and especially Byron’s way in speaking of Shelley.  It is not probable that Shelley formed to himself any such idea of his own power; yet you will find hints at it in his letters, you will see, curious traces of it in the letters of others, and nothing else will fully explain the change in Byron’s life.  Moreover, it reconciles the apparent inconsistencies of Shelley’s reservations in talking about Byron with his manifest and practical confidence in the result of their joint working.

When I met Shelley again in Italy, it was easy to see that a grand change had come over his appearance and condition.  The Southern climate had suited him, and the boat which caused his death had in the mean while been instrumental in developing his life.  His retirement from painful personal conflict had given him greater ease; intercourse with Mary had made his life better; and, not to overlook one important fact, he had grown since he left England.  For physiologists attest the truth, that growth continues throughout human existence, even until after decay begins; and Shelley’s constitution was of that kind—­strong in some of its developments, slow in others—­which needed longer time than many to arrive at its full proportions.  For instance, in the interval since I had seen him his chest had manifestly become of a larger girth.  I am speaking only upon distant recollection; but I should judge it to have been three or four inches larger round, or perhaps more.  His voice was stronger, his manner more confident and downright, and, although not less emphatic, yet decidedly less impulsively changeful.  I can recall his reading from an ancient author, translating as he went, a passage about the making of the first man; and I remember it from the subject and from the easy flow of his translation, but chiefly from the air of strength and cheerfulness which I noticed in his voice and manner.  In nothing, however, does Shelley appear to me to have been so misdescribed as in the outward man,—­partly, as usual, from overstatement of peculiarities, and partly because each artist has painted the portrait from his own favorite view.  Many, through exaggeration, or imperfect knowledge, have equally misconstrued his moral character, and have omitted to report the real conduct of his understanding as he advanced towards “the middle of the way of life.”

From the story of his life after I first saw him, as well as from many things that I have heard him say of his family, and the strange recollections that he had of home, it is easy to understand the general tenor of his early life.  Through some caprice in genealogical chemistry, in Percy the Shelley race struck out an entirely new idea:  an apparent caprice in the sequence of houses that has often been noticed.  For how often may we observe that the union of the most remarkable intellects produces a tertium quid which is the reverse of an equivalent to the combined totals, representing only a fraction