At the opening of the next chapter of his book of blunders, Mr. Kegan Paul holds stoutly to his statement that Shelley and Godwin were in correspondence twelve months before they exchanged letters. Instead of being headed ‘1812-14,’ as it would have been, had it not been for this droll misconception, Chapter VIII., Vol. II., of the book is headed ‘The Shelleys, 1811-14,’ and opens with a short paragraph containing these words, ‘The first notice of Shelley in the Godwin Diaries is under date January 6th, 1811, “Write to Shelley.”’ To heighten the confusion, for which I am slow to think Godwin’s diary in any degree accountable, the biographer says in his next paragraph, ‘Shelley was at this time living at Keswick, in the earlier and happier days of his marriage with Harriet Westbrook.... He had already, in this manner, made the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt, when, in January, 1811, he wrote thus to Godwin’:--the letter thus submitted to the reader’s notice being Shelley’s well-known first letter to Godwin, which appears in Hogg’s _Life_ under the right date, ‘January 3rd, 1812,’ but in Mr. Kegan Paul’s medley of mistakes under the wrong date of ‘January 3rd, 1811.’ As Shelley’s first letter to Leigh Hunt was dated 2nd March, 1811, it was not written before 3rd January, 1811. As Leigh Hunt took no notice of that letter, Shelley did not make Leigh Hunt’s acquaintance by writing it. Though Leigh Hunt saw and spoke with Shelley on one or two occasions of earlier time, he cannot be fairly said to have made his acquaintance before a day long subsequent to 3rd February, 1815. What an assemblage of errors in half-a-page of print! It is conceivable that the usually careful Godwin in his diary gave the wrong number to the new year,--a mistake made occasionally even by precise journalists. But if it was so, instead of being misled by the slip into a series of bad blunders, Mr. Kegan Paul should have detected and amended it. Here is the list of blunders:-- _Blunder No. 1._--A wrong date of 1811 for 1812 at the head of the chapter. _Blunder No. 2._--The same wrong date to the extract from the diary. _Blunder No. 3._--The same wrong date in the author’s original writing. _Blunder No. 4._--The same error in the date given to the letter. _Blunder No. 5._--The biographer’s own mistake of saying that Shelley was living at Keswick in January, 1811,--months before his expulsion from Oxford. _Blunder No. 6._--The biographer’s own mistake of saying that Shelley and Harriett Westbrook were husband and wife on 3rd January, 1811,--eight calendar months before the date of their wedding. _Blunder No. 7._--The biographer’s own mistake of saying Shelley’s first letter to Leigh Hunt was dated before 3rd January, 1811. _Blunder No. 8._--The biographer’s own mistake of saying Shelley made Leigh Hunt’s acquaintance by writing that letter. _Blunder No. 9._--The biographer’s own mistake (of years), touching the date when Shelley made Leigh Hunt’s acquaintance.