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ment. His master, having done what he could to lighten Dan's sufferings in prison, hastily left the Lynmouth cottage, and took refuge in the little town of Tremadoc in the county of Carnarvon. Here for a time Shelley was much interested in the fortunes of the great embankment, designed to rescue a tract of land from the sea. He attempted to collect funds to carry on the undertaking, contributed himself out of all proportion to his means, and visited London in order to solicit further subscriptions. In London (October 1812) he saw Godwin face to face for the first time, and the impression on each side was favourable. He renewed his friendship with Hogg; finally broke with his once worshipped, now detested, Miss Hitchener; and added to the circle of his acquaintances the agreeable family of Mr. Newton, whose zeal on behalf of vegetarianism commended him to Shelley. During the winter in Wales he exerted himself generously on behalf of the suffering poor; he studied the philosophers of the French illumination, and, under Godwin's advice, endeavoured to gain some real acquaintance with history, added to his store of manuscript poems, and prepared for publication a series of extracts from the Bible which were selected with a view to set forth a pure morality unencumbered by what Shelley held to be biblical mythology. On the night of 26th February 1813 the lonely house of Tanyrallt, which the Shelleys occupied, was entered by some villain bent on outrage. Alarmed by the noise Shelley descended, pistols in hand, from his bedroom. Shots were fired and an encounter took place, which ended in the escape of the marauder. Attempts have been made to discredit the story of this adventure. There do not appear to be sufficient grounds for disbelief, but we may perhaps accept the theory that Shelley's overwrought nerves played tricks upon him after the attack, and that the alleged later attempt at assassination on the same night was a delusion of the brain.

On a second visit to Ireland Shelley travelled as far south as Killarney and Cork. In April he was again in London, where in June 1813 his first child, a girl, named Ianthe, was born. "He was extremely fond of his child," says Peacock, "and would walk up and down a room with it in his arms for a long time together, singing to it a monotonous melody of his own making." When Harriet had recovered, she and her husband moved to Bracknell in Berkshire, attracted thither by the presence of Mrs. Boinville (sister-in-law of the vegetarian Newton) and her young married daughter Cornelia Turner. These new friends were cultivated, refined, enthusiastic, perhaps somewhat sentimental. With Cornelia as his fellow-student Shelley made progress in Ariosto, Tasso, Petrarch. It would have been a time of great enjoyment but that pecuniary troubles disturbed him; debts had accumulated, and he

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was forced to raise money at ruinous interest by post-obit bonds. October he left Bracknell, wandered northwards to the English lakes, and thence proceeded to Edinburgh. But his stay in Scotland was not for long. Before the close of the year he was settled in a furnished house at Windsor, in the midst of his schoolboy haunts and at no great distance from Bracknell, where the Boinvilles still resided. For a time he occupied himself in writing the dialogue published in 1814 with the title "A Refutation of Deism," in which it is his aim to demonstrate that no via media can be found between Christianity and Atheism.

In order to raise money it was necessary to place beyond all doubt the legitimacy of any son and heir who might be born to Shelley; doubts were probably raised as to the validity of the Scotch wedding; and accordingly on 24th March 1814 Shelley went through the ceremony of marriage with Harriet according to the rites of the Church of England. But before this event his domestic happiness had been grievously clouded. Whatever intellectual and spiritual sympathy at any time existed between him and his young wife had now ceased to exist. She aspired to a more fashionable life than he could endure; her expenditure on dress, silverplate, and a carriage plunged him deeper in debt, when debt had become a misery and a degradation. Eliza Westbrook had grown an intolerable presence in the household, and yet Eliza Westbrook was for ever at hand. Shelley was urgent that Harriet should nurse her child, and Harriet insisted on hiring a wet-nurse. At length the managing elder sister withdrew, but Harriet maintained after her departure a hard and cold bearing as of one who had suffered wrong. Shelley sought for some imperfect consolation in the friendship of Mrs. Boinville and Mrs. Turner. In May he implored for a reconciliation, but without effect. Harriet quitted her home and went to reside in Bath, while her husband took refuge in London.

