, through
his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well.
He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than
conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by
what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.
The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the
churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in 1815.
He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in the
open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in tracing the
Thames to its source. He never spent a season more tranquilly than the
summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a severe pulmonary attack;
the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near Windsor Forest; and his
life was spent under its shades or on the water, meditating subjects for
verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at extending his political
doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in prose essays to the
people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but he had now begun to
feel that the time for action was not ripe in England, and that the pen
was the only instrument wherewith to prepare the way for better things.

In the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the
books that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814
and 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod,
Theocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes
Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero, a
large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton's
poems, Wordsworth's "Excursion", Southey's "Madoc" and "Thalaba", Locke
"On the Human Understanding", Bacon's "Novum Organum". In Italian,
Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the "Reveries d'un Solitaire" of
Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travel. He read
few novels.

NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

Shelley wrote little during this year. The poem entitled "The Sunset"
was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at
Bishopsgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva.
The "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was conceived during his voyage round
the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage by
reading the "Nouvelle Heloise" for the first time. The reading it on the
very spot where the scenes are laid added to the interest; and he was at
o