The destination of the travellers was Keswick.  Here they engaged lodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house.  Probably Shelley was attracted to the lake country as much by the celebrated men who lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, and the cheapness of its accommodation.  He had long entertained an admiration for Southey’s poetry, and was now beginning to study Wordsworth and Coleridge.  But if he hoped for much companionship with the literary lions of the lakes, he was disappointed.  Coleridge was absent, and missed making his acquaintance—­a circumstance he afterwards regretted, saying that he could have been more useful to the young poet and metaphysician than Southey.  De Quincey, though he writes ambiguously upon this point, does not seem to have met Shelley.  Wordsworth paid him no attention; and though he saw a good deal of Southey, this intimacy changed Shelley’s early liking for the man and poet into absolute contempt.  It was not likely that the cold methodical student, the mechanical versifier, and the political turncoat, who had outlived all his earlier illusions, should retain the good-will of such an Ariel as Shelley, in whose brain “Queen Mab” was already simmering.  Life at Keswick began to be monotonous.  It was, however, enlivened by a visit to the Duke of Norfolk’s seat, Greystoke.  Shelley spent his last guinea on the trip; but though the ladies of his family enjoyed the honour of some days passed in ducal hospitalities, the visit was not fruitful of results.  The Duke at this time kindly did his best, but without success, to bring about a reconciliation between his old friend, the member for Horsham, and his rebellious son.

Another important incident of the Keswick residence was Shelley’s letter to William Godwin, whose work on Political Justice he had studied with unbounded admiration.  He never spoke of this book without respect in after-life, affirming that the perusal of it had turned his attention from romances to questions of public utility.  The earliest letter dated to Godwin from Keswick, January 3, 1812, is in many respects remarkable, and not the least so as a specimen of self-delineation.  He entreats Godwin to become his guide, philosopher, and friend, urging that “if desire for universal happiness has any claim upon your preference,” if persecution and injustice suffered in the cause of philanthropy and truth may commend a young man to William Godwin’s regard, he is not unworthy of this honour.  We who have learned to know the flawless purity of Shelley’s aspirations, can refrain from smiling at the big generalities of this epistle.  Words which to men made callous by long contact with the world, ring false and wake suspicion, were for Shelley but the natural expression of his most abiding mood.  Yet Godwin may be pardoned if he wished to know more in detail of the youth, who sought to cast himself upon his care in all the panoply of phrases about philanthropy and universal happiness.