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love him. I shall have no peace of mind until you bring him here. You remember, sister, I said his young face had lines of care and sorrow on it-when he was showing us the road to Rome on the map and the sun shone on it ;-poor boy! Oh, tell us about his wife,--is she worthy of him? She must love him dearly-and so must all who know him."

To palliate the warm-hearted lady's admiration of the Poet —as well as my own-I must observe, that all on knowing him sang the same song; and as I have before observed, even Byron in his most moody and cynical vein, joined in the chorus, echoing my monotonous notes. The reason was, that after having heard or read the rancorous abuse heaped on Shelley by the mercenary literature of the day, in which he was described as a monster more hideous than Caliban,—the revulsion of feeling on seeing the man was sɔ great, that he seemed as gentle a spirit as Ariel. There never has been nor can be any true likeness of him. Desdemona says, I saw Othello's visage in his mind," and Shelley's "visage" as well as his mind are to be seen in his works.

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SHELLEY ON THE SAN SPIRIDIONE.

When I was at Leghorn with Shelley, I drew him towards the docks, saying,

"As we have a spare hour let's see if we can't put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." In these docks are living specimens of all the nationalities of the world; thus we can go round it, and visit and examine any particular nation we like, observing their peculiar habits, manners, dress, language, food, productions, arts, and naval architecture; for see how varied are the shapes, build, rigging, and decoration of the different vessels. There lies an English cutter, a French chasse marée, an American clipper, a Spanish tartan, an Austrian trabacolo, a Genoese felucca, a Sardinian zebeck, a Neapolitan brig, a Sicilian sparanza, a Dutch galleot, a Danish snow, a Russian hermaphrodite, a Turkish sackalever, a Greek bombard. I don't see a Persian Dow, an Arab grab, or a Chinese junk; but there are enough for our purpose and to spare.

As you are writing a poem, 'Hellas,' about the modern Greeks, would it not be as well to take a look at them amidst all the din of the docks? I hear their shrill nasal voices, and should like to know if you can trace in the language or lineaments of these Greeks of the nineteenth century, A. D., the faintest resemblance to the lofty and sublime spirits who lived in the fourth century, B. C. An English merchant who has dealings with them, told me he thought these modern Greeks were, if judged by their actions, a cross between the Jews and gypsies; —but here comes the Capitano Zarita; I know him."

So dragging Shelley with me I introduced him, and asking to see the vessel, we crossed the plank from the quay and stood on the deck of The San Spiridione in the midst of her chattering irascible crew. They took little heed of the skipper, for in these trading vessels each individual of the crew is part owner, and has some share in the cargo; so they are all interested in the speculation-having no wages. They squatted about the decks in small knots, shrieking, gesticulating, smoking, eating, and gambling like savages.

“Does this realize your idea of Hellenism, Shelley?” I said. "No! but it does of Hell," he replied.

The captain insisted on giving us pipes and coffee in his cabin, so I dragged Shelley down. Over the rudder-head facing us, there was a gilt box enshrining a flaming gaudy daub of a saint, with a lamp burning before it; this was Il Padre Santo Spiridione, the ship's godfather. The skipper crossed himself and squatted on the dirty divan. Shelley talked to him about the Greek revolution that was taking place, but from its interrupting trade the captain was opposed to it.

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Come away!" said Shelley. "There is not a drop of the old Hellenic blood here. These are not the men to rekindle the ancient Greek fire; their souls are extinguished by traffic and superstition. Come away!"—and away we went.

SHELLEY AND THE AMERICAN MATE.

"It is but a step," I said, " from these ruins of worn-out Greece to the New World, let's board the American clipper."

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I had rather not have any more of my hopes and illusions mocked by sad realities," said Shelley.

"You must allow," I answered, "that graceful craft was designed by a man who had a poet's feeling for things beautiful; let's get a model and build a boat like her."

The idea so pleased the Poet that he followed me on board her. The Americans are a social, free-and-easy people, accustomed to take their own way, and to readily yield the same privilege to all others, so that our coming on board, and examination of the vessel, fore and aft, were not considered as intrusion. The captain was on shore, so I talked to the mate, a smart specimen of a Yankee. When I commended her beauty, he said,

"I do expect, now we have our new copper on, she has a look of the brass sarpent, she has as slick a run, and her bearings are just where they should be."

