acting on emotional theories of liberty? Whilst he was having stolen interviews with his familiar friend’s sixteen-years-old daughter under the willow-tree, he had a remarkable conference with his friend Peacock, who, on coming from the country to London for the meeting, found the author of _Queen Mab_ in a state of extreme excitement. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair disheveled, his dress disordered; and whilst talking with extravagant energy he caught up a bottle of laudanum, saying vehemently as he clutched the vessel of poisonous drink, ‘I never part with this. I am always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles:-- ‘Man’s happiest lot is not to be: And when we tread life’s thorny steep, Most blest are they, who earliest free Descend to death’s eternal sleep.’ In the ensuing conversation (_vide_ Peacock’s collected _Works_) Shelley did not even suggest that Harriett’s behaviour had afforded him any serious cause of dissatisfaction. On the contrary, whilst reflecting on her mental unfitness for the position to which he had so imprudently exalted her, he admitted that she was a noble animal. ‘Every one, who knows me,’ he said, ‘must know that the partner of my life should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy. Harriett is a noble animal, but she can do neither.’ ‘It always appeared to me,’ replied Peacock, ‘that you were very fond of Harriett.’ ‘But you did not know how I hated her sister,’ rejoined Shelley; forbearing to say aught in dissent from, or assent to, Peacock’s remark on his former show of fondness for his wife. To another of his friends Shelley commended Harriett for being ‘a noble animal,’ adding words which seemed to imply that, in her nobleness, she would acquiesce in the transference of his affections from herself to William Godwin’s daughter. But because he spoke thus fairly of Harriett to persons, who knew she had given him no grave cause of offence, it does not follow that he was not at the same time charging her with serious misconduct to those, who were not so well qualified to judge between her and him. To those who remember in what different strains he wrote of his father to the Duke of Norfolk and William Godwin, it is needless to say that he was capable of speaking justly of a person, with whom he was displeased, to individuals cognizant of the real causes of his displeasure, and no less unjustly to persons of inferior or no information touching the nature of the quarrel.