and water-birds from the chain of stagnant pools which impeded my progress.

With no landmarks to guide me, nor sky to be seen above, I was bewildered in this wilderness of pines and ponds; so I sat down, struck a light, and smoked a cigar. A red man would have known his course by the trees themselves, their growth, form, and color; or if a footstep had passed that day, he would have hit upon its trail. As I mused upon his sagacity and my own stupidity, the braying of a brother jackass startled me. He was followed by an old man picking up pine cones. I asked him if he had seen a stranger?

"L'Inglese malincolico haunts the woods maledetta. I will show you his nest."

As we advanced, the ground swelled into mounds and hollows. By-and-by the old fellow pointed with his stick to a hat, books, and loose papers lying about, and then to a deep pool of dark glimmering water, saying, "Eccolo!" "Eccolo!" I thought he meant that Shelley was in or under the water. The careless, not to say impatient, way in which the Poet bore his burden of life, caused a vague dread amongst his family and friends that he might lose or cast it away at any moment.

The strong light streamed through the opening of the trees. One of the pines, undermined by the water, had fallen into it. Under its lee, and nearly hidden, sat the Poet, gazing on the dark mirror beneath, so lost in his bardish reverie that he did not hear my approach. There the trees were stunted and bent, and their crowns were shorn like friars by the sea breezes, excepting a cluster of three, under which Shelley's traps were lying; these overtopped the rest. To avoid startling the Poet out of his dream, I squatted under the lofty trees, and opened his books. One was a volume of his favorite Greek dramatist, Sophocles, the same that I found in his pocket after his death-and the other was a volume of Shakspeare. I then hailed him, and, turning his head, he answered faintly,

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Hollo, come in."

"Is this your study?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered, "and these trees are my books-they

tell no lies. You are sitting on the stool of inspiration,” he exclaimed. "In those three pines the weird sisters are imprisoned, and this," pointing to the water, "is their cauldron of black broth. The Pythian priestesses uttered their oracles from below-now they are muttered from above. Listen to the solemn music in the pine-tops-don't you hear the mournful murmurings of the sea? Sometimes they rave and roar, shriek and howl, like a rabble of priests. In a tempest, when a ship sinks, they catch the despairing groans of the drowning mariners. Their chorus is the eternal wailing of wretched men."

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66 They, like the world," I observed, seem to take no note of wretched women. The sighs and wailing you talk about are not those of wretched men afar off, but are breathed by a woman near at hand—not from the pine-tops, but by a forsaken lady."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Why, that an hour or two ago I left your wife, Mary Shelley, at the entrance of this grove, in despair at not finding you."

He started up, snatched up his scattered books, and papers, thrust them into his hat and jacket pockets, sighing "Poor Mary! hers is a sad fate. Come along; she can't bear solitude, nor I society-the quick coupled with the dead.”

He glided along with his usual swiftness, for nothing could make him pause for an instant when he had an object in view, until he had attained it. On hearing our voices, Mrs. Shelley joined us; her clear gray eyes and thoughtful brow expressing the love she could not speak. To stop Shelley's self-reproaches, or to hide her own emotions, she began in a bantering tone, chiding and coaxing him :

:

"What a wild-goose you are, Percy; if my thoughts have strayed from my book, it was to the opera, and my new dress from Florence-and especially the ivy wreath so much admired for my hair, and not to you, you silly fellow ! When I left home, my satin slippers had not arrived. These are serious matters to gentlewomen, enough to ruffle the serenest tempered. As to you and your ungallant companion, I had forgotten that

such things are; but as it is the ridiculous custom to have men at balls and operas, I must take you with me, though, from your uncouth ways, you will be taken for Valentine and he for Orson."