With characteristic generosity he was at this time endeavouring to succour Godwin who had pressing need of a large sum of money. In May or June Shelley first looked with interest on Mary, the daughter of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. She had just returned from a visit to Scotland—a girl in her seventeenth year, with golden hair, a pale, pure face, great forehead, and earnest eyes of hazel. She was vigorous of intellect, possessed of much mental courage, and much firmness of will, united with sensibility and ardour of heart. The second Mrs. Godwin had made Mary's home unhappy. She and Shelley drew towards each other in what at first seemed to be friendship, but quickly proved itself love. At the same time-if we may trust a statement of Mrs. Godwin's daughter, Claire Clairmont-Shelley had not only come to believe that Harriet had ceased to love him; he declared his belief

that she had proved faithless to him, and had formed a connection with an Irish officer named Ryan. There is no proof that Shelley had evidence sufficient to support this charge, and Harriet herself asserted her fidelity. Her assertion is supported by Thornton Hunt, Hookham, Hogg, and others. But Godwin stated in 1817 that he knew from unquestionable authority, wholly unconnected with Shelley, that Harriet had proved unfaithful to her husband before their separation. We can readily suppose that Shelley might persuade himself of what was not the fact. He wrote to Harriet begging her to come to London. On her arrival (14th July) he told her that he could no longer regard her as his wife; that his heart was given to Mary Godwin; but that he would continue, as far as might be, to watch over her interests. The shock and agitation of Shelley's disclosure brought an illness on Harriet, during which Eliza Westbrook was in constant attendance, and Shelley besought the sufferer to return to life and health. But his resolution to part from her remained unchanged. Having made arrangements for Harriet's material comfort, he prepared, without the knowledge of Godwin or his wife, for flight with Mary. On the morning of 28th July 1814 the fugitives were on their way to France. They had persuaded Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Godwin's wife by a previous marriage, to be their companion. An idealised record of Shelley's days of misery with Harriet is probably to be found in the confessions of the madhouseprisoner of "Julian and Maddalo." A less obscure narrative of the causes of estrangement is given with altered names in Mrs. Shelley's novel of Lodore.

Crossing from Dover to Calais in an open boat, the runaways made for Paris, and having there procured money, they travelled, Shelley on foot, Mary or Claire on muleback, towards Switzerland. From Troyes Shelley wrote to Harriet a letter which would be incomprehensible if coming from any other writer, in which he expressed a hope that she would follow them, and reside under his care in their immediate neighbourhood. On reaching Brunnen on the Lake of Lucerne, the wanderers engaged rooms, but apprehending a difficulty of obtaining supplies at so great a distance from England, they hastily turned homewards, descended the Rhine as far as Cologne, and after an absence of six weeks reached London in the middle of September.

The months in London between mid-September and January 1815 were months of trial and vexation. Godwin was estranged; the intercourse with Harriet, who in November gave birth to Shelley's second child, a son, was of a troubled kind; there were sore straits for money, and during some days Shelley, while hiding from creditors, was parted from Mary. But the opening month of 1815 altered his circumstances.

On 6th January his grandfather died, and Shelley became the immediate heir to a great property. By parting with his interest in a portion of the estates to his father, he secured an annual income of one thousand pounds, and also received a considerable sum for the payment of his debts. Unhappily, at the same time that his worldly goods increased, his health in some degree failed. In the summer he wandered through Devon, and early in August found a happy resting-place at Bishopsgate on the borders of Windsor Park. Accompanied by Mary and his friend Peacock, he spent some delightful days in a river excursion up the Thames as far as Lechlade, of which we have a memorial in one of the early lyrical pieces. On his return home he composed in the glades of Windsor Great Park the poem which first proves that his genius had attained to adult years, his "Alastor." It is, in its inmost sense, a pleading on behalf of human love-that love which he had himself sought and found; it is a rebuke to the man of genius-the seeker for beauty and the seeker for truth—who would live apart from human sympathy; yet the fate of the solitary idealist, Shelley tells us, is less mournful than that of one who should fatten in apathy, “instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition." The poem is a record, marvellously exalted, of his experiences of the past year, his thoughts of love and death, and the impressions derived from external nature amid Swiss lake and mountain, on the arrowy Reuss, among the rock-guarded passes of the Rhine, and in presence of the autumnal glories of Windsor Forest.

