During the year 1817 we were established at Marlow in Buckinghamshire.  Shelley’s choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no great distance from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames.  The poem was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is distinguished for peculiar beauty.  The chalk hills break into cliffs that overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech; the wilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant vegetation; and the cultivated part is peculiarly fertile.  With all this wealth of Nature which, either in the form of gentlemen’s parks or soil dedicated to agriculture, flourishes around, Marlow was inhabited (I hope it is altered now) by a very poor population.  The women are lacemakers, and lose their health by sedentary labour, for which they were very ill paid.  The Poor-laws ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates.  The changes produced by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with them the most heart-rending evils to the poor.  Shelley afforded what alleviation he could.  In the winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the poor cottages.  I mention these things,—­for this minute and active sympathy with his fellow-creatures gives a thousandfold interest to his speculations, and stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race.

The poem, bold in its opinions and uncompromising in their expression, met with many censurers, not only among those who allow of no virtue but such as supports the cause they espouse, but even among those whose opinions were similar to his own.  I extract a portion of a letter written in answer to one of these friends.  It best details the impulses of Shelley’s mind, and his motives:  it was written with entire unreserve; and is therefore a precious monument of his own opinion of his powers, of the purity of his designs, and the ardour with which he clung, in adversity and through the valley of the shadow of death, to views from which he believed the permanent happiness of mankind must eventually spring.

’Marlowe, December 11, 1817.

’I have read and considered all that you say about my general powers, and the particular instance of the poem in which I have attempted to develop them.  Nothing can be more satisfactory to me than the interest which your admonitions express.  But I think you are mistaken in some points with regard to the peculiar nature of my powers, whatever be their amount.  I listened with deference and self-suspicion to your censures of “The Revolt of Islam”; but the productions of mine which you commend hold a very low place in my own esteem; and this reassures me, in some degree at least.  The poem was produced by a series of thoughts which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm.  I felt the