When
thirteen years old he was sent to Eton, where he began to display his
revolutionary tendencies by his resistance to the fagging system; and
where he also gave some earnest in writing of his future powers. At the
age of sixteen he entered University College, Oxford, and appeared as a
radical in most social, political, and religious questions. On account of
a paper entitled _The Necessity of Atheism_, he was expelled from the
university and went to London. In 1811 he made a runaway match with Miss
Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of the keeper of a coffee-house, which
brought down on him the wrath of his father. After the birth of two
children, a separation followed; and he eloped with Miss Godwin in 1814.
His wife committed suicide in 1816; and then the law took away from him
the control of his children, on the ground that he was an atheist.
After some time of residence in England, he returned to Italy, where soon
after he met with a tragical end. Going in an open boat from Leghorn to
Spezzia, he was lost in a storm on the Mediterranean: his body was washed
on shore near the town of Via Reggio, where his remains were burned in
the presence of Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and others.
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