radiance in which he robed his subtle imaginings. The practical, acute, clear mind of Godwin could not live, with any comfort to itself, in this region of ethereal, though sublime, magnificence: neither his temperament nor his intellectual habits fitted him for deriving any high degree of pleasure from a practice so opposed to his own. But Shelley has helped to make the times more poetical; and the flame-like energy and grandeur, the tumultuous passion, and the strange visionary beauty of the Revolt of Islam are now universally acknowledged.

In the same year, Shelley also wrote the highly mystical fragments of Prince Athanase-fragments, however, full of beauty and music; a large part of Rosalind and Helen; a few small poems; and a pamphlet advocating Parliamentary Reform, published under the signature of the "Hermit of Marlow." This political work is remarkable for the statesmanlike calmness of the writer's opinions, and the moderation of his demands. Shelley here proposed that committees should be formed with a view to polling the entire people on the subject which was then, as now, agitating the whole nation. He disavowed any wish to establish universal suffrage at once, or to do away with monarchy and aristocracy, while so large a proportion of the people remained disqualified by ignorance from sharing in the government of the country, though he looked forward to a time when the world would be enabled to "disregard the symbols of its childhood;" and he suggested that the qualification for the suffrage should be the

registry of the voter's name as one who paid a certain small sum in direct taxes. Such were the views of a political thinker who was equally removed from being a Tory or a demagogue.

At the end of this year (1817), a relapse of the severe attack of ophthalmia, caught from his visits to the poor cottagers in his neighbourhood, deprived Shelley of his usual resource of reading. In looking over the journal in which, from day to day, Mrs. Shelley was in the habit of noting their occupations, as well as passing events, one is struck with wonder at the number of books which they read in the course of the year. At home or travelling-before breakfast, or waiting for the mid-day meal-by the side of a stream, or on the ascent of a mountain- -a book was never absent from the hands of one or the other: and there were never two books; one read while the other listened. 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.

The

LIST OF BOOKS READ BY SHELLEY AND MARY IN 1817.

Symposium of Plato.

Plays of Eschylus.

Plays of Sophocles.
Iliad of Homer.

Arriani Historia India.

Homer's Hymns.

Histoire de la Révolution
Française.

Apuleius.
Greek.

Metamorphoses-Latin.

Coleridge's Biographia Lite

raria.

CHAPTER VIII.

ITALY: 1818.

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. The general 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 for ever, 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.

Come with me, thou delightful child!
Come with me! Though the wave is wild
And the winds are loose, we must not stay,
Or the slaves of law may rend thee away.

*

Rest, rest! shriek not, thou gentle child !—
The rocking of the boat thou fearest,
And the cold spray and the clamour wild?
There, sit between us two, thou dearest,—

Me and thy mother. Well we know
The storm at which thou tremblest so,
With all its dark and hungry graves,
Less cruel than the savage slaves

Who hunt thee o'er these sheltering waves.

This hour will in thy memory

Be a dream of days forgotten:

We soon shall dwell by the azure sea

Of serene and golden Italy,

Or Greece, the Mother of the Free.
And I will teach thine infant tongue
To call upon their heroes old

In their own language, and will mould

Thy growing spirit in the flame

Of Grecian lore; that by such name,

A patriot's birthright thou mayst claim.

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