I said we wished to build a boat after her model.

"Then I calculate you must go to Baltimore or Boston to get one; there is no one on this side the water can do the job. We have our freight all ready, and are homeward-bound; we have elegant accommodation, and you will be across before your young friend's beard is ripe for a razor. Come down, and take an observation of the state cabin."

It was about seven and a half feet by five; "plenty of room to live or die comfortably in," he observed, and then pressed us to have a chaw of real old Virginian cake, i. e. tobacco, and a cool drink of peach brandy. I made some observation to him about the Greek vessel we had visited.

"Crank as an eggshell,” he said; “too many sticks and top hamper, she looks like a bundle of chips going to hell to be burnt."

I seduced Shelley into drinking a wine-glass of weak grog, the first and last he ever drank. The Yankee would not let us go until we had drunk, under the star-spangled banner, to the memory of Washington, and the prosperity of the American commonwealth.

"As a warrior and statesman," said Shelley, "he was right

eous in all he did, unlike all who lived before or since; he never used his power but for the benefit of his fellow creatures,

'He fought,

For truth and wisdom, foremost of the brave;

Him glory's idle glances dazzled not;

'Twas his ambition, generous and great,

A life to life's great end to consecrate.'

Stranger," said the Yankee, "truer words were never spoken; there is dry rot in all the main timbers of the Old World, and none of you will do any good till you are docked, refitted, and annexed to the New. You must log that song you sang; there ain't many Britishers that will say as much of the man that whipped them; so just set these lines down in the log, or it won't go for nothing."

Shelley wrote some verses in the book, but not those he had quoted; and so we parted.

SHELLEY AND HIS LITERARY BRETHREN.

Like many other over-sensitive people, he thought everybody shunned him, whereas it was he who stood aloof. To the few who sought his acquaintance, he was frank, cordial, and, if they appeared worthy, friendly in the extreme; but he shrank like a maiden from making the first advances. At the beginning of his literary life, he believed all authors published their opinions as he did his from a deep conviction of their truth and importance, after due investigation. When a new work appeared, on any subject that interested him, he would write to the authors expressing his opinion of their books, and giving his reasons for his judgment, always arguing logically, and not for display; and, with his serene and imperturbable temper, variety of knowledge, tenacious memory, command of language, or rather of all the languages of literature, he was a most subtle critic; but, as authors are not the meekest or mildest of men, he occasionally met with rude rebuffs, and retired into his own shell.

In this way he became acquainted with Godwin, in early life ; and in his first work, “Queen Mab,” or rather in the notes appended to that poem, the old philosopher's influence on the beardless boy is strongly marked. For publishing these notes Shelley was punished as the man is stated to have been who committed the first murder: "every man's hand was against him." Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and others he had either written to, corresponded with, or personally known; but in their literary guild he found little sympathy; their enthusiasm had burnt out whilst Shelley's had waxed stronger. Old Rothschild's sage maxim perhaps influenced them, “ Never connect yourself with an unlucky man.” However that may be, all intercourse had long ceased between Shelley and any of the literary fraternity of the day, with the exception of Peacock, Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the Brothers Smith, of the “Rejected Addresses."

RESOLVES TO BUILD A BOAT.

I will now return to our drive home from visiting the ships in the docks of Leghorn. Shelley was in high glee, and full of fun, as he generally was after these "distractions,” as he called them. The fact was his excessive mental labor impeded, if it did not paralyze, his bodily functions. When his mind was fixed on a subject, his mental powers were strained to the utmost. If not writing or sleeping, he was reading; he read whilst eating, walking, or travelling-the last thing at night, and the first thing in the morning-not the ephemeral literature of the day, which requires little or no thought, but the works of the old sages, metaphysicians, logicians, and philosophers, of the Grecian and Roman poets, and of modern scientific men, so that anything that could diversify or relax his overstrained brain was of the utmost benefit to him. Now he talked of nothing but ships, sailors, and the sea; and, although he agreed with Johnson that a man who made a pun would pick a pocket, yet he made several in Greek, which he at least thought good, for he shrieked with laughter as he uttered them. Fearing his phil-Hellenism would end by making him serious, as it always

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