Nearly the whole of the winter was spent in Naples, where Shelley suffered from depression of more than ordinary depth.  Mrs. Shelley attributed this gloom to the state of his health, but Medwin tells a strange story, which, if it is not wholly a romance, may better account for the poet’s melancholy.  He says that so far back as the year 1816, on the night before his departure from London, “a married lady, young, handsome, and of noble connexions,” came to him, avowed the passionate love she had conceived for him, and proposed that they should fly together. (Medwin’s Life of Shelley, volume 1 324.  His date, 1814, appears from the context to be a misprint.) He explained to her that his hand and heart had both been given irrevocably to another, and, after the expression of the most exalted sentiments on both sides, they parted.  She followed him, however, from place to place; and without intruding herself upon his notice, found some consolation in remaining near him.  Now she arrived at Naples; and at Naples she died.  The web of Shelley’s life was a wide one, and included more destinies than his own.  Godwin, as we have reason to believe, attributed the suicide of Fanny Imlay to her hopeless love for Shelley; and the tale of Harriet has already been told.  Therefore there is nothing absolutely improbable in Medwin’s story, especially when we remember what Hogg half-humorously tells us about Shelley’s attraction for women in London.  At any rate, the excessive wretchedness of the lyrics written at Naples can hardly be accounted for by the “constant and poignant physical sufferings” of which Mrs. Shelley speaks, since these were habitual with him.  She was herself, moreover under the impression that he was concealing something from her, and we know from her own words in another place that his “fear to wound the feelings of others” often impelled him to keep his deepest sorrows to himself. (Note on the Revolt of Islam.)

All this while his health was steadily improving.  The menace of consumption was removed; and though he suffered from severe attacks of pain in the side, the cause of this persistent malady does not seem to have been ascertained.  At Naples he was under treatment for disease of the liver.  Afterwards, his symptoms were ascribed to nephritis, and it is certain that his greater or less freedom from uneasiness varied with the quality of the water he drank.  He was, for instance, forced to eschew the drinking water of Ravenna, because it aggravated his symptoms; while Florence, for a similar reason, proved an unsuitable residence.  The final settlement of the Shelleys at Pisa seems to have been determined by the fact that the water of that place agreed with him.  That the spasms which from time to time attacked him were extremely serious, is abundantly proved by the testimony of those who lived with him at this period, and by his own letters.  Some relief was obtained by mesmerism, a remedy suggested by Medwin; but the obstinacy of the torment preyed upon his spirits to