In January 1816 Mary gave birth to a boy, named William after her father. Still Godwin maintained his attitude of alienation from Shelley, though he deigned to accept liberal gifts of money. At length Shelley grew indignant, yet was not the less zealous in rendering Godwin what aid he could. It seemed that Mary and he would be happier in any other country than in England, where kinsfolk and former friends averted their faces in anger or in shame. Accordingly, it was decided that trial should be made of a residence abroad; there would be a compensation in the diminished cost of living for the loss of English fields and skies. In the early days of May 1816 Shelley, with Mary, little William, and Claire Clairmont, was en route for Geneva by way of Paris.

Of Byron's intrigue with Miss Clairmont, Shelley and Mary, when they started from England, were in profound ignorance. But it was with a view of meeting Byron that Claire had been urgent with Shelley to take her abroad. At Sécheron, a small suburb of Geneva, the two great poets met. When Shelley moved into occupation of a cottage on the opposite side of the lake, and Byron took refuge from an importunate public at the Villa Diodati, they were in constant communi

cation. They rowed or sailed together, and towards the close of June, circumnavigated the lake, during which excursion "The Prisoner of Chillon" was written. With Mary for his companion, Shelley visited Chamouni. The feelings with which Swiss scenery inspired him may be read in the poem "Mont Blanc," and the noble "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." Mary also was moved to imaginative creation, and now conceived the design of her tale of Frankenstein, undertaken in fulfilment of an agreement that each of the friends-herself, Byron, Shelley, and the young physician, Polidori-should produce a ghoststory. Notwithstanding the delights of Switzerland, the hearts of Shelley and Mary turned longingly towards England. Before quitting Geneva they had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of M. G. Lewis, the celebrated author of The Monk, a book which Shelley, as a boy, had read with eager enjoyment. Early in September their feet were once more on English soil.

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But it seemed as if they had returned only to encounter calamity. On 9th October Mary's half-sister, Fanny, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, who had been for some time past in depressed spirits, put an end to her life by poison at an inn in Swansea. Alarmed by a desponding letter Shelley had hastened from Bath, where he was residing, to meet her, but arrived too late. The shock of excitement and grief was for a time disastrous to his health, and it was well for him that at this moment he found a friend of bright and courageous temper in Leigh Hunt. Disaster, however, followed on disaster. November Shelley was seeking to discover Harriet, who had disappeared from his ken and from the protection of her father. On 10th December her body was found in the Serpentine river. At first after the parting with Shelley she had hoped that he would return to her; when this hope faded away her unhappiness was great, she complained of the restraint to which she was subjected in her father's house, and already spoke of suicide. For some time before her death she had broken away from that restraint. Her daughter aged three, and her little boy of two years old, had been placed with a clergyman in Warwick. She herself lived openly for a time, Godwin tells a correspondent, with a certain colonel whom he names. Then she seems to have sunk lower, and to have been deserted. In informing Shelley of the terrible event, the bookseller, Hookham, mentions that had she lived a little longer she would have given birth to a child.1 The evidence at the coroner's inquest

1 When I wrote my Life of Shelley, I did not think it necessary to state some of the facts mentioned above, with the result that some critics, who did not take the trouble to examine The Times newspaper to which I referred, charged me with making false accusations against Harriet Shelley, whose faults I desired not to deny

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