suffered so much from what has been written on Shelley by those who had not the capacity of understanding his character, and were utterly ignorant of the circumstances which shaped his life, that I cannot refrain from expressing our heartfelt thanks and gratitude for the comfort and pleasure we have had in reading your paper.” And later: “It is a great happiness to me to know, in my old age, that when I am gone there will be some one left to do battle for the truth against those whose nature prevents them from seeing in Shelley’s beautiful unselfish love and kindness anything but evil.” The Shelley Society, founded by Dr. F. J. Furnivall in 1886, had the support of a large number of the poet’s admirers, among whom were Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Mr. Stopford Brooke, Mr. Buxton Forman, Mr. Hermann Vezin, Dr. John Todhunter, Mr. F. S. Ellis, Mr. Stanley Little, and Mr. Bernard Shaw; and much useful work was done in the way of meetings and discussions, the publication of essays on Shelley, and facsimile reprints of some of his rarer volumes, thus throwing new light, biographical or bibliographical, on many doubtful questions. I will refer only to one of these, in which I was myself concerned, a study of “Julian and Maddalo,” which I read at a meeting in 1888, and which was subsequently printed in the _Shelley Society’s Papers_ and reissued as a pamphlet. Its object was to make clear what had been overlooked by Dowden, Rossetti, and the chief authorities, though hinted at by one or two writers, viz. that the story of “the maniac” (in “Julian and Maddalo”) was not, as generally supposed, a mere fanciful interpolation, but a piece of poetical autobiography, a veiled record of Shelley’s own feelings at the time of his separation from Harriet. On this point Dr. Furnivall wrote to me (April 16, 1888): “Robert Browning says he has always held the main part of your view, from the first publication of ‘Julian and Maddalo,’ but you must not push it into detail. I had a long talk with him last night.” The greatest single achievement of the Shelley Society was the staging of _The Cenci_ at the Islington Theatre, in 1886. The performance was technically a private one, as the Licenser of Plays had refused his sanction; but great public interest was aroused, and the acting of Mr. Hermann Vezin as Count Cenci, and of Miss Alma Murray as Beatrice--“the poetic actress without a rival” was Browning’s description of her--made the event one which no lover of Shelley could forget. If the Society had done nothing else than this, its existence would still have been justified.