The judgment having been delivered, it was ordered that Shelley should contribute a portion of his income towards the maintenance and education of his children. How much of his income was he required to spend in this way? _Primâ facie_ this question would seem one which Lady Shelley, with the Field Place Papers about her, could not fail to answer correctly, if she undertook to answer it at all. Lady Shelley answers the question with curious inaccuracy. She says precisely, ‘He was forced, however, to set aside 200_l._ a-year for their support; and this sum was deducted by Sir Timothy from his son’s annuity.’ What are the facts? (1) Shelley was _not_ required to contribute 200_l._ a-year to the education of his children; he contributed only 120_l._ a-year, in equal quarterly payments. (2) Sir Timothy Shelley did _not_ deduct 200_l._ a-year, or any sum of money whatever from the 250_l._ which he paid every quarter to his son’s bank-account. The curious part of this achievement in blundering is that Lady Shelley publishes in her book the documents which disprove the statements of her text. The letters that passed between Shelley and Horace Smith, in March and April, 1821 (a body of correspondence published by Lady Shelley herself in her _Shelley Memorials_), show that Sir Timothy paid the 1000_l._ a-year to Shelley without any deduction; that Dr. Hume, the custodian of the children, received only 120_l._ for his care of the two children; that instead of looking to Sir Timothy, the Doctor looked to Shelley for the payment of this sum; that the Doctor was empowered to draw on Shelley’s London bankers for 30_l._ a-quarter; and that with the exception of an additional trifle for _postage_ and other extras, 120_l._ per annum was the whole sum of Shelley’s contribution to the maintenance of the children. It is thus that Lady Shelley deals with facts from her authentic sources. It appears, therefore, that these proceedings in the Court of Chancery left Shelley with the clear income of 880_l._ a-year; a larger revenue by 80_l._ a-year than the yearly income he had reserved for his own use on raising Harriett’s allowance to its highest sum:--a fact to be borne in mind, since successive writers have spoken of these proceedings, as seriously reducing the income at his command before the first Mrs. Shelley’s death. From the August of 1817, even to this year of grace, Lord Eldon has been written of bitterly for depriving so bright a genius and so virtuous a citizen as Shelley of the care of his own offspring; and so long as organs of social opinion, so powerful as the _Edinburgh Review_, continue to misstate the grounds of the Lord Chancellor’s decree, he will continue to be denounced as a prodigy of intolerance. It will be otherwise, if writers bear in mind what were the real grounds of the judgment, for which he has been censured so vehemently.