found pretty Harriett in a pining condition, and in all the languor of "sentiment" for himself; and about the beginning of September 1811, eloped with her to Edinburgh. Here he forthwith married her; which was in every respect an honourable act of youthful unworldliness, and all the more so in that his own pet theories were directly adverse to the formal institution of marriage. No evidence is forthcoming to show that the poet was ever strictly in love with Harriett; while on the other hand a very strong presumption arises that she, more especially guided by her elder sister Eliza and the family generally, had "set her cap" at so highly eligible a parti as the grandson and eventual heir of the extremely wealthy Sir Bysshe Shelley, of Castle Goring. No doubt too Shelley's own genius, delicate beauty of aspect, and never-failing personal fascination, were highly impressive to the girlish Harriett; and her many charms of face, figure, and manner, not indifferent to him. Harriett was by no means uneducated, nor wanting in those superficial likings for literature which go with education. She was a frank, kind, nice girl, and in all ways worthy of any ordinary man's love. Unfortunately, to so exceptional a inan as Shelley, her attractions were not made for a permanency: the heart of a poet is "deep calling to deep," and, if it turns out that there is only shallow to respond, the result is too well assured

"No song, but sad dirges,

Like the wind through a ruined cell."

As Mrs. Siddons said in a tragedy voice to the haberdasher's assistant, "But will it wash?" Charming Harriett's conjugal graces of mind and character did not "wash."

The income of Shelley during his married life with Harriett may have averaged something like £300 a year-not too certain in its inflowing, and continually forestalled by some act of lavish generosity for public or private_objects. To have rejected (as he did) £2000 a year, tendered on the sole condition of his entailing the estate on his eldest son, or in default on his younger brother, was, under the circumstances, a noble adhesion to principle-for Shelley abhorred the system of primogeniture. He was very migratory in his movements; and much and increasingly oppressed by the presence of Miss Westbrook in his house, wherein, almost immediately after his marriage, she established herself as general dictatress and woman of business. From Edinburgh he went to York, staying with Hogg; to Keswick in Cumberland, where he made the acquaintance of Southey; to Dublin, where he agitated for catholic emancipation and

repcal of the union; to Nantgwillt in Radnorshire ;. Lymouth in Devonshire; Tanyrallt in Carnarvonshire. This last sojourn he quitted in March 1813, alleging that a twicerepeated nocturnal attempt at assassination had been made upon him. This is only one out of many wondrous stories told by Shelley as pertaining to various stages of his career. Some of them are proved untruths, others more than questionable; others again may be believed without gross credulity. This tale of the assassination is of the more than questionable class: nobody could trace the assassin, or guess why assassination should have been attempted at all. Yet there are some considerations which save the allegation from absolute, unhesitating rejection. Why Shelley told these portentous stories is a strange problem. He had a great respect for truth, and endured inuch tribulation in the cause of speculative truth, as estimated by himself. In default of a better reason, one is fain to say that he had a most excitable imagination, fancied many things, and attitudinized or exaggerated in others; a habit which was greatly fostered by his practice (which began somewhere about 1812) of taking laudanum, often in large doses, to mitigate the pangs of a spasmodic disease which afflicted him from an early age, and on to the conclusion of his noble and too brief life.

Snapped out of Carnarvonshire by the pistol of a probably non-existent bravo, Shelley, with Harriett and Eliza, returned to Dublin, visited Killarney, and next settled awhile in London, still shifting frequently from house to house. His first child, Ianthe Eliza, was born in London in 1813. About the same time he printed his first considerable poem, Queen Mab. He did not publish it; but that function was at once performed for him by a pirating bookseller, and again, in 1821, by another. Queen Mab is a work of some poetic suggestiveness, much youthfulness, and great audacity of opinion and expression; it produced a certain sensation, chiefly by dint of the last-named characteristic. Shelley was preeminently an enthusiast, and even (so far as a perfectly tolerant man can be one) a fanatic: he actually fancied that such a performance as Queen Mab was capable of producing a change in the opinions and practices of society. Such an overweening notion may be pardoned to a youth of twenty-one; a few years later he perceived the world of life and of custom to be made of rather tougher material. His next residence was at Bracknell in Berkshire; then for a short while in Edinburgh; and back to London, broken by visits to Bracknell.

We have now reached the end of 1813, and approach the

finale of Shelley's married life with Harriett. She did not respond to his demands on heart and head; teazed him sometimes to act in modes inconsistent with his ideas; and continued, by active or passive concurrence, to fasten on him "the daughter of the horseleech," Eliza Westbrook. Things were in a critical state by the close of 1813, yet still so far remediable as that Shelley remarried Harriett in London on the 24th of March 1814, in order to remove any conceivable uncertainties attaching to the Scotch marriage.. The presumable early advent of a son and heir was no doubt a cogent motive. By May 1814 things passed from the critical to the catastrophic stage. Shelley now became acquainted with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, then sixteen years of age, the daughter of the celebrated author of Political Justice, Caleb Williams, and other works for which the young poet and speculator entertained a huge admiration. If a reunion of heart with Harriett was possible before, it now became impossible. Shelley fell helplessly in love with Mary; quitted Harriett; offered his heart-homage to Mary, either soon before or soon after the separation, and received an immediate and cordial response; made such arrangements for the wellbeing of Harriett as his circumstances allowed; and started for a continental trip, with Mary and Miss Clairmont (a daughter of the second Mrs. Godwin by her previous marriage) on the 28th of July. Poor Harriett, who had behaved well to Shelley according to her lights and opportunities, was much to be pitied, and as yet in no way pointedly to be blamed. She returned to her father, now at Bath, and soon gave birth to a son, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. Not to return to a sorrowful subject, I will in. here at once add the little that remains to be said concerning Harriett, which is indeed both scanty and not very dis tinctly defined. Not long after parting from Shelley she found some other protector or protectors; and, in conse-, we quence of some untoward events arising from a connexion of this sort, she drowned herself in the Serpentine on the 10th of November 1816.

