himself from the storms and disappointments, the pain and sorrow, that
beset his life.

No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were
torn from him. In his first resentment against the Chancellor, on the
passing of the decree, he had written a curse, in which there breathes,
besides haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father's love,
which could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the consequences.

At one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had
said some words that seemed to intimate that Shelley should not be
permitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment he feared
that our infant son would be torn from us. He did not hesitate to
resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon country, fortune, everything,
and to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas
addressed to this son, whom afterwards we lost at Rome, written under
the idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to
preserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not
written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the
spontaneous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and woes, and
was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the uncontrollable
emotions of his heart. I ought to observe that the fourth verse of this
effusion is introduced in "Rosalind and Helen". When afterwards this
child died at Rome, he wrote, a propos of the English burying-ground in
that city: 'This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the
yearnings of a parent's heart are now prophetic; he is rendered immortal
by love, as his memory is by death. My beloved child lies buried here. I
envy death the body far less than the oppressors the minds of those whom
they have torn from me. The one can only kill the body, the other
crushes the affections.'

NOTE ON POEMS OF 1818, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

We often hear of persons disappointed by a first visit to Italy. This
was not Shelley's case. The aspect of its nature, its sunny sky, its
majestic storms, of the luxuriant vegetation of the country, and the
noble marble-built cities, enchanted him. The sight of the works of art
was full enjoyment and wonder. He had not studied pictures or statues
before; he now did so with the eye of taste, that referred not to the
rules of schools, but to those of Nature and truth. The first entrance
to Rome opened to him a scene of remains of antique gr