There is some uncertainty as to the precise date of Charles Bysshe Shelley’s birth. As the matter is of slight or no importance, I have not been at much pains to ascertain the very day on which Shelley’s son by Harriett was born. Writing from the Field Place MSS., the writer of the _Edinburgh_, ‘Shelley and Mary’ article, says that the poet’s first-born son was born ‘about December 1st,’--a statement following immediately upon the writer’s testimony that, according to Mary Godwin’s diary, Harriett left her father’s house on the 20th of October preceding her accouchement; and that, on so leaving her father’s house, she went to some place alike unknown to both keepers of the joint-diary. Anyhow, there is small reason for doubt that the boy was born in his maternal grandfather’s house in Chapel Street. To this point, Miss Westbrook (in her second affidavit in the memorable proceedings in Chancery, dated 13th January, 1817) speaks precisely. Affidavits are sometimes loosely drawn; but it is in the highest degree improbable that Miss Westbrook would have signed under oath a statement that her nephew was born in her father’s house, and her own home, unless she remembered him to have been born there. It is no less improbable that Miss Westbrook’s memory could have betrayed her on such a point. Consequently, _if_ Harriett’s boy by Shelley was born about 1st December, 1814 (as the Field Place evidences are said to show), and _if_ (as the same evidences are said to show) Harriett left her father’s house on the previous 20th October, 1814, she must have returned to her old home in Chapel Street on some day before the birth of her son.