During the time that the examination was taking place before the police, Lord Byron's house was beset by the dragoons belonging to Signor Major Masi's troop, who were on the point of forcing open the doors, but they were too well guarded within to dread the attack. Lord Byron, however, took his ride as usual two days after.

"It is not the first time," said he, "that my house has "been a bender, and may not be the last."

All Lord Byron's servants were banished from Pisa, and with them the Counts Gamba, father and son.

Lord Byron was himself advised to leave it; and as the Countess accompanied her father, he soon after joined them at Leghorn, and passed six weeks at Monte Nero. His return to Pisa was occasioned by a new persecution of the Gambas. An order was issued for them to leave the Tuscan States in four days; and on their embarkation for Genoa, the Countess and himself took up their residence (for the first time together) at the Lanfranchi palace where Leigh Hunt and his family had already arrived.

18th AUGUST, 1822. On the occasion of Shelley's melancholy fate I revisited Pisa, and on the day of my arrival. learnt that Lord Byron was gone to the sea-shore, to assist in performing the last offices to his friend.* We came to a spot marked by an old and withered trunk of a fir-tree; and near it, on the beach, stood a solitary hut covered with reeds. The situation was well calculated for a poet's

* It is hoped that the following memoir, as it relates to Lord Byron, may not be deemed misplaced here.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was removed from a private school at thirteen, and sent to Eton. He there shewed a character of great eccentricity, mixed in none of the amusements natural to his age, was of a melancholy and reserved disposition, fond of solitude, and made few friends. Neither did he distinguish himself much at Eton, for he had a great contempt for modern Latin verses, and his studies were directed to any thing rather than the exercises of his class. It was from an early acquaintance with German writers that he probably imbibed a romantic turn of mind; at least, we find him before fifteen publishing two Rosa-Matilda-like novels, called 'Justrozzi' and 'The Rosicrucian,' that bore no marks of being the productions of a boy, and were much talked of, and reprobated as immoral by the journalists of the day. He also made great progress in chemistry. He used to say, that nothing ever delighted him so much as the discovery that there

grave. A few weeks before I had ridden with him and Lord Byron to this very spot, which I afterwards visited

were no elements of earth, fire, or water: but before he left school he nearly lost his life by being blown up in one of his experiments, and gave up the pursuit. He now turned his mind to metaphysics, and became infected with the materialism of the French school. Even before he was sent to University College, Oxford, he had entered into an epistolary theological controversy with a dignitary of the Church, under the feigned name of a woman; and, after the second term, he printed a pamphlet with a most extravagant title, "The Necessity of Atheism.' This silly work, which was only a recapitulation of some of the arguments of Voltaire and the philosophers of the day, he had the madness to circulate among the bench of Bishops, not even disguising his name. The consequence was an obvious one:-he was summoned before the heads of the College, and, refusing to retract his opinions, on the contrary preparing to argue them with the examining Masters, was expelled the University. This disgrace in itself affected Shelley but little at the time, but was fatal to all his hopes of happiness and prospects in life; for it deprived him of his first love, and was the eventual means of alienating him for ever from his family. For some weeks after this expulsion his father refused to receive him under his roof; and when he did, treated him with such marked coldness, that he soon quitted what he no longer considered his home, went to London privately, and

more than once. In front was a magnificent extent of the blue and windless Mediterranean, with the Isles of Elba

thence eloped to Gretna Green with a Miss Westbrook,-their united ages amounting to thirty-three. This last act exasperated his father to such a degree, that he now broke off all communication with Shelley. After some stay in Edinburgh, we trace him into Ireland; and, that country being in a disturbed state, find him publishing a pamphlet, which had a great sale, and the object of which was to soothe the minds of the people, telling them that moderate firmness, and not open rebellion, would most tend to conciliate, and to give them their liberties.

He also spoke at some of their public meetings with great fluency and eloquence. Returning to England the latter end of 1812, and being at that time an admirer of Mr. Southey's poems, he paid a visit to the Lakes, where himself and his wife passed several days, at Keswick. He now became devoted to poetry, and after imbuing himself with "The Age of Reason,' 'Spinosa,' and 'The Political Justice,' composed his Queen Mab,' and presented it to most of the literary characters of the day-among the rest to Lord Byron, who speaks of it in his note to The Two Foscari' thus:-"I shewed it to Mr.

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Sotheby as a poem of great power and imagination. I never wrote a line of the Notes, nor ever saw them except in their published "form. No one knows better than the real author, that his opinions

and Gorgona,-Lord Byron's yacht at anchor in the offing: on the other side an almost boundless extent of sandy

"and mine differ materially upon the metaphysical portion of that "work; though, in common with all who are not blinded by baseness " and bigotry, I highly admire the poetry of that and his other produc "tions." It is to be remarked here, that 'Queen Mab' eight or ten years afterwards fell into the hands of a knavish bookseller, who published it on his own account; and on its publication and subsequent prosecution Shelley disclaimed the opinions contained in that work, as being the crude notions of his youth.

His marriage, by which he had two children, soon turned out (as might have been expected) an unhappy one, and a separation ensuing in 1816, he went abroad, and passed the summer of that year in Switzerland, where the scenery of that romantic country tended to make Nature a passion and an enjoyment; and at Geneva he formed a friendship for Lord Byron, which was destined to last for life. It has been said that the perfection of every thing Lord Byron wrote at Diodati, (his Third Canto of Childe Harold,' his 'Manfred,' and 'Prisoner of Chillon,') owed something to the critical judgment that Shelley exercised over those works, and to his dosing him (as he used to say) with Wordsworth. In the autumn of this year we find the subject of this Memoir at Como, where he wrote 'Rosalind and Helen,' an eclogue, and an ode to the

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