with the conversation amongst
literary men, I had really been able to understand something of his
position, insomuch that no doubt he saw the intense interest I took in
himself and his sufferings.

The emotions that he underwent were but too manifest in the
unconcealed anxiety and the eager recital of newly awakened hopes,
with intervals of the deepest depression. He suffered also from
physical causes, which I then only in part understood. This suffering
was traced to the attack made upon him at Tanyralt, in Wales, when, on
the night of February the 26th, 1813, some man who had been prowling
about the house in which he lived first fired at him through the
window, and then entered the room, escaping when the man-servant was
called in by the tumult and the screams of Mrs. Shelley. The whole
incident has been doubted,--why, I can hardly understand, unless the
reason is that some of the conjectures in which Mrs. Shelley indulged
were over-imaginative. She mentions by name a political opponent who
had said that "he would drive them out of the country." My own weak
recollections point to reasons more personal. But what I do know is,
that Shelley himself ascribed the injury from which he suffered to
a pressure of the assassin's knee upon him in the struggle. The
complaint was of long standing; the attacks were alarmingly severe,
and the seizure very sudden. I can remember one day at Hampstead: it
was soon after breakfast, and Shelley sat reading, when he suddenly
threw up his book and hands, and fell back, the chair sliding sharply
from under him, and he poured forth shrieks, loud and continuous,
stamping his feet madly on the ground. My father rushed to him, and,
while the women looked out for the usual remedies of cold water and
hand-rubbing, applied a strong pressure to his side, kneading it with
his hands; and the patient seemed gradually to be relieved by that
process. This happened about the time when he was most anxious for the
result of the trial which was to deprive him of his children. In
the intervals he sought relief in reading, in conversation,--which
especially turned upon classic literature,--in freedom of thought and
action, and in play with the children of the house. I can remember
well one day when we were both for some long time engaged in gambols,
broken off by my terror at his screwing up his long and curling
hair into a horn, and approaching me with rampant paws and frightful
gestures as some imaginative