honestly, though with a greater or less degree of inexactness. I do not question that Shelley spoke to him about the affair, and the passage of the Keswick letter; and I am disposed to think that, on being questioned about the passage of the epistle, Shelley may have imagined it to refer, and said that it referred, to some vaguely remembered matter, which instead of taking place in 1811 was an incident of his last visit to Field Place in 1813. Be it remembered that two distant cousins and close companions have several points of mental resemblance; one of them being the inexactitude that renders Medwin’s volumes so comparatively worthless, and Shelley’s soberest statements about his personal story so unreliable. It is conceivable that what Shelley said about his mother’s endeavour to lure him into signing a parchment-deed, was his vague and inexact recollection of some incident of his last visit to the old home. Of course, it is not to be imagined she produced a legal instrument and asked him to put his signature forthwith to the writing. But it is conceivable that, feeling with her husband on the question of entailing the estate, and knowing the purport of the memorable October, 1811, codicil of Sir Bysshe’s will (which would require her son to join in the entailment of the estates A and B on pain of forfeiting all interest in his grandsire’s much larger possessions) she undertook to use her influence to win from him a written promise, that he would in due course join in the arrangement, which was desired by his parents even more for his sake than for the sake of ‘the family.’ What more natural than for the lady to say to her husband, ‘Leave me to deal with Bysshe, and I will do my best to persuade him to act rightly’? In the autumn following this last visit to Field Place (if Lady Shelley is right in assigning the visit to the summer of 1813, which I think her to be), or the autumn preceding the same visit (if Hogg is right in ascribing the visit to the early summer of 1814), Shelley,--moving about for the sake of change, and also perhaps because domestic considerations made him feel it would be well for him to pass a few weeks at a distance from Maimuna’s abode,--made the already mentioned trip to Scotland and the Cumberland lakes, with his wife, Miss Westbrook, and Thomas Love Peacock. At Edinburgh on 21st October, 1813, the tourists were still there on 26th November, 1813, when Shelley wrote Hogg a letter containing six superlatively noteworthy words in this otherwise noteworthy sentence: ‘I am happy to hear that you have returned to London, as I shall shortly have the pleasure of seeing you again. _I shall return to London alone._ My evenings will often be spent at the N’s, where, I presume, you are no unfrequent visitor.’