Pecuniary Difficulties and Resources--Choice of a Profession--Shelley walking a Hospital--Dropt by Acquaintances--Birth of Mary Godwin’s first Child--Sir Bysshe Shelley’s Death--Differences and Tiffs between Mary and Claire--Characteristics of the Sisters--Trip to South Devon--At Work on _Alastor_--Publication of the Poem--_Essay on Christianity_--Life at Bishopgate--Shelley’s Idolatry of Byron--Birth of Mary Godwin’s first-born Son--Claire and Byron--Second Trip to Switzerland--Shelley’s Pretext for leaving England--Strange Scene between Shelley and Peacock--Semi-Delusions--Another Hallucination. So much fantastic stuff has been written about Shelley’s poverty at manhood’s threshold, and the sufferings which came to him from his father’s cruel parsimony, that it is well to observe he never made a close and enduring acquaintance with the penury, which has nursed so many rhymesters into poets of deathless song. Poverty is of course a comparative term. In the story of Shelley’s career it must be construed as little more than a figure of speech. In Poland Street he was supplied bountifully with money by relatives and other friends. From the date of the arrangement, to which the Squire was a party not long after his boy’s expulsion from Oxford, he enjoyed a sufficient and even liberal allowance, till he ran off to Scotland with Harriett; and from the day of the elopement till the moment of his withdrawal from his first wife he had an adequate income, and the means of living far beyond it. Between 28th July and 13th September, 1814, he spent (in ready money) 98_l._, besides the money with which he journeyed from London to Calais and posted from Calais to Paris. The young man who spent money at this rate, like most other outrunners of the constable, was often without money in hand for the requirements of his wasteful career,--often without a guinea in his pocket. But it is absurd to assign to poverty the immediate results of habitual prodigality. If he ever suffered from what can be fairly styled poverty, the brief experience belonged to the period between his return from the Continent in September, 1814, and the early month of the ensuing year, when by accepting the easy terms offered to him by his father with the Duke of Norfolk’s approval, he stept into a clear revenue of 1000_l._ a-year. In compliance with the arrangement which afforded him this assured allowance during his father’s life, the poet surrendered only a small portion of his interest in the settled estates, A and B.