But biographers have not hesitated to deal in this way with the imaginary reminiscences of _Laon and Cythna_ and _Prince Athanase_. Now for the facts to set in array beside the statements of the poem. Instead of being old enough to apprehend the meaning of his father’s words, and to be likely to remember the voyage as a dream of long-forgotten days, little William was only two years and two months old when he crossed the Channel. No brother and sister had been taken from him. His father and mother were not flying from the Court of Chancery, when they went abroad. They did not go to Italy to get out of the Lord Chancellor’s grip. They knew that, in respect to William and little Clara, they had nothing to fear from the Court. How far did the conditions and incidents of their passage over the water accord with the descriptive touches of the poem? Heaven knows. Heaven also knows that the poem was written months before the voyage was made. The poem _To William Shelley_ was written in 1817, the voyage was made in March, 1818. This fact shows how cautious people should be in building up the poet’s personal story out of passages from his poems and letters. Shelley’s accounts of his school-days in _Laon and Cythna_, or of any other matter of his past history, were as imaginary as his description of his flight across the Channel, or any other matter of his future history. It may be urged, but evidence forbids it to be conceded, that, whilst writing the imaginary piece of autobiography, Shelley was under the impression that, unless he took his two children by Mary Godwin abroad, the Court of Chancery would wrest them from him. Such a fear might have possessed Shelley before the Chancery suit, but even Shelley could not have entertained so wild a fancy _after_ the suit, which had made him a lawyer in respect to the Court’s power to do what he pretended to fear. He knew that the Court would not have listened to Mr. Westbrook’s suit had he not made a provision for the children by settling 2000_l._ upon them. He knew that till some similar provision, in property of some sort, had been made for William and Clara, no proceedings could be taken in Chancery to remove them from his control. Moreover, he knew that the Court would not think of taking them from their mother.