[261] After Shelley's death, Mary Shelley decided to remain in Italy in order to assist with _The Liberal_. She considered Hunt "expatriated at the request and desire of others," and, in helping him, she thought to fulfil any obligation that Shelley might have assumed in the scheme. For her services she received thirty-three pounds. She lived for some time in the same house with the Hunts after they separated from Lord Byron, but the arrangement was an unhappy one. Disagreements, beginning with a misunderstanding concerning the possession of Shelley's heart, dragged through the winter. Fortunately everything was adjusted before they separated. July, 1823, she wrote of Hunt: "he is all kindness, consideration and friendship--all feeling of alienation towards me has disappeared to its last dregs." (Marshall, _The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin_, London, 1889, II, p. 81.) And again: "But thank heaven we are now the best friends in the world.... It is a delightful thing, my dear Jane, to be able to express one's affection upon an old and tried friend like Hunt, and one so passionately attached to my Shelley as he was, and is.... He was displeased with me for many just reasons, but he found me willing to expiate, as far as I could, the evil I had done; his heart again warmed, and if when I return you find me more amiable, and more willing to suffer with patience than I was, it is to him that I owe this benefit." (_Ibid._, II, p. 85.) [262] Jeaffreson assigns the cause of Hunt's neglect to his ignorance of the fact that he could suck money out of Shelley. _The Real Shelley_, II, p. 352. [263] Mac-Carthay in _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, p. 302. [264] Shelley was deeply wounded by the attack. He wrote Hunt: "As to what relates to yourself and me, it makes me melancholy to consider the dreadful wickedness of the heart which would have prompted such expressions as those with which the anonymous writer gloats over my domestic calamities and the perversion of understanding with which he paints your character." (Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes_, p. 340; December 22, 1818.) [265] Shelley at first attributed the article in the _Quarterly_ to Southey on the grounds of his enmity to _The Examiner_ which, Shelley declared, had been the "crown of thorns worn by this unredeemed Redeemer for many years." Southey denied the authorship. (Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes_, p. 341; December 22, 1818.) [266] _The Examiner_, September 26, October 3 and 10, 1819. See also _Correspondence_, I, pp. 125-126. [267] _Correspondence_, I, p. 169. [268] _Ibid._, I, p. 166. [269] See Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p. 130.