Over the wall (towards the high road) of the house, inhabited for about a year by Shelley at Great Marlow, may be seen a tablet bearing this inscription, chiselled at the cost of a gentleman, whose intention to honour the poet was more creditable than his knowledge of the poet’s story:-- This Tablet was Placed A.D. 1867, At the Instance of Sir William Robert Clayton, Bart., To Perpetuate the Record that PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Lived and Worked in this House And was Here Visited by Lord Byron. ‘He is Gone where all Things Wise and fair Descend. Oh, Dream not the Amorous Deep Will yet Restore him to the Vital air, Death Feeds on His Mute Voice, and Laughs at Our Despair.’ ADONAIS. Byron having left England for ever long before Shelley entered the house, it is needless to say that the poets never exchanged words under its roof. Regarded from the road, this house is, at the present time, a dingy and mean dwelling; but on entering it, the visitor is agreeably surprised by the magnitude of the rooms (one of them, _i.e._ Shelley’s library, being, in Peacock’s opinion, not in mine, large enough for a ball-room); and the rectangular garden in the rear of the building (a garden, at this present time, divided into four several plots of ground) is twenty-one yards wide and two hundred and twenty-five yards long. Readers may rely on the exactness of these particulars of the garden’s size, which were given to me for this work by my friend Mr. William Ford Langworthy. The knavish gardener having lopt the fine holly to a bare pole, Shelley was at considerable cost in planting this garden with shrubs. About the same time the house (taken on lease for twenty-one years) was re-decorated and furnished at no small expense; the library (big enough for a ball-room) being fitted with shelves and books on terms, that were not otherwise than advantageous to the ‘unbiased’ Mr. Hookham, of Bond Street. Without meaning to live in this pleasant house ‘for ever,’ Shelley, no doubt, intended to make it his home, till he should succeed to estates A and B. Mrs. Shelley hoped the place would be her home till she should become Lady Shelley. But human creatures are less the rulers than the sport of circumstances. Little more than a year had passed since their settlement at Marlow when, yielding reluctantly to her husband’s solicitations, Mrs. Shelley went with him to Italy for the remainder of his days.