division, which would enable you to defer the visit, from which we expect so much delight, for six weeks. I hope we shall really see you before that time, and that you will allow the chestnut, or any other important tree, as he stands in the foreground, to be considered as a virtual representation of the

rest.

"Will is quite well, and very beautiful. Mary unites with me in presenting her kind remembrances to Mrs. Godwin, and begs most affectionate love to you.

"Yours,

"P. B. SHELLEY.

"Have you read Melincourt? It would entertain you."

About this time, Shelley became acquainted, at Leigh Hunt's house, at Hampstead, with John Keats, and with the brothers James and Horace Smith. The genius of the former he at once recognized, and celebrated it, in a subsequent year, in the eloquent poem, Adonais. For Horace Smith Shelley had the most affectionate regard a regard fully deserved by that excellent and warmhearted wit.

But now came one of the greatest sorrows which Shelley ever had to encounter. Up to the time of his first wife's death, her children had resided with her and with her father; but, after that event, Shelley claimed them. Mr. Westbrook refused to give them up, and carried the case into Chancery, where he filed a bill, asseverating that the remaining parent of the children was unfit to have the charge of them, on account of the alleged depravity of his religious and moral opinions, in which he designed to bring them up. The case having been argued, judgment was pronounced by the Lord

Chancellor (Eldon), and it was decreed that Shelley should not be allowed to have the custody of his own offspring. He was forced, however, to set aside 2007. a year for their support; and this sum was deducted by Sir Timothy from his son's annuity. The children were committed to the care of a clergyman of the Church of England, and were of course educated in those principles which their father looked on with aversion. The son, as the reader has already seen, died when a youth; the daughter is still living.

As to the monstrous injustice of this decree, most men are now agreed; and no further remark need be made on so repellent a subject, except an expression of astonishment that the name of Dr. Parr should be found among Shelley's opponents. His testimony was given, and quoted very frequently, as to the respectability of the persons appointed, under Chancery, as guardians of the children.

The ensuing letter from the poet's legal adviser, written before the decision of the Lord Chancellor, contains some points of interest:

"MY DEAR SIR,

“Gray's Inn, 5th Aug. 1817.

"I ENCLOSE you the Master's report on the subject of the children, which I am sorry to say is against you. I am taking the necessary proceedings to bring the question before the Lord Chancellor, and it will come on for his decision some time next week, or, at any rate, before he rises, which is the 23d inst. One comfort is, that there could not be a weaker case against you than this is. The only support of Mr. Ken

dall * is Dr. Parr, who is himself open to a great deal of observation, and who, except as a Greek scholar, does not stand high in any one's opinion.

“The Master, in the first place, omits to inquire what would be a proper plan for the education of the children, though ordered by the Chancellor to do so; and then he goes on to approve a proposal that Mr. Kendall should stand, in all respects, loco parentis, when the Lord Chancellor himself says that he has not yet made up his mind as to how far he would interfere against parental authority.

“I should think that the plaintiffs will find it a difficult matter to prevail on the Chancellor to confirm this unnatural proposal of abandoning these infants to the care of a stranger, of whom nobody interested in the welfare of the children knows anything,- who lives at a considerable distance from all the family, who, from his ignorance of all the family, can have no object but to make the most of the children as a pecuniary transaction,-in short, who has nothing to recommend him but the affidavit of the venerable bridegroom, Dr. Parr.† "As I objected to liberties being taken with your income, you will observe that the proposal is altered.

"Your faithful and obedient servant,

"P. W. LONGDILL."

Moved to fiery wrath by the cruel injustice which had been dealt out to him, Shelley wrote a terrible curse on the Lord Chancellor, which Mrs. Shelley published among her husband's poems. The outraged father speaks grandly and fearfully in these lines:

"By thy most impious Hell, and all its terrors;
By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt

One of the persons recommended as guardians for the children. -ED.

† Dr. Parr married, for the second time, in 1816, though then in his seventieth year.- ED.

Of thine impostures, which must be their errors,
That sand on which thy crumbling power is built:

"By all the hate which checks a father's love,
By all the scorn which kills a father's care;
By those most impious hands that dared remove
Nature's high bounds by thee - and by despair,—

"Yes! the despair which bids a father groan,

And cry, 'My children are no longer mine:
The blood within those veins may be mine own,
But, Tyrant, their polluted souls are thine!'-—

"I curse thee, though I hate thee not. O slave!
If thou could'st quench the earth-consuming hell
Of which thou art a demon, on thy grave

This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well!"

In his Masque of Anarchy (written in 1819), Shelley has two stanzas, hot with scorn and sarcasm, on the man who had robbed him of his offspring:

"Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Lord Eldon, an ermine gown:
His big tears (for he wept well)
Turn'd to mill-stones as they fell:

"And the little children, who

Round his feet play'd to and fro,

Thinking every tear a gem,

Had their brains knock'd out by them."

Towards the end of 1817, Shelley was obliged, owing to pecuniary difficulties, to stay for some time at the house of Leigh Hunt, who had by that time removed to Lisson Grove. He had been made answerable for cer

tain liabilities incurred by his first wife, and the creditors pressed him severely; though until the demands were urged on him, he had no knowledge that any such claims existed; nor had he now an opportunity of verifying their exactness. He even ran some danger of arrest; but matters were at length settled. In the mean while, Mrs. Shelley resided at Marlow, in company with her children, and with a little daughter of Lord Byron, called Allegra, and sometimes Alba. Shelley returned to Marlow in the autumn.

On December 7th, he thus addressed Godwin:
:-

"MY DEAR GODWIN,

66

Marlow, December 7th, 1817.

"To begin with the subject of most immediate interest: close with Richardson; and when I say this, what relief should I not feel from a thousand distressing emotions, if I could believe that he was in earnest in his offer! I have not heard from Longdill, though I wish earnestly for information.

"My health has been materially worse. My feelings at intervals are of a deadly and torpid kind, or awakened to a state of such unnatural and keen excitement, that, only to instance the organ of sight, I find the very blades of grass and the boughs of distant trees present themselves to me with microscopical distinctness. Towards evening I sink into a state of lethargy and inanimation, and often remain for hours on the sofa, between sleep and waking, a prey to the most painful irritability of thought. Such, with little intermission, is my condition. The hours devoted to study are selected with vigilant caution from among these periods of endurance. It is not for this that I think of travelling to Italy, even if I knew that Italy would relieve me. But I have experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and, although at present it has passed away without any very considerable vestige of its existence, yet