The ever-memorable meetings of the reformers at the house of Newton, where Shelley was a constant guest, have been thus recorded by one of the biographers of the great poet:--“Shelley was intimate with the Newton family, and was converted by them in 1813, and he began then a strict vegetable diet. His intimate association with the amiable and accomplished votaries of a _Return to Nature_ was perhaps the most pleasing portion of his poetical, philosophical, and lovely life.... For some years I was in the thick of it; for I lived much with a select and most estimable society of persons (the Newtons), who had ‘returned to Nature,’ and I heard much discussion on the topic of vegetable diet. Certainly their vegetable dinners were delightful, elegant, and excellent repasts; flesh, fowl, fish, and ‘game’ never appeared--nor eggs nor butter _bodily_, but the two latter were admitted into cookery, but as sparingly as possible, and under protest, as not approved of and soon to be dispensed with. We had soups in great variety, that seemed the more delicate from the absence of flesh-meat. “There were vegetables of every kind, plainly stewed or scientifically disguised. Puddings, tarts, confections and sweets abounded. Cheese was excluded. Milk and cream might not be taken unreservedly, but they were allowed in puddings, and sparingly in tea. Fruits of every kind were welcomed. We luxuriated in tea and coffee, and sought variety occasionally in cocoa and chocolate. Bread and butter, and buttered toast were eschewed; but bread, cakes, and plain seed-cakes were liberally divided among the faithful.”[222] The cause of the publication of his book Newton thus states:-- “Having for many years been an habitual invalid, and having at length found that relief from regimen which I had long and vainly hoped for from drugs, I am anxious, from sympathy with those afflicted, to impart to others the knowledge of the benefit I have experienced, and to dispel, as far as in me lies, the prejudices under which I conceive mankind to labour on points so nearly connected with their health and happiness. “The particulars of my case I have already related at the concluding pages of Dr. Lambe’s _Reports on Cancer_. To the account there given I have little to add, but that, by continuing to confine myself to the regimen advised in that work, I continue to experience the same benefit; that the winter which has just elapsed has been passed much more comfortably than that which preceded it, and that, if my habitual disorder is not completely eradicated, it is so much subdued as to give but little inconvenience; that I have suffered but a single day’s confinement for several months; and, upon the whole, that I enjoy an existence which many might envy who consider themselves to be in full possession of the blessings of health.