the hands of one or the other; and there were never two books; one read while the other listened. The catalogue of works perused, which I subjoin, would seem to require the unremitting attention of unfettered leisure; yet at this time Shelley was greatly occupied with affairs of business, and his mind was much harassed by the Chancery suit with regard to his children.

"LIST OF BOOKS READ BY SHELLEY AND MARY IN 1817.

CHAPTER VIII.

ITALY: 1818.

The gen

THE year 1818 was memorable in the life of Shelley, on account of his having at that date quitted England, to which he was destined never to return. eral state of his health, together with other motives, induced him to seek a more genial climate in the south of Europe. One of his most powerful reasons was a fear lest the Lord Chancellor might follow out some vague threat which he had uttered in delivering judgment, and deprive him of his infant son by his second wife. No attempt was made to act on this threat; but so much did Shelley fear that the outrage would be committed, that he addressed the child (who afterwards died at Rome) in some beautiful stanzas, signifying his readiness to abandon his country forever, rather than be parted from another of his offspring:

"The billows on the beach are leaping around it;

The bark is weak and frail;

The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it

Darkly strew the gale

In the early part of the year, Shelley was much occupied with matters of business in London; but in March they started for Italy. They went thither direct, avoiding even Paris, and did not pause till they arrived at Milan. From this city, the little Allegra was sent, under the care of a nurse, to her father at Venice.

The removal to Italy was advantageous to Shelley in

almost every respect. It is true that he left behind him friends to whom he was attached; but cares of various kinds, many of them springing from his lavish generosity, crowded round him in his native country, and the climate afflicted him with extreme suffering His greatest pleasure the free enjoyment of natural scenerywas marred by this sensitiveness to the influence of English weather.

The very first aspect of Italy (as Mrs. Shelley has recorded) enchanted him. The land appeared like "a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive letters during the first year of his residence;" and in these we see, not merely the consummate handling of a master of prose composition, but a poet's appreciation of all forms of loveliness, whether of nature or of art.

A very romantic story touching this period of Shelley's life is told by Captain Medwin. He asserts that a married lady introduced herself to the poet in the year 1816, shortly before his departure for Switzerland, and, concealing her name, told him that his many virtues and the grandeur of his opinions in politics, morals, and religion, had inspired her with such an ardent passion for him that she had resolved on abandoning her husband, her family, and her friends, with a view to linking her fortunes to those of Shelley.

Of this strange narrative, it will be sufficient to say here that not the slightest allusion to it is to be found in any of the family documents.

The Shelleys stayed a month at Milan; and, after visiting the Lake of Como, proceeded to Leghorn, where they became acquainted with Mrs. Gisborne, a lady who had formerly been a most intimate friend of Mary Wollstonecraft (Mrs. Shelley's mother). The thoughtful character and amiable disposition of this lady seem to have bound the whole party in ties of friendship, which continued unbroken till the end.

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At the Baths of Lucca, where the poet and his wife next went, Rosalind and Helen, begun at Marlow, was finished, at the request of Mrs. Shelley. Thence, in August, Shelley visited Venice; and, circumstances rendering it advisable that he should remain near at hand for a few weeks, he resided during that time at a villa which Lord Byron rented at Este, and which was kindly placed at his disposal. Here he was joined by his family, and here also more than one literary work was prosecuted. I Capuccini (such was the name of the residence) is described by Mrs. Shelley as a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious houses. It was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill at the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk a Pergola, as it is called in Italian -led from the hall-door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began the Prometheus; and here also, as he mentions in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo. A slight ravine, with a road in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient