What is said about Claire’s age by Mr. Kegan Paul, who tells two different stories about it? ‘This,’ he says of Mrs. Clairmont and her coming to The Polygon (_vide_ pp. 57, 58, vol. ii. of _William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries_), ‘was a Mrs. Clairmont, a widow, with a son then at school, and one little daughter _somewhat older_ than Fanny, who came to occupy the next house to Godwin in the Polygon.’ The italics of two words of this quotation are mine. Farther on, in his book, when he comes to work on the discovery, so as to make it appear that Claire was much older than Mary, Mr. Kegan Paul (vol. ii., p. 213) says, ‘Jane Clairmont was only at home for two nights during the six weeks Shelley spent in London. _She was several years older than Fanny_, and even then led a somewhat independent life apart from her mother and step-father, presumably as a governess, since that was the occupation she afterwards followed in Italy, during the intervals of her residence with the Shelleys.’ This extract (seven words of which I print in italics) refers to Shelley’s stay in London in the October and November, 1812. It is made up of inaccuracies. (1) Claire, like Mary, was only fifteen years old. (2) She may have been a pupil-teacher in some school where she was being educated; but she was not living in independence of her stepfather and her mother. (3) She was not several years older than Fanny. Several years older! First, Mr. Kegan Paul says _somewhat older_, and then _several years older_; the difference between the two expressions making the two passages tell two different stories. The purpose of the larger expression is obvious. Mr. Paul wishes us to think Claire several years older than Fanny Imlay, in order that we may think her very much Mary’s superior, by the authority of age. Several years may mean anything from three or four years to ten or twelve. Let us put the expression at four years. Then, as Fanny (born in April, 1794) was already eighteen years old, Claire must, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, have been twenty-two years old in 1812, and must have been born at least as early as April, 1790. It follows, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, that Claire’s brother, older than she, must have been born, at the latest, on 4th June, 1789,--might, indeed, be fairly taken as having been born a year earlier. Charles Clairmont was therefore, according to Mr. Kegan Paul, rising twelve years old, when his mother came to her new house in the Polygon. Was he? (1) In 1802, when Charles (according to Mr. Kegan Paul’s statement) was thirteen years old, William Godwin is admitted by Mr. Kegan Paul to have taken much pains to put the boy into Christ’s Hospital. Had Godwin succeeded in getting the admission, the boy would have been fourteen before he went into the school, where boys, eighty years since, used to be admitted, no less than now-a-days, in quite tender years. Is it probable Godwin would have sought for the admission when the boy was so old?