The story (known to every one) proceeds to tell how in her alarm at the words, the thrilling accents in which they were delivered, and the dolefully maniacal visage of their utterer, the poor old woman screamed to the guard to open the door and allow her to escape from the company of the raving lunatic, who wanted her to join with him in talking about kings and their deaths in so disloyal a fashion; and how, on the door being opened, she cleared herself out of the coach, with her basket of mellow apples and her other basket of onions. There are several versions of this equally piquant and doubtful story. To believe everything in Leigh Hunt’s _Autobiography_, is to believe that the farce was originally enacted, to the poor woman’s terror, in his presence _in_ ‘the Hampstead stage,’ as he and Shelley were travelling by that vehicle into town. But even if it could be proved that he had no part in the conception of the story, or in the incidents out of which it grew, the fiction would be fitly given as an example of the kind of humour that was acceptable to, perhaps, the least humorous of our supremely great poets; for Shelley told the story so often _of_ himself, that he eventually believed it as thoroughly as any of his numerous fictions about himself. Whilst Shelley was living in lodgings, and dating some of his letters from Cooke’s Hotel, Dover Street, he met his father at least on one occasion in society. The poet and Harriett were lodging in Half-Moon Street, when, on coming there to dine with them by invitation, Hogg was received by Harriett with excuses for the absence of her husband, who was dining at Norfolk House. Having called in the morning at the house, to pay his respects to the Duke, he was asked to return a few hours later to a dinner party. Considerations of prudence having made him accept the invitation Bysshe had gone to the dinner, leaving word that he would get away from the great people at Norfolk House as soon as possible. In Bysshe’s absence, therefore, Hogg dined with Harriett, who was reading aloud to him over the tea-cups when, after much vehement rapping at the street door, Shelley rushed into the room, ‘tumbling upstairs, with a mighty sound, treading upon his nose, as I accused him of doing, and throwing off his neckcloth, according to custom, stood staring about for some moments, as wondering why he had been in such a hurry.’ At the Norfolk House dinner (a large party of men) Percy, sitting at the bottom of the table, found himself next the Earl of Oxford, who (according to Bysshe’s account of the affair) inquired of him, ‘Who is that very strange old man at the top of the table, sitting next his Grace, who talks so much, so loudly, and in so extraordinary a manner, and all about himself?’ ‘He is my father, and he is a very strange old man indeed!’ replied Shelley, who, on coming away from Norfolk House, was accompanied to the door of his lodgings by the Earl.