry and the belles-lettres, and where he published anonymously, in 1737, a volume of "Poems upon various occasions," containing the first sketch of "The Schoolmistress," which in its completed form was given to the world in 1742. In 1745 he settled down on his little patrimonial estate, the Leasowes, to beautify which into a show-place he devoted much of the rest of his life. The Leasowes though nominally in Shropshire, is surrounded by Worcestershire and Warwickshire, and close to the Lyttletonian seat of Hagley. His improvement of the Leasowes seems to have impoverished Shenstone without adding to his happiness. He died there on the 11th February, 1763. Besides his poem "The Schoolmistress," in imitation of the Spenserian style and stanza, Shenstone wrote chiefly elegies and pastorals, graceful and simple, but feeble. Passages of the Pastoral Elegy, such, for instance, as that beginning—"I have found out a gift for my fair," still figure in the collections; and his lines on the felicity afforded by an inn are often quoted. His works in verse and prose were published in 1764-69 in three volumes, of which the third contains his letters. According to Dr. Anderson, Shenstone suggested to Percy the publication of the Reliques, and assisted him in its preparation.—F. E. SHERARD or SHERWOOD, William, son of George Sherwood of Bushby in Leicestershire, an English botanist, was born in 1659, and died the 12th of August, 1728. He was educated at the Merchant Tailors' school, and entered St. John's college, Oxford, in 1677. He became a fellow of the college, and took the degree of bachelor of laws on 11th December, 1683. He accompanied Lord Townshend on his travels on the continent. He prosecuted botany with zeal, and assisted Ray in his publications. He communicated to him a list of plants collected on Mount Jura, Soleure, and in the neighbourhood of Geneva. He travelled in various parts of England, and visited the island of Jersey. To the Royal Society he communicated papers on China and India varnishes, and on the Rhus vernix, or poison-wood tree of New England. In 1702 he was one of the commissioners for sick and wounded seamen at Portsmouth, and he soon after was appointed consul at Smyrna. He visited the seven churches in Asia, and gave an account of a volcanic island in the Grecian Archipelago. He collected a large herbarium. In 1718 he returned to Britain, and soon after received the degree of doctor of laws from the university of Oxford. He again made a tour on the continent. On his return he lived in great privacy in London, and afterwards retired to his brother's residence at Eltham. By his will he left £3000 to provide a salary for a professor of botany at Oxford, on condition that Dillenius should be chosen first professor. His botanical library and herbarium were given to the university of Oxford. He published "Schola Botanica," or a catalogue of plants in the garden at Paris. He aided in the publication of Hermann's Paradisus Botanicus; and of Vaillants' Botanicon Parisiense. A genus of plants is called Sherardia.—J. H. B. SHERBURNE, Sir Edward, an English writer, the son of a gentleman of the same name, who was secretary to the first East India Company and clerk of the ordnance, was born September 18, 1618. He succeeded his father in the latter post, but soon after his appointment to it the civil war broke out; and being a catholic, and attached to King Charles I., who had knighted him. Sir Edward was ejected from his office by a warrant of the house of lords in 1642, and kept some time in confinement. Upon his release he immediately joined his fortunes to those of the king, who made him commissary-general of the artillery, in which capacity he was present at the battle of Edgehill. Sir Edward subsequently went to Oxford, and there betook himself to literary labour. In 1648 he published a translation of Seneca's Medea; in 1651, a collection of poems and translations; in 1675, a poem, "The Sphere of Marcus Mamilius;" and in 1679 a translation from Seneca entitled "Troades, or the Royal Captives." He suffered considerably from the political commotions of the times, and died in 1702.—F. SHERIDAN, Frances, wife of Thomas Sheridan, the elocutionist, and mother of the dramatist, born in Ireland about 1724, was originally a Miss Chamberlaine, and a granddaughter of Sir Oliver Chamberlaine. She attracted the notice of her future husband by a pamphlet in his defence during his quarrel with the Dublin public, while he was manager of the theatre-royal there. Boswell describes her as "sensible, ingenious, unassuming, yet communicative;" and Dr. Parr, as "quite celestial." Besides her comedies, "The Discovery" and "The Dupe," she wrote two novels. One of them, the "Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph," drew from her friend. Dr. Johnson, the complimentary criticism—"I know not, madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much." The other, her romance of "Nourjahad," found admirers up to a recent date. She died at Blois in 1766.—F. E. SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley, dramatist, orator, and politician, was the son of Thomas and Frances Sheridan (q.v.). He was born in September, 1751, at 12 Dorset Street, Dublin, and was placed for a year at the school of Mr. Samuel Whyte of that city, long afterwards the teacher of Sheridan's biographer, the poet Moore. In 1762 he was sent to Harrow, where, though he was extremely idle. Dr. Parr, then one of the masters, detected the intelligence that lurked under his stupidity in school. He was fond of reading English poetry, and in his seventeenth year began a dramatic sketch founded on the Vicar of Wakefield. From Harrow he went to his father's in London, and began with his schoolfellow Halhed (afterwards an orientalist of some little note) a translation of the epistles of Aristænetus into English verse, which was published in 1771. The year before he had removed with the family to Bath, and there he fell in love with his future wife, Miss Linley the singer (daughter of the composer), a beautiful and amiable girl, of whom in maturer years, according to Moore, "a late bishop used to say that she seemed to him the connecting link between woman and angel." Sheridan's brother and his friend Halhed were both the victims of Miss Linley's fascinations, and made him, who kept his own secret, their confidant. Wearied of the persecutions of a married admirer, as well as of the public life she was leading, Miss Linley resolved to fly to France and take refuge in a convent. Sheridan escorted her. She was eighteen, he twenty, and the result may be guessed. They were privately married near Calais in March, 1772, and again in England (where her father's consent had been reluctantly obtained) in April, 1773. A few weeks before the second marriage he had entered himself at the Middle temple, and when the marriage was avowed he refused to allow his wife to appear on the stage—a resolution which Samuel Johnson approved. For some time they lived on the £3000 which an old gentleman, formerly her admirer, had presented to her, when he found that she did not wish to marry him, and that the father thought of bringing an action against him for breach of promise. When this resource was exhausted, Sheridan made his coup d'essai as a dramatist. His comedy, "The Rivals," was performed at Covent Garden on the 17th of January, 1775. It failed the