“I send you the two notes, which will tell you the story I allude to of the Auto da Fe.  Shelley’s allusion to his ‘fellow-serpent’ is a buffoonery of mine.  Goethe’s Mephistofilus calls the serpent who tempted Eve ‘my aunt, the renowned snake;’ and I always insist that Shelley is nothing but one of her nephews, walking about on the tip of his tail.”

* * * * *

TO LORD BYRON.

     “Two o’clock, Tuesday Morning.

     “My dear Lord,

“Although strongly persuaded that the story must be either an entire fabrication, or so gross an exaggeration as to be nearly so; yet, in order to be able to discover the truth beyond all doubt, and to set your mind quite at rest, I have taken the determination to go myself to Lucca this morning.  Should it prove less false than I am convinced it is, I shall not fail to exert myself in every way that I can imagine may have any success.  Be assured of this.

     “Your Lordship’s most truly,

     “* *.

“P.S.  To prevent bavardage, I prefer going in person to sending my servant with a letter.  It is better for you to mention nothing (except, of course, to Shelley) of my excursion.  The person I visit there is one on whom I can have every dependence in every way, both as to authority and truth.”

* * * * *

TO LORD BYRON.

     “Thursday Morning.

     “My dear Lord Byron,

“I hear this morning that the design, which certainly had been in contemplation, of burning my fellow-serpent, has been abandoned, and that he has been condemned to the galleys.  Lord Guilford is at Leghorn; and as your courier applied to me to know whether he ought to leave your letter for him or not, I have thought it best since this information to tell him to take it back.

     “Ever faithfully yours,

     “P.B.  SHELLEY.”

* * * * *

LETTER 475.  TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.

     “Pisa, January 12. 1822.

     “My dear Sir Walter,

“I need not say how grateful I am for your letter, but I must own my ingratitude in not having written to you again long ago.  Since I left England (and it is not for all the usual term of transportation) I have scribbled to five hundred blockheads on business, &c. without difficulty, though with no great pleasure; and yet, with the notion of addressing you a hundred times in my head, and always in my heart, I have not done what I ought to have done.  I can only account for it on the same principle of tremulous anxiety with which one sometimes makes love to a beautiful woman of our own degree, with whom one is enamoured in good earnest; whereas, we attack a fresh-coloured housemaid without (I speak, of course, of earlier