e

Returning from Switzerland in September 1814, Shelley and Mary found themselves isolated and poor. In this ). latter respect, the death of Sir Bysshe on the 6th of January 1815 brought present and substantial relief: an arrangement being made with Sir Timothy whereby Percy came into immediate possession of an allowance of £1000 a year, which, subject to an annual deduction of £200 or less consequent upon the Chancery proceedings soon to be mentioned, continued to be his income for the residue of his life. now settled at Bishopgate near Windsor Forest, and wrote

He

his first decidedly fine poem, Alastor. In January 1816 Mary bore him a son, his favourite William, who died in Rome in June 1819. A second child, Clara, died in Venice in 1818; the third and last, born in Florence in November 1819, is the present Baronet, Sir Percy Florence Shelley.

In May 1816 Shelley, with Mary and Miss Clairmont, again went abroad for a somewhat longer excursion, and stayed at or near Sécheron on the Lake of Geneva, where they made acquaintance with Byron. He and Shelley prized each other's poetic genius, and Byron had besides a deep personal regard for Shelley, whom he appreciated as the most high-minded, disinterested, and consistent man within his cognizance. Shelley did not, and could not, say anything so heartily laudatory of Byron; but he could sympathize with him in several things, admire him deeply and self-obliviously in more, and serve him with true friendliness under all conditions. In Switzerland Mrs. Shelley began her renowned novel Frankenstein. It was during this tour that Shelley, in a not over-wise spirit of defiance, signed his name in the album for visitors at the Chartreuse of Montanvert, with the tag

Εἶμι φιλάνθρωπος δημωκρατικός τ' ἄθεος τε.

Shelley and Mary were back in England by September 1816, and had hardly fixed upon a residence at Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire when the news of Harriett's suicide startled them. The poet felt the shock deeply it continued to intensify for awhile, and up to the close of his life its impression remained potent. As already intimated, this mournful termination to Harriett's career was in no wise directly attributable to Shelley or his proceedings: it is moreover to some extent explicable, without supposing that the calamities of Harriett were really of a very overwhelming character, by the fact that, from early girlhood and on through the most prosperous days of her married life, she had had an avowed proclivity to suicide. The death of Harriett was soon followed by another blow to Shelley, perhaps still more keenly felt. Mr. Westbrook refused to deliver up to him the children, Ianthe and Charles, and filed a bill in Chancery to justify his resistance. He alleged that Shelley had deserted his wife, was an atheist, and intended to bring up the children in his own religious and social heterodoxies. In August 1817 Lord Chancellor Eldon delivered judgment, assigning to Mr. Westbrook the custody of the children, and their education to a clergyman of the Church of England, with an allowance to be paid by their father. The grounds on which his judgment pro

ceeded were not strictly those of speculative opinion alleged against Shelley. but of actual conduct, in the affair of Harriett and Mary, consequent upon and conformable to opinion.

Shelley had meanwhile, in December 1816, married Mary Godwin, and had taken up his residence at Marlow. Here he lived on a scale of considerable comfort, combined with profuse liberality to others. At the beginning of 1815 he had walked a London hospital, chiefly with a view of ministering to the poor on occasion: at Marlow he exerted himself incessantly in alleviating the distress, whether bodily or pecuniary, of the lacemakers and other suffering poor in his vicinity. His own health was precarious, and most alarming symptoms of consumption appeared more than once in these years, but finally ceased in 1818. His spasmodic and other ailments remained, and were torture enough. An attack of ophthalmia, which recurred at a later date, was also caught in 1817 in attending some of the poor. In this year Shelley saw a great deal of Leigh Hunt, and a very affectionate friendship reigned between them. At Hunt's house in Hampstead, the author of Alastor met Horatio Smith and Keats, and took more kindly to the latter than he found reciprocated.

The Revolt of Islam, at first named Laon and Cythna, was published in 1818, and confirmed beyond cavil, to discerning eyes, the lofty promise of Alastor. It had been preceded by a pamphlet, bearing the name of "The Hermit of Marlow" as author, on the subject of parliamentary reform. Laon and Cythna was a dainty dish to set before the British public; for the two lovers who give the name to the poem were, in that first form of it, not lovers only but brother and sister as well. The publisher Mr. Ollier protested, and withheld the book after a very few copies had been issued: Shelley stuck to his text for awhile: at last, outwearied or convinced, he gave in, and introduced into the poem the few changes which have brought it to its present complexion.

Considerations of health, and perhaps of money, now made Shelley turn longing eyes towards the continent, especially towards Italy. On the 11th of March 1818 he left England, with his wife and two children and Miss Clairmont; went straight to Milan; and was fated never to revisit his native country, nor even to quit Italian soil again. It cannot exactly be said that Shelley had a rooted intention of never returning to England-in some respects, indeed, he had a predilection for living there but the probability is that, had his life been prolonged for several years, he might still have been mostly a foreign resident. The