Shelley and his family—­including for the most part Miss Clairmont—­wandered about a good deal in Italy.  They were in Milan, Leghorn, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice and its neighbourhood, Rome, Naples, Florence, Pisa, the Bagni di Pisa, and finally (after Shelley had gone to Ravenna by himself) in a lonely house named Casa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, on the Bay of Spezzia.  Their two children died; but in 1819 another was born, the Sir Percy Florence Shelley who lived on till November 1889.  They were often isolated or even solitary.  Among their interesting acquaintances at one place or another were, besides Byron, Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne (the latter had previously been Mrs. Reveley, and had been sought in marriage by Godwin after the death of Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797); the Contessina Emilia Viviani, celebrated in Shelley’s poem of Epipsychidion; Captain Medwin, Shelley’s cousin and schoolfellow; the Greek Prince, Alexander Mavrocordato; Lieutenant and Mrs. Williams, who joined them at Casa Magni; and Edward John Trelawny, an adventurous and daring sea-rover, who afterwards accompanied Byron to Greece.

It was only towards the summer of 1819 that Shelley read the Endymion.  He wrote of it thus in a letter to his publisher, Mr. Ollier, September 6, 1819.  ’I have read ...  Keats’s poem....  Much praise is due to me for having read it, the author’s intention appearing to be that no person should possibly get to the end of it.  Yet it is full of some of the highest and the finest gleams of poetry:  indeed, everything seems to be viewed by the mind of a poet which is described in it.  I think, if he had printed about fifty pages of fragments from it, I should have been led to admire Keats as a poet more than I ought—­of which there is now no danger.’  Shelley regarded the Hymn to Pan, in the first Book of Endymion, as affording ‘the surest promise of ultimate excellence.’

The health of Keats having broken down, and consumption having set in, Shelley wrote to him from Pisa urging him to come over to Italy as his guest.  Keats did not however go to Pisa, but, along with the young painter Joseph Severn, to Naples, and thence to Rome.  I here subjoin Shelley’s letter.

’Pisa—­27 July, 1820.

’MY DEAR KEATS,

’I hear with great pain the dangerous accident you have undergone [recurrence of blood-spitting from the lungs], and Mr. Gisborne, who gives me the account of it, adds that you continue to wear a consumptive appearance.  This consumption is a disease particularly fond of people who write such good verses as you have done, and with the assistance of an English winter, it can often indulge its selection.  I do not think that young and amiable poets are bound to gratify its taste:  they have entered into no bond with the Muses to that effect.  But seriously (for I am joking on what I am very anxious about) I think you would do well to pass the winter in Italy, and avoid