the fetters from Erin’s bruised and wounded limbs, and chase the darkness of ignorance from a liberated country. Was such a work to be deferred for the want of a miserable 250_l._, whilst John Lawless was known for his honesty in every castle and cabin, south of the Giant’s Causeway, and whilst his young friend was the immediate heir of one of the first fortunes of England? To obtain the equally trivial and necessary sum, Shelley seized a pen and wrote (_vide_ Medwin’s _Life of Shelley_) to Mr. Medwin, the Horsham lawyer,--saying how he was engaged with a literary friend in producing a voluminous _History of Ireland_, and needed 250_l._ for the execution of the enterprise. Of course, the Horsham lawyer was assured by his youthful client, that the sale of the _History_ would yield great profit, and that the 250_l._ would be repaid in eighteen months. It is more curious and remarkable that, in pressing Mr. Medwin to provide the needful money for the project, Shelley assured the lawyer that two hundred and fifty pages of the work were already printed:--a statement for which the vigour and liveliness of the writer’s imagination may perhaps be held accountable. It speaks less for Mr. Lawless’s honesty, than for his cleverness, in drawing wind to his sails from every passing breeze, that this letter was written when Shelley had been barely five weeks in Dublin, and possibly had not known him for a month. How Mr. Medwin answered the letter does not appear; but it may be assumed confidently that if he provided the 250_l._, he required that the transaction should be withheld from the knowledge of Shelley’s father. Nor does it appear whether Mr. Lawless drew money for his literary project out of his young friend’s pocket. But the known circumstances of their intimacy leave little room for doubt that Shelley’s purse was accountable for the Irish gentleman’s persistence in the labours, that resulted in his _Compendium of the History of Ireland, from the Earliest Period to the Reign of George I._ (1814);--a work on which he was engaged between the dates of Shelley’s two visits to Ireland. During his stay in Dublin, Shelley continued to correspond with the philosopher of Skinner Street, writing him at least three long letters, dated respectively on 24th February, 8th March, and 18th March; letters to which Godwin replied on 4th March, 14th March, and 30th March. Resembling in their adulatory and reverential extravagances his earlier epistles from Keswick to the same correspondent, Shelley’s letters from Dublin to William Godwin are chiefly remarkable for evidence that he was looking yearningly for the pleasures of personal intimacy with the sage, whom he was pleased to regard and address as his intellectual guide and guardian.