To say that parental affection was not powerful in Shelley is not to raise a question respecting his general elevation of character, for the mere strength and activity of the parental sentiment afford no data for estimating the degree in which a man is endowed with the higher virtues. The mean and selfish often delight in their children, and on the other hand the humane and lofty-natured are sometimes by no means remarkable for solicitude for their own offspring. Why then am I at so much pains to call attention to the evidence that Shelley was not strongly interested in his first-born child, and that in this particular Harriett resembled him? In order that, whilst considering the circumstances which resulted in the poet’s separation from his wife, the reader may remember there is no reason for thinking the youthful couple were strongly influenced by the affection, that so often draws a husband and wife into stronger sympathy, and sometimes counteracts the forces that, but for it, would drive them asunder. It was probably before Harriett’s accouchement, and whilst her physical condition, without disposing her to keep indoors, rendered bodily exercise more and more trying to her, that Shelley gave his wife the carriage which afforded Hogg the materials for one of his drollest anecdotes. How the carriage was horsed, and in what way the occupant of lodgings procured the servants needful for putting the vehicle on the London pavement, does not appear. Probably the requisite men and animals were provided on credit by the keeper of the livery-yard where the carriage was housed. It is, however, certain that, instead of being ‘jobbed,’ the vehicle was bought by Shelley of a coach-maker, who had not parted with the coach many weeks when he sued his customer for its price, one of the consequences of the tradesman’s efforts to get his money being that Hogg, through the blundering of a brace of bailiffs, was momentarily arrested on the writ issued for his friend’s apprehension. The coach-builder’s action shows clearly that, in selling the carriage to Shelley, he imagined himself selling it to a customer of legal age. It does not, however, follow that Shelley made any misstatement of his years in order to get possession of the vehicle. On buying the carriage, it was, of course, incumbent on him to let the tradesman know he was dealing with a minor; and it is conceivable that Shelley either spoke to the man in terms which should have enlightened him on this point, or had reason for believing the tradesman knew him to be under age. Had Shelley been heir to an estate, into the actual possession of which he would come a few months later, the purchase of the coach would have been no act of egregious imprudence, but as the estate to which he might eventually succeed would not come to him till the death of his father, the poet’s action in setting up his carriage, when he was deeply in debt, and had no income apart from the