elves
to me with microscopic distinctness. Towards evening I sink into a state
of lethargy and inanimation, and often remain for hours on the sofa
between sleep and waking, a prey to the most painful irritability of
thought. Such, with little intermission, is my condition. The hours
devoted to study are selected with vigilant caution from among these
periods of endurance. It is not for this that I think of travelling to
Italy, even if I knew that Italy would relieve me. But I have
experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and although at present it has
passed away without any considerable vestige of its existence, yet this
symptom sufficiently shows the true nature of my disease to be
consumptive. It is to my advantage that this malady is in its nature
slow, and, if one is sufficiently alive to its advances, is susceptible
of cure from a warm climate. In the event of its assuming any decided
shape, IT WOULD BE MY DUTY to go to Italy without delay. It is not mere
health, but life, that I should seek, and that not for my own sake--I
feel I am capable of trampling on all such weakness; but for the sake of
those to whom my life may be a source of happiness, utility, security,
and honour, and to some of whom my death might be all that is the
reverse.'

In almost every respect his journey to Italy was advantageous. He left
behind friends to whom he was attached; but cares of a thousand kinds,
many springing from his lavish generosity, crowded round him in his
native country, and, except the society of one or two friends, he had no
compensation. The climate caused him to consume half his existence in
helpless suffering. His dearest pleasure, the free enjoyment of the
scenes of Nature, was marred by the same circumstance.

He went direct to Italy, avoiding even Paris, and did not make any pause
till he arrived at Milan. The first aspect of Italy enchanted Shelley;
it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter
heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive
letters during the first year of his residence in Italy, which, as
compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show how truly he
appreciated and studied the wonders of Nature and Art in that divine
land.

The poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power and
with more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He meditated three
subjects as the groundwork for lyrical dramas. One was the story of
Tasso;