SEYMOUR
SHELBURNE
to live in Italy after his retirement in
1872. D. Aug. 3, 1879.
SEYMOUR, Edward Adolphus,
twelfth Duke of Somerset and Earl St. Maur, statesman and writer. B. Dec. 20, 1804. Ed. Eton and Oxford (Christ s Church). He married Sheridan s grand daughter, and entered the House of Commons in 1830 as a Liberal. He became a Lord of the Treasury in 1835, secretary to the Board of Control in 1839, under-secretary to the Home Department in 1841, and First Commissioner of Works, with a seat in the Cabinet, in 1851. In 1855 he succeeded his father as Duke of Somerset, and passed to the House of Lords. He was First Lord of the Admiralty from 1859 to 1866. Seymour was created KG. in 1862, and Earl St. Maur of Berry Pomeroy in 1863. Heavy domestic losses after his retirement in 1866 led to a period of studious seclusion, though Somerset was not " embittered," as the writer in the Diet. Nat. Biog. says. In 1872 the fruit of this was seen in the publication of his Christian Theology and Modern Scepticism, in which he rejects all miracles, denies the authority of the Gospels, and opposes dogma and priesthood. He accepts " a Supreme Intelligence," but can only say that this belief gives " a ray of light beyond the mystery of the grave." See the Letters, Remains, and Memoirs of E. A. Seymour (1893), edited by W. H. Mallock and Lady Gwendolen Ramsden. D. Nov. 28, 1885.
SHAFTESBURY, first Earl of. See
COOPER, ANTHONY ASHLEY.
SHAFTESBURY, third Earl of. See
COOPER, ANTHONY ASHLEY.
SHAW, George Bernard, dramatist and critic. B. (Dublin) July 26, 1856. Ed. private school. At the age of fifteen Shaw became a clerk in a land agent s office at Dublin. In 1876 he left Dublin to try his fortune in London, and entered
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upon ten years of literary struggle and
considerable privation. He wrote five un
successful novels, two of which, An Unsocial
Socialist and Cashel Byron s Profession
appeared into To-day; and two others were
published by Mrs. Besant in Our Corner. In
1885 Shaw became art critic on the Pall
Mall Gazette, and this opened a long and
brilliant career as a critic. From 1888 to
1890 he was musical critic on the Star, and
from ] 890 to 1894 on the World. From 1894
to 1898 he was well known as the dramatic
critic of the Saturday Bevieio. His first
play, Widowers Houses, appeared in 1892 ;
but his early plays were failures on the
stage. He published them (Plays, Pleasant
and Unpleasant) in 1898. Man and Super
man (1903) was the first to succeed, though
its success was not great until John Bull s
Other Island conciliated a larger public in
1904. Since 1905 he has enjoyed a
European and American reputation as a
dramatist. He had joined the Fabian
Society at its foundation in 1884, and is
one of the chief founders of its present
organ, The Neiu Statesman. Shaw was a
Rationalist long before he was a Socialist.
He discarded Christianity at the age of
ten, and did not enter a church for twenty
years afterwards. He disdains the title of
Rationalist, and has said quaint and caustic
things about Rationalism ; but in this he
refers to the narrower meaning of the term
the use of reason only in investigation.
To Christianity and Theism he is as scorn
fully opposed as any Freethinker who ever
lived (see McCabe s George Bernard Shaw,
1914, pp. 58-82, and the more recent
preface to Androcles and the Lion, 1916) ;
but he follows Samuel Butler in believing
that the supreme reality is a "vital force,"
and that reason is not the proper instru
ment for perceiving it. His high idealism
and personality, caustic and fearless criti
cism, and unique skill as a humourist and
satirist have made him a great power for
good in his generation.
SHELBURNE, Lord. See PETTY, WILLIAM.
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