[Postcript by Harriet Shelley.]

Mr. Shelley is so dreadfully nervous to-day from having been up all night that I am afraid what he has written will alarm you very much. We intend to leave this place as soon as possible, as our lives are not safe so long as we remain. It is no common robber we dread, but a person who is actuated by revenge, and who threatens my life and my sister's as well. us the money, it will greatly add to our comfort. Sir, I remain your sincere friend,

If you can send

H. SHELLEY.

A person who was a neighbor of the Shelleys at this time, writing in 1860, states that Shelley further asserted that he saw a ghost or devil when he looked from the window on this occasion, and that Shelley set fire to the wood to destroy the apparition. Hogg states that "persons acquainted with the localities and with the circumstances, and who carefully investigated the matter, were unanimously of opinion that no such attack was ever made.” On the other hand, there are sufficient indications that there was no intentional fraud on Shelley's part. It should be remembered that, in addition to possessing a peculiar temperament, Shelley was at times in the habit of taking laudanum to excess. Many of the details mentioned in Harriet's letter must have had their origin in the poet's excited imagination; but it is just possible that there was some substratum of fact. Peacock, who knew Shelley well, considers that this was one of the cases of semi-delusion to which, in his opinion, his friend was subject. In his Memoirs of Shelley, he illustrates this tendency by the following narrative: "In the early summer of 1816 the spirit of restlessness again came over him, and resulted in a second visit to the Continent. The change of scene was preceded, as more than once before, by a mysterious communication from a person seen only by himself,

him if he did not instantly depart.

warning him of immediate personal perils to be incurred by I was alone at Bishopsgate with him and Mrs. Shelley when the visitation alluded to occurred." Peacock was sceptical as to the visit; whereupon Shelley said, "You know Williams of Tremadoc? It was he who was here to-day. He came to tell me of a plot laid by my father and uncle to entrap me and lock me up. He was in great haste and could not stop a minute, and I walked with him to Egham." Peacock remained unconvinced, and adduced some facts which showed that it was highly improbable that Shelley had walked to Egham. To this the latter replied, "It is very hard on a man who has devoted his life to the pursuit of truth, who has made great sacrifices and incurred great sufferings for it, to be treated as a visionary. If I do not know that I saw Williams, how do I know that I see you?" Finally, Shelley stated that Williams was staying at the Turk's Head Coffee-house in London; and if Peacock would walk thither on the following day he would find that things were as Shelley asserted. They started out the next morning; but before going far Shelley, suddenly turning round, exclaimed, "I do not think we shall find Williams at the Turk's Head;" and proposed a walk in another direction. Peacock heard nothing more of the mysterious visit for some days, when Shelley said to him, "I have some news from Williams, a letter and an enclosure; I cannot show you the letter; I will show you the encloIt is a diamond necklace." Peacock objected that the necklace would prove nothing as to Williams's alleged visit. "Then," answered Shelley, "if you will not believe me, I must submit to your incredulity." "I had," continues Peacock, "on one or two previous occasions, argued with him against similar semi-delusions, and I believe if they had always been received with similar scepticism they would not have been so often repeated. . . . I call them semi-delusions

sure.

because, for the most part, they had their basis in his firm belief that his father and uncle had designs upon his liberty. On this basis his imagination built a fabric of romance, and when he presented it as substantive fact, and it was found to contain more or less of inconsistency, he felt his selfesteem interested in maintaining it by accumulated circumstances, which severally vanished under the touch of investigation, like Williams's location at the Turk's Head Coffee-house. I must add that in the expression of these differences there was not a shadow of anger. They were discussed with freedom and calmness, with the good temper and good feeling which never forsook him in conversations with his friends. There was an evident anxiety for acquiescence, but a quiet and gentle toleration of dissent. A personal discussion, however interesting to himself, was carried on with the same calmness as if it related to the most abstract question in metaphysics."

