again, varied by the flying journey to Edinburgh, and a last visit paid in strictest secrecy to his mother and sisters, at Field Place, of which a very interesting record is left in the narrative of Mr. Kennedy, occupied the interval between July, 1813, and March, 1814.  The period was not productive of literary masterpieces.  We only hear of a “Refutation of Deism”, a dialogue between Eusebes and Theosophus, which attacked all forms of Theistic belief.

Since we are now approaching the gravest crisis in Shelley’s life, it behoves us to be more than usually careful in considering his circumstances at this epoch.  His home had become cold and dull.  Harriet did not love her child, and spent her time in a great measure with her Mount Street relations.  Eliza was a source of continual irritation, and the Westbrook family did its best, by interference and suggestion, to refrigerate the poet’s feelings for his wife.  On the other hand he found among the Boinville set exactly that high-flown, enthusiastic, sentimental atmosphere which suited his idealizing temper.  Two extracts from a letter written to Hogg upon the 16th of March, 1814, speak more eloquently than any analysis, and will place before the reader the antagonism which had sprung up in Shelley’s mind between his own home and the circle of his new friends:—­“I have been staying with Mrs. B—­ for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself.  They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life.  I have felt myself translated to a paradise, which has nothing of mortality but its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the view of that necessity, which will quickly divide me from the delightful tranquillity of this happy home,—­for it has become my home.  The trees, the bridge, the minutest objects, have already a place in my affections.”

“Eliza is still with us—­not here!—­but will be with me when the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart.  I am now but little inclined to contest this point.  I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul.  It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy.  I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable wretch.  But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm, that cannot see to sting.”

While divided in this way between a home which had become distasteful to him, and a house where he found scope for his most romantic outpourings of sensibility, Shelley fell suddenly and passionately in love with Godwin’s daughter, Mary.  Peacock, who lived in close intimacy with him at this period, must deliver his testimony as to the overwhelming nature of the new attachment:—­“Nothing that I ever read in tale or history could present a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, uncontrollable