In truth the discovery of a Shelleyan copy of the _Essay_, dated 1820 or 1821, would not materially strengthen the evidence that Shelley wrote it in his life’s concluding term. At Bishopgate, Shelley saw little of his neighbours; the few of them who called upon him being so little to his mind that they were not encouraged to call again. Indeed, the only gentleman of the neighbourhood who seems to have approached the new settler on the verge of Windsor Park, without impressing him unfavourably, was Dr. Pope, the Quaker doctor of Staines, who, visiting the poet in the way of professional service, visited him also for the friendly discussion of religious questions. ‘I like to hear thee talk, friend Shelley: I see thee art very deep,’ the doctor remarked on one occasion to the author of _Queen Mab_. With the exception of this new acquaintance, who was only an occasional caller, and the two familiar comrades who had held to him staunchly in the previous winter of harassment and neglect, Shelley seems to have received no one at Bishopgate on a footing of sociability, from the middle of September, 1815, to the opening of the next spring. But the time of seclusion passed pleasantly in literary effort and the society of the two friends, with whom he read Greek authors;--Peacock strolling over to him twice or thrice a-week from Marlow, whilst Hogg (though a less frequent visitor at the cottage) seldom let a fortnight pass without walking down from London. Whilst reading Greek literature with the two scholars, Shelley found time to bring Mary forward in Latin. ‘Mary,’ he wrote to Hogg in September, 1815, ‘has finished the fifth book of the _Æneid_, and her progress in Latin is such as to satisfy my best expectations,’--words reminding one pathetically how, three years earlier, he took a similar interest in Harriett’s Latin studies, and wrote about them with the same satisfaction to the same correspondent. As the time is nearing for Shelley to achieve his ambition of winning Byron’s friendship, the occasion has arrived for glancing at the regard in which the more famous poet was held by the author of _Alastor_, and also for glancing at the efforts made by certain of the Shelleyan enthusiasts to minimize the idolater’s admiration of the poet they abhor, by insisting that the admiration was qualified with disapproval, and strictly limited to certain of Byron’s more creditable literary productions. Let us see, by Shelley’s own words and acts, how he thought of Byron from 1816, when they made the personal acquaintance of one another, to the opening of the year memorable for the fatal boat accident in the Bay of Spezia.