In April, 1813, Shelley took lodgings in London. There he had now several intimate friends: Hogg, the Godwins, Peacock the poet and novelist, whose acquaintance he had recently made, Leigh Hunt, and others. Hogg again affords a series of lively pictures of the Shelleys and their method of living. Harriet was bright, blooming, and placid as ever, and still addicted to reading aloud. Owing to the multitude of books, their sitting-room presented a scene of confusion which recalled Shelley's bachelor apartments in Oxford. Meals came at irregular hours. Throughout life the poet was very simple in his diet and neglectful of regular meals. "When he felt hungry," writes Hogg of Shelley in 1813, “he would dash into the first baker's shop, buy a loaf, and rush out again, bearing it under his arm; and he strode onwards in his rapid course, breaking off pieces of bread and rapidly swallowing them." He eschewed spirituous liquors and drank tea or water; both he and Harriet were

vegetarians at this time. But Shelley was not fanatical in this respect; when away from home he ate what came in his way, and did not refuse the weaker sorts of wine. Peacock ascribes Shelley's ill-health largely to vegetarianism and irregularity in eating. In his sleeping he was not less eccentric, inclined to be drowsy in the evenings, and never so wakeful as when the rest of the world is in the habit

of taking repose. As to dress, Hogg says that he never remembers to have seen Shelley in a greatcoat, even in the coldest weather. He wore his waistcoat much, or entirely, open; his throat was bare, the collar of his shirt unbuttoned; he wore a hat reluctantly in town, but in fields or gardens had no other covering for his head than his long, wild locks. "He took strange caprices, unfounded frights and dislikes, vain apprehensions and panic terrors, and therefore he absented himself from formal and sacred engagements. He was unconscious and oblivious of times, places, persons, and seasons; and, falling into some poetic vision, some daydream, he quickly and completely forgot all that he had repeatedly and solemnly promised or ran away after some object of imaginary urgency and importance which suddenly came into his head, setting off in vain pursuit of it, he knew not whither."

In June, 1813, a daughter, Ianthe, was born. This event, which should have bound husband and wife more closely together, marks the beginnings of estrangement. We have seen the quixotic fashion in which Shelley married. The marriage turned out, at first, more happily than could have been expected. Harriet had beauty and amiability; she adopted, though in a somewhat childish fashion no doubt, the views of her husband; she employed his phraseology. Shelley's love for his young wife grew; his letters and poems written while in Devonshire and Wales witness to the happiness of their union. But the poet's eccentricities were such

as to put a strain on the most appreciative affection; and Harriet was not specially adapted, in character and intellect, to comprehend him. On the other side, the time was sure to come when Shelley would feel with exaggerated sensitiveness the difference between the real person and the ideal which he had conceived. Harriet was essentially commonplace, without extraordinary spiritual or mental endowments. As she grew to full maturity, as the pliancy and docility of girlhood passed away, she doubtless developed tastes and opinions little in harmony with her husband's unconventional views. Her patience must have been tried by his unpractical aims and by his neglect of those things which society about her deemed important. In 1813 Shelley made a purchase of plate and set up a carriage certainly

not of his own impulse. To intensify any divergencies of thought and feeling between husband and wife, there were the continued presence and influence of Eliza Westbrook. However she may have dissembled in the early days of their acquaintance, she had no natural interest or sympathy for Shelley's peculiar ways and opinions. She was not at all literary or intellectual in her tastes; her aims were commonplace; her character, mature and strong; her influence over her sister, great. Shelley now cordially detested his sisterin-law, and his dislike was intensified when he saw her in chief charge of the little Ianthe. Peacock says: "I have

often thought that if Harriet had nursed her own child [contrary to the father's wishes, a wet-nurse was employed], and if this sister had not lived with them, the link of their married love would not have been so readily broken."

The sense of disparity between himself and his wife may have been quickened by the congenial female society which he now enjoyed among some new friends, — the Newtons and Boinvilles. The circle into which he was thus introduced was composed of persons of an enthusiastic and