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the crown of my head. He certainly looked like anything but a soldier. The metamorphosis was very amusing; he enjoyed it much, and made himself perfectly at home in his unwonted garb. We gave him the name of Captain Jones, under which name we used to talk of him after his departure; but, with all our care, Bysshe's visit could not be kept a secret.

He

"I chanced to mention the name of Sir James Macintosh, of whom he expressed the highest admiration. He told me Sir James was intimate with Godwin, to whom, he said, he owed everything; from whose book, Political Justice, he had derived all that was valuable in knowledge and virtue. He discoursed with eloquence and enthusiasm; but his views seemed to me exquisitely metaphysical, and by no means clear, precise, or decided. He told me that he had already read the Bible four times. was then only twenty years old.* He spoke of the Supreme Being as of infinite mercy and benevolence. He disclosed no fixed views of spiritual things; all seemed wild and fanciful. He said that he once thought the surrounding atmosphere was peopled with the spirits of the departed. He reasoned and spoke as a perfect gentleman, and treated my arguments, boy as I was (I had lately completed my sixteenth year), with as much consideration and respect as if I had been his equal in ability and attainments.

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Shelley was one of the most sensitive of human beings; he had a horror of taking life, and looked upon it

* As this was in the summer of 1813, Shelley must have been nearly, if not quite, twenty-one. -— ED.

as a crime. He read poetry with great emphasis and solemnity; one evening he read aloud to us a translation of one of Goethe's poems, and at this day I think I hear him. In music he seemed to delight, as a medium of association; the tunes which had been favorites in boyhood charmed him. There was one, which he played several times on the piano with one hand, which seemed to absorb him; it was an exceedingly simple air, which, I understand, his earliest love (Harriet Grove) was wont to play for him. He soon left us, and I never saw him afterwards; but I can never forget him. It was his last visit to Field Place. He was an amiable, gentle being."

Towards the close of 1813, estrangements, which for some time had been slowly growing between Mr. and Mrs. Shelley came to a crisis. Separation ensued; and Mrs. Shelley returned to her father's house. Here she gave birth to her second child, a son, who died in

1826.

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The occurrences of this painful epoch in Shelley's life, and of the causes which led to them, I am spared from relating. In Mary Shelley's own words: "This is not the time to relate the truth; and I should reject any coloring of the truth. No account of these events has ever been given at all approaching reality in their details, either as regards himself or others; nor shall I further allude to them than to remark that the errors of action committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, as far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who loved him, in the firm conviction that, were they judged impartially, his character would

stand in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary."

Of those remaining who were intimate with Shelley at this time, each has given us a different version of this sad event, colored by his own views and personal feelings. Evidently Shelley confided to none of these friends. We, who bear his name, and are of his family, have in our possession papers written by his own hand, which in after years may make the story of his life complete, and which few now living, except Shelley's own children, have ever perused.

One mistake which has gone forth to the world, we feel ourselves called upon positively to contradict.

Harriet's death has sometimes been ascribed to Shelley. This is entirely false. There was no immediate connection whatever between her tragic end and any conduct on the part of her husband. It is true, however, that it was a permanent source of the deepest sorrow to him; for never during all his after life did the dark shade depart which had fallen on his gentle and sensitive nature from the self-sought grave of the companion of his early youth.

CHAPTER VII.

ENGLAND AND

SWITZERLAND:

66

JUDGMENT OF THE

LORD CHANCELLOR: THE REVOLT OF ISLAM."

To the family of Godwin, Shelley had, from the period of his self-introduction at Keswick, been an object of interest; and the acquaintanceship which had sprung up between them during the poet's occasional visits to London had grown into a cordial friendship. It was in the society and sympathy of the Godwins that Shelley sought and found some relief in his present sorrow. He was still extremely young. His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his gifts of genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on Godwin's daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear Shelley spoken of as something rare and strange. To her, as they met one eventful day in St. Pancras Churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe, in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past — how he had suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her love, he hoped in future years to enroll his name with the wise and good who had done battle for their fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms to the cause of humanity.

Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in his, and linked her fortune with his own; and most truthfully, as the remaining portions of these Memorials will prove, was the pledge of both redeemed.

The theories in which the daughter of the authors of Political Justice and of the Rights of Woman had been educated, spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection. For she was the child of parents whose writings had had for their object to prove that marriage was one among the many institutions which a new era in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. By her father, whom she loved by the writings of her mother, whom she had been taught to venerate these doctrines had been rendered familiar to her mind. It was, therefore, natural that she should listen to the dictates of her own heart, and willingly unite her fate with one who was so worthy of her love.

The short peace of 1814 having opened the Continent, they went abroad, and, having visited some of the most magnificent scenes of Switzerland, returned to England from Lucerne by the Reuss and the Rhine. This rivernavigation enchanted Shelley. He was never so happy as when he was in a boat, and, "in his favorite poem of Thalaba," as Mrs. Shelley records in her notes to her husband's works, "his imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage." His pleasure must therefore have been keen.

On the death of Sir Bysshe, in January, 1815, Shelley's father inherited the title and the accumulated wealth. With respect to this event, Shelley records, in

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