and the laying out of the grounds. I had almost daily letters from him or Mary. He was the first to tell me of Harriet's death, asking whether I thought it would become him to interpose any delay before marrying Mary. I gave him my opinion that, as they were living together, the sooner they legalized their connection the better. He acted on this opinion, and shortly after his marriage he came to me at Marlow. We went together to see the progress of his house and grounds. I recollect a little scene which took place on this occasion. There was on the lawn a very fine old widespreading holly. The gardener had cut it up into a bare pole, selling the lop for Christmas decorations. As soon as Shelley saw it, he asked the gardener, "What had possessed him to ruin that beautiful tree?" The gardener said, he thought he had improved its appearance. Shelley said: "It is impossible that you can be such a fool." The culprit stood twiddling his thumbs along the seams of his trousers, receiving a fulminating denunciation, which ended in his peremptory dismissal. A better man was engaged with several assistants, to make an extensive plantation of shrubs. Shelley stayed with me two or three days. I never saw him more calm and self-possessed. Nothing disturbed his serenity but the unfortunate holly. Subsequently, the feeling for Harriet's death grew into a deep and abiding sorrow: but it was not in the beginning that it was felt most strongly.

It is not merely as a work of art that the Revolt of Islam must be considered. It had made its first appearance under the title of Laon and Cythna, but Laon and Cythna was still more outspoken as to certain matters than the Revolt of Islam, and was almost immediately withdrawn from circulation, to appear with alterations under its present name. There is something not quite worthy of Shelley in this transaction. On the one hand, merely prudential reasons, mere dread of public indignation, ought not to have induced him to conceal opinions which for the interest of humanity he thought it his duty to promulgate. But those who knew most of Shelley will be least inclined to attribute to him such a motive as this. On the other hand, if good feeling induced him to abstain from printing what he knew must be painful to the great majority of his countrymen, the second version should have been suppressed as well as the first."-Pp. 314, 315.

Shelley was not influenced by either of the motives supposed. Mr. Ollier positively refused to publish the poem as it was, and Shelley had no hope of another publisher. He for a long time refused to alter a line: but his friends finally

prevailed on him to submit. Still he could not, or would not, sit down by himself to alter it, and the whole of the alterations were actually made in successive sittings of what I may call a literary committee. He contested the proposed alterations step by step: in the end, sometimes adopting, more frequently modifying, never originating, and always insisting that his poem was spoiled.

UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

S

[Reprinted from Fraser's Magazine, for March, 1860.]

FROM ITALY-1818 TO 1822.

|HELLEY wrote to me many letters from Italy-scarcely less than fifty. Of these, thirteen were published by Mrs. Shelley, and I now publish seventeen more. These are all I can find, and are perhaps all that contain anything of general interest.

I have from time to time thought of printing these letters, but I have always hesitated between two opposite disinclinations on the one hand to omit the passages which show my friend's kind feelings towards me, and on the other, to bring myself personally before the public. But as these passages, especially those relating to Nightmare Abbey (in which he took to himself the character of Scythrop), are really illustrative of his affectionate, candid, and ingenuous character, I have finally determined not to suppress them.

We were for some time in the habit of numbering our letters. The two first in the following series were numbered 6 and 7, and the third 16. Of the letters preceding No. 6, Mrs. Shelley published four; and of those between Nos. 7 and 16 she published six, leaving a deficiency of three, of which I can give no account. No. 16 was the last numbered letter, so that I have no clue to my subsequent losses.

In his letter to me from Naples, dated January 26th, 1819, (published by Mrs. Shelley), he said: "In my accounts of pictures and things, I am more pleased to interest you than the many; and this is fortunate, because in the first place I have no idea of attempting the latter, and if I did attempt it, I should assuredly fail. A perception of the beautiful

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characterizes those who differ from ordinary men, and those who can perceive it would not buy enough to pay the printer. Besides, I keep no journal, and the only records of my voyage will be the letters I send you."

The letter from Naples, dated February 25th, 1819, is the last I can find unpublished; and that from Rome, June 5th, 1819, published by Mrs. Shelley, was probably the last of his beautiful descriptive letters to me.

Of the cessation of his wanderings, and consequently of his descriptions, I have spoken in my last paper. There is something to the point in one of the following letters: "Livorno, June, 1819.-I do not as usual send you an account of my journey, for I had neither the health nor the spirit to take notes."

Bagni di Lucca, July 25th, 181S.

MY DEAR PEACOCK,-I received on the same day your letters marked 5 and 6, the one directed to Pisa, and the other to Livorno, and I can assure you they are most welcome visitors.

