To separate Shelley as far as possible from what he necessarily regards as an awkward and humiliating affair, Mr. Garnett has recourse to a representation which, instead of according with the probabilities of the case, is discountenanced by several facts. 'It was but too clear,' says the author of _Shelley in Pall Mall_, 'that Shelley's colleague, doubtless under the compulsion of the poet's impetuous solicitations for more verses, had appropriated whatever came first to hand, with slight respect for pedantic considerations of _meum_ and _tuum_.' What evidence could Mr. Garnett produce that the pilfered matter was put into the book, not by Shelley but by his coadjutor? that the poet had pressed his coadjutor impetuously for more verses? that, in consequence of his impetuous solicitations for more verses, Shelley's coadjutor took verses out of a printed book, and palmed them off on him as verses of her own composition? What evidence could Mr. Garnett produce that Shelley was unaware that the volume of so-styled original verse contained poetry which had been 'appropriated ... with slight respect for pedantic considerations of _meum_ and _tuum_?' No evidence of any kind, over and beyond these words by the mendacious and rascally Stockdale:-- 'I fully anticipated the probable vexation of the juvenile maiden-author, when I communicated my discovery to Mr. P. B. Shelley. With all the ardour, incidental to his character, which embraces youthful honour in all its brilliancy, he expressed the warmest resentment at the imposition, practised upon him, by his coadjutor, and intreated me to destroy all the copies.' Of Stockdale's motives of self-interest and vindictiveness, in writing of Shelley in a laudatory style, something will be said by-and-by. For the present it is enough to remind the reader that the concoctor of the scandalous _Budget_ (1827) was writing from memory, more than sixteen years after the incidents to which he refers. That Shelley's coadjutor was spurred into wrongful action by 'the poet's impetuous solicitations for more verses,' is a touch of fiction for which we are indebted to Mr. Garnett's imagination.