amphlet, _An Address to the Irish
People_, he stood in the balcony of his lodgings in Lower Sackville
Street, and threw copies to the passers-by. "I stand," he wrote at the
time, "at the balcony of our window, and watch till I see a man _who looks
likely_; I throw a book to him." Harriet, it is to be feared, saw only the
comic side of the adventure. Writing to Elizabeth Hitchener--"the Brown
Demon," as Shelley called her when he came to hate her--she said:

I'm sure you would laugh were you to see us give the pamphlets. We
throw them out of the window, and give them to men that we pass in
the streets. For myself, I am ready to die of laughter when it is
done, and Percy looks so grave. Yesterday he put one into a woman's
hood and cloak. She knew nothing of it, and we passed her. I could
hardly get on: my muscles were so irritated.

Shelley, none the less, was in regard to Ireland a wiser politician than
the politicians, and he was indulging in no turgid or fanciful prose in
his _Address_ when he described the Act of Union as "the most successful
engine that England ever wielded over the misery of fallen Ireland."
Godwin, with whom Shelley had been corresponding for some time, now became
alarmed at his disciple's reckless daring. "Shelley, you are preparing a
scene of blood!" he wrote to him in his anxiety. It is evidence of the
extent of Godwin's influence over Shelley that the latter withdrew his
Irish publications and returned to England, having spent about six weeks
on his mission to the Irish people.

Mr. Ingpen has really written a new biography of Shelley rather than a
compilation of new material. The new documents incorporated in the book
were discovered by the successors to Mr. William Whitton, the Shelleys'
family solicitor, but they can hardly be said to add much to our knowledge
of the facts about Shelley. They prove, however, that his marriage to
Harriet Westbrook took place in a Presbyterian church in Edinburgh, and
that, at a later period, he was twice arrested for debt. Mr. Ingpen holds
that they also prove that Shelley "appeared on the boards of the Windsor
Theatre as an actor in Shakespearean drama." But we have only William
Whitton, the solicitor's words for this, and it is clear that he had been
at no pains to investigate the matter. "It was mentioned to me yesterday,"
he wrote to Shelley's father in November, 1815, "that Mr. P.B. Shelley was
exhibiting himself on the Windsor s