Our life here is as unvaried by any external events as if we were at Marlow, where a sail up the river or a journey to London makes an epoch. Since I last wrote to you, I have ridden over to Lucca, once with C., and once alone; and we have been over to the Cassino, where I cannot say there is anything remarkable, the women being far removed from anything which the most liberal annotator would interpret into beauty or grace, and apparently possessing no intellectual excellences to compensate the deficiency. I assure you it is well that it is so, for the dances, especially the waltz, are so exquisitely beautiful that it would be a little dangerous to the newly unfrozen senses and imaginations of us migrators from the neighbourhood of the pole. As it is-except in the dark there can be no peril. The atmosphere here, unlike that of the rest of Italy, is diversified with clouds, which grow in the middle of the day, and sometimes bring thunder and lightning, and hail about the size of a pigeon's egg, and decrease towards the evening, leaving only those finely woven webs of vapour which we see in English skies, and flocks of fleecy and slowly moving clouds, which all vanish before sunset; and the nights are for ever serene, and we see a star in the east at sunset-I think it is Jupiter-almost as fine as Venus was last summer; but it wants a certain silver and

aërial radiance, and soft yet piercing splendour, which belongs, I suppose, to the latter planet by virtue of its at once divine and female nature. I have forgotten to ask the ladies if Jupiter produces on them the same effect. I take great delight in watching the changes of the atmosphere. In the evening, Mary and I often take a ride, for horses are cheap in this country. In the middle of the day, I bathe in a pool or fountain, formed in the middle of the forests by a torrent. It is surrounded on all sides by precipitous rocks, and the waterfall of the stream which forms it falls into it on one side with perpetual dashing. Close to it, on the top of the rocks, are alders, and above the great chestnut-trees, whose long and pointed leaves pierce the deep blue sky in strong relief. The water of this pool, which, to venture an unrythmical paraphrase, is "sixteen feet long and ten feet wide," is as transparent as the air, so that the stones and sand at the bottom seem, as it were, trembling in the light of noonday. It is exceedingly cold also. My custom is to undress and sit on the rocks, reading Herodotus, until the perspiration has subsided, and then to leap from the edge of the rock into this fountain -a practice in the hot weather excessively refreshing. This torrent is composed, as it were, of a succession of pools and waterfalls, up which I sometimes amuse myself by climbing when I bathe, and receiving the spray over all my body, whilst I clamber up the moist crags with difficulty.

I have lately found myself totally incapable of original composition. I employed my mornings, therefore, in translating the Symposium, which I accomplished in ten days. Mary is now transcribing it, and I am writing a prefatory essay. I have been reading scarcely anything but Greek, and a little Italian poetry with Mary. We have finished Ariosto together -a thing I could not have done again alone.

Frankenstein seems to have been well received; for although the unfriendly criticism of the Quarterly is an evil for it, yet it proves that it is read in some considerable degree, and it would be difficult for them, with any appearance of fairness, to deny it merit altogether. Their notice of me, and their exposure of their true motives for not noticing my book, shows how well understood an hostility must subsist between me and them.

The news of the result of the elections, especially that of the metropolis, is highly inspiriting. I received a letter, of

two days' later date, with yours, which announced the unfortunate termination of that of Westmoreland. I wish you had sent me some of the overflowing villany of those apostates. What a pitiful wretch that Wordsworth! That such a man should be such a poet! I can compare him with no one but Simonides, that flatterer of the Sicilian tyrants, and at the same time the most natural and tender of lyric poets.

What pleasure would it have given me if the wings of imagination could have divided the space which divides us, and I could have been of your party. I have seen nothing so beautiful as Virginia Water in its kind. And my thoughts for ever cling to Windsor Forest, and the copses of Marlow, like the clouds which hang upon the woods of the mountains, low trailing, and though they pass away, leave their best dew when they themselves have faded. You tell me that you have finished Nightmare Abbey. I hope that you have given the enemy no quarter. Remember, it is a sacred war. We have found an excellent quotation in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. I will transcribe it, as I do not think you have these plays at Marlow.

“Matthew. Oh, it's your only fine humour, sir. Your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit, sir. I am melancholy myself divers times, sir; and then do I no more but take pen and paper presently, and overflow you half a score or a dozen of sonnets at a sitting.

"Ed. Knowell. Sure he utters them by the gross.

"Stephen. Truly, sir; and I love such things out of mea

sure.

"Ed. Knowell. I' faith, better than in measure, I'll undertake.

"Matthew. Why, I pray you, sir, make use of my study; it's at your service.

"Stephen. I thank you, sir; I shall be bold, I warrant you. Have you a stool there to be melancholy upon ?”—Every Man in his Humour, Act 3, scene i.

The last expression would not make a bad motto.*

*

Bagni di Lucca, Aug. 16th, 1818.

MY DEAR PEACOCK,-No new event has been added to my life since I wrote last: at least none which might not

I adopted this passage as a second motto, omitting E. Knowell's interlocutions.