Shelley, like other students, would, when the spell that bound his faculties was broken, shut his books, and indulge in the wildest flights of mirth and folly. As this is a sport all can join in, we talked and laughed, and shrieked, and shouted, as we emerged from under the shadows of the melancholy pines and their nodding plumes, into the now cool purple twilight and open country. The cheerful and graceful peasant girls, returning home from the vineyards and olive groves, stopped to look at us. The old man I had met in the morning gathering pine cones, passed hurriedly by with his donkey, giving Shelley a wide berth, and evidently thinking that the melancholy Englishman had now become a raving maniac. Sancho says, "Blessings on the man who invented sleep ;" the man who invented laughing deserves no less.

The day I found Shelley in the pine forest, he was writing verses on a guitar. I picked up a fragment, but could only make out the first two lines:

"Ariel, to Miranda take

This slave of music."

It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most “admired disorder;" it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks; such a dashed off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered,

66 When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt a drawing. If you ask me why I publish what few or none will care to read, it is that the spirits I have raised haunt me until they are sent to the

devil of a printer. All authors are anxious to breech their bantlings."

SHELLEY'S DRAMATIC ASPIRATIONS.

One day I drove the Poet to Leghorn. In answer to my questions, Shelley said, “In writing the Cenci my object was to see how I could succeed in describing passions I have never felt, and to tell the most dreadful story in pure and refined language. The image of Beatrice haunted me after seeing her portrait. The story is well authenticated, and the details far more horrible than I have painted them. The Cenci is a work of art; it is not colored by my feelings, nor obscured by my metaphysics. I don't think much of it. It gave me less trouble than anything I have written of the same length.

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"I am now writing a play for the stage. It is affectation to say we write a play for any other purpose. The subject is from English history; in style and manner I shall approach as near our great dramatist as my feeble powers will permit. King Lear is my model, for that is nearly perfect. I am amazed at my presumption. Poets should be modest. My audacity savors of madness.

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Considering the labor requisite to excel in composition, I think it would be better to stick to one style. The clamor for novelty is leading us all astray. Yet, at Ravenna, I urged Byron to come out of the dismal wood of error' into the sun, to write something new and cheerful. Don Juan is the result. The poetry is superior to Childe Harold, and the plan, or rather want of plan, gives scope to his astonishing natural powers.

"My friends say my Prometheus is too wild, ideal, and perplexed with imagery. It may be so. It has no resemblance to the Greek Drama. It is original; and cost me severe mental labor. Authors, like mothers, prefer the children who have given them most trouble, Milton preferred his Paradise Regained, Petrarch his Africa, and Byron his Doge of Venice.

"I have the vanity to write only for poetical minds, and

must be satisfied with few readers. Byron is ambitious; he writes for all, and all read his works.

"With regard to the great question, the System of the Universe, I have no curiosity on the subject. I am content to see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil; I have no fears and some hopes. In our present gross material state our faculties are clouded ;-when Death removes our clay coverings the mystery will be solved."

He thought a play founded on Shakspeare's "Timon " would be an excellent mode of discussing our present social and political evils dramatically, and of descanting on them.

HOW SHELLEY IMPRESSED STRANGERS.

After we had done our business, I called on a Scotch family and lured my companion in. He abhorred forcing himself on strangers- -so I did not mention his name, merely observing, 66 As you said you wanted information about Italy, here is a friend of mine can give it you-for I cannot."

The ladies-for there was no man there were capital specimens of Scotchwomen, fresh from the land of cakes,-frank, fair, intelligent, and of course, pious. After a long and earnest talk we left them, but not without difficulty, so pressing were they for us to stop to dinner.

When I next visited them, they were disappointed at the absence of my companion; and when I told them it was Shelley, the young and handsome mother clasped her hands, and exclaimed,

"Shelley! That bright-eyed youth ;-so gentle, so intelligent-so thoughtful for us. Oh, why did you not name him?"

"Because he thought you would have been shocked."

"Shocked!—why I would have knelt to him in penitence for having wronged him even in my thoughts. If he is not pure and good-then there is no truth and goodness in this world. His looks reminded me of my own blessed baby,--so innocent-so full of love and sweetness."

"So is the serpent that tempted Eve described," I said.

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Oh, you wicked scoffer! she continued. "But I know you