"I met Murder on the way-- He had a mask like Castlereagh. Very smooth he looked, yet grim; Seven bloodhounds followed him. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clothed with the bible as with light, And the shadows of the night, Like Sidmouth next, Hypocrisy On a crocodile came by. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One fled past, a maniac maid, And her name was Hope, she said, But she looked more like Despair; And she cried out in the air: 'My father Time is weak and grey With waiting for a better day; See how idiot-like he stands, Fumbling with his palsied hands! 'He has had child after child, And the dust of death is piled Over every one but me-- Misery! oh Misery!'" It was not, however, only in bellicose lyrics that Shelley incorporated his political and social ideas and passions at this period. In the year 1818 he wrote two very characteristic narrative poems, _Julian and Maddalo_ and _Rosalind and Helen_. The first-mentioned gives a vivid description of the poet's life in Venice with Byron, and affords one of the many proofs of his noble and ardent admiration for Byron's poetry. It contains an account of a visit paid by the two friends to a lunatic asylum in the neighbourhood of Venice and describes the impression produced upon Shelley. The man "whose heart a stranger's tear might wear as water-drops the sandy fountain-stone," and who "could moan for woes which others hear not," could not but be deeply moved by compassion for the unfortunates who at that time were still kept in fetters and punished by flogging. We gain the best idea of the utter want of understanding of mental disease in those days, and the barbarity displayed in its treatment, from reading of the manner in which an insane patient of such rank as King George the Third was treated in 1798. The King's mental alienation displayed itself chiefly in excessive talkativeness; there was no inclination to any kind of violence. Nevertheless from the very beginning, and throughout the whole duration of the attack, he was kept in a strait-waistcoat, was closely confined, deprived of the use of knife and fork, and subjected to the whims of his pages, who knocked him about, struck him, and used abusive language to him. All this is known because the King retained a distinct remembrance after his recovery of what had happened during his illness. Shelley's gentleness and love of his fellow-men are evident in the plea which he, ignorant of the humaner treatment of the insane inaugurated in France during the Revolution, utters for these afflicted ones: "Methinks there were A cure of these with patience and kind care, If music thus can move."