as to put a strain on the most appreciative affection; and Harriet was not specially adapted, in character and intellect, to comprehend him. On the other side, the time was sure to come when Shelley would feel with exaggerated sensitiveness the difference between the real person and the ideal which he had conceived. Harriet was essentially commonplace, without extraordinary spiritual or mental endowments. As she grew to full maturity, as the pliancy and docility of girlhood passed away, she doubtless developed tastes and opinions little in harmony with her husband's unconventional views. Her patience must have been tried by his unpractical aims and by his neglect of those things which society about her deemed important. In 1813 Shelley made a purchase of plate and set up a carriage - certainly not of his own impulse. To intensify any divergencies of thought and feeling between husband and wife, there were the continued presence and influence of Eliza Westbrook. However she may have dissembled in the early days of their acquaintance, she had no natural interest or sympathy for Shelley's peculiar ways and opinions. She was not at all literary or intellectual in her tastes; her aims were commonplace; her character, mature and strong; her influence over her sister, great. Shelley now cordially detested his sisterin-law, and his dislike was intensified when he saw her in chief charge of the little Ianthe. Peacock says: "I have often thought that if Harriet had nursed her own child [contrary to the father's wishes, a wet-nurse was employed], and if this sister had not lived with them, the link of their married love would not have been so readily broken."

The sense of disparity between himself and his wife may have been quickened by the congenial female society which he now enjoyed among some new friends, the Newtons and Boinvilles. The circle into which he was thus introduced was composed of persons of an enthusiastic and

somewhat eccentric type. Mr. Newton was a strong vegetarian; to animal food and the drinking of undistilled water he ascribed most of the ills of humanity; he saw, too, profound meanings in the signs of the zodiac. His wife and Mrs. Boinville were sisters. To the latter Shelley was especially drawn. Recalling in 1819 the time of which we are now speaking, he wrote: "I could not help considering Mrs. Boinville, when I knew her, as the most admirable specimen of a human being I had ever seen. Nothing earthly ever appeared to me more perfect than her character and manners." She was an enthusiast for liberty, full of sensibility and intensity, of gracious and refined manners. Under her teaching and that of her married daughter, Cornelia Turner, Shelley began the study of Italian poetry. To the cynical and common-sense Hogg and Peacock, the absurdities of this circle were more apparent than its charms. "The greater part of her [Mrs. Boinville's] associates," says Hogg, "were odious. I generally found there two or three sentimental young butchers, an eminently philosophical tinker, and several very unsophisticated medical practitioners, or medical students, all of low origin and vulgar and offensive manners. They sighed, turned up their eyes, retailed philosophy, such as it was, and swore by William Godwin and Political Justice." During the summer of 1813 Shelley was much in the society of these people, having rented a cottage at Bracknell, where the Boinvilles were spending the summer months.

From Bracknell, Shelley, on the invitation of his mother, paid a clandestine visit to Field Place while his father was absent. There he met a young officer, Captain Kennedy, whose impressions of the poet are interesting: "His eyes were most expressive, his complexion beautifully fair, his features exquisitely fine; his hair was dark, and no particular attention to its arrangement was manifest. In per

son he was slender and gentlemanlike, but inclined to stoop; his gait was decidedly not military. The general appearance indicated great delicacy of constitution. One would pronounce of him that he was different from other men. There. was an earnestness in his manner and such perfect gentleness of breeding and freedom from everything artificial as charmed every one. I never met a man who so immediately won upon me. He reasoned and spoke like a perfect gentleman, and treated my arguments, boy as I was (I had lately completed my sixteenth year), with as much consideration and respect as if I had been his equal in ability and attainment." Shelley told Captain Kennedy that he owed everything to Godwin, "from whose book, Political Justice, he had derived all that was valuable in knowledge and virtue."

In the autumn of the same year, Shelley, in company with Harriet, Eliza, and Peacock, made a tour through the Lake country to Scotland. Under Peacock's influence he plunged deep into classical literature. The chief literary product of the year was a dialogue entitled A Refutation of Deism, which exhibits a great advance both in style and thought upon his earlier prose writings.

The year 1814 brought matters between Shelley and his Harriet to a crisis. The divergence in views and practice between husband and wife had probably been gradually widening. From Peacock's account, we gather that the latter had begun to laugh at Shelley's enthusiasms and at some of his friends. Hogg says that after the birth of her child she relinquished reading aloud. "Neither did she read much to herself; her studies, which had been so constant and exemplary, dwindled away to nothing, and Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them or to urge her, as of old, to devote herself to the cultivation of her mind. When I called upon her she proposed a walk, if

the weather was fine, instead of the vigorous and continuous readings of previous years. The walk commonly conducted us to some fashionable bonnet shop." And then there was Miss Westbrook. Shelley writes to Hogg, under date of March 16, 1814: "Eliza is still with us not here! - but will be with me when the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart [from the Boinville's, where he had been staying]. I am now little inclined to contest this point. I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror to see her caress my poor little Ìanthe, in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable wretch." Whatever may have been the state of his feelings, he certainly appears, in the spring of 1814, to have had no idea of the step which he was to take in two or three months, that of abandoning his marital relations with Harriet. This may be inferred, for example, from the fact that towards the end of March he, a second time, went through the ceremony of marriage with her. Professor Dowden suggests that the cause of this act may have been some doubts cast upon the validity of the Scotch rite in the course of negotiations with money-lenders in which he was at this time engaged. During the early part of the following summer Harriet was for a somewhat long period absent from her husband. The latter was, meanwhile, engaged in helping Godwin out of money difficulties, in which that sage was continually involved; and was in consequence repeatedly at Godwin's house. It was now that Mary Godwin first attracted his attention. She was in her seventeenth year, "with shapely golden head, a face very pale and pure, great forehead, earnest hazel eyes, and an expression at once of sensibility and firmness about her delicately curved lips." Her father

describes her at fifteen as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active in mind; her desire of knowledge is great and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." Between Shelley and her, a friendship sprang up, which quickly developed into mutual passion. Early in June, Shelley and Hogg called at Godwin's house. Godwin did not appear; but presently, Hogg narrates, "the door was partially and softly opened. A thrilling voice called 'Shelley!' A thrilling voice answered 'Mary!' And he darted out of the room like an arrow from the bow of the

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far-shooting king. A very young female, fair and fairhaired, pale indeed, and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at that time, had called him out of the room. He was absent a very short time, a minute or two,—and then returned.... 'Who was that, pray?' I asked; a daughter?' 'Yes.' 'A daughter of William Godwin?' The daughter of William and Mary.'1 This was the first time that I beheld a very distinguished lady, of whom I have much to say hereafter.” A month later, Harriet, who was still absent, became alarmed at the cessation, during four days, of Shelley's letters. She wrote to Hookham, the publisher, a friend of Shelley; he in turn communicated with Shelley and Godwin, and the suspicions of the latter seem to have been aroused. In response to a letter from Shelley, Harriet returned to London, July 14th. Shelley proposed a separation, and Harriet had a fit of illness in consequence. About this time occurred an interview between Shelley and Peacock, of which the latter

1 That is, Mary Wollstonecraft, the writer, the vindicator of the rights of women, and Godwin's first wife. The Godwin household was curiously complicated; besides Mary, there were an elder daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, by an American named Imlay, commonly known as Fanny Godwin; Jane Clairmont (usually called Claire) and her brother Charles, children of the second Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage; as well as children of Godwin and his second wife.