ined reason had loaded his pistols on
the evening before the alleged assault, professed to have seen the
villain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, and
confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, are
too circumstantial to be lightly set aside.

On the whole it appears most probable that Shelley on this night was the
subject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his enemies at
Tanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate his escape
from the neighbourhood without paying his bills, may be dismissed. But
no investigation on the spot could throw any clear light on the
circumstance, and Shelley's friends, Hogg, Peacock, and Mr. Madocks,
concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion.

There was no money in the common purse of the Shelleys at this moment.
In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, a London publisher,
who sent them enough to carry them across the Irish channel. After a
short residence in 35, Cuffe Street, Dublin, and a flying visit to
Killarney, they returned to London. Eliza, for some reason as
unexplained as the whole episode of this second visit to Ireland, was
left behind for a short season. The flight from Tanyrallt closes the
first important period of Shelley's life; and his settlement in London
marks the beginning of another, fruitful of the gravest consequences and
decisive of his future.

CHAPTER 4.

SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET.

Early in May the Shelleys arrived in London, where they were soon joined
by Eliza, from whose increasingly irksome companionship the poet had
recently enjoyed a few weeks' respite. After living for a short while in
hotels, they took lodgings in Half Moon Street. The house had a
projecting window, where the poet loved to sit with book in hand, and
catch, according to his custom, the maximum of sunlight granted by a
chary English summer. "He wanted," said one of his female admirers,
"only a pan of clear water and a fresh turf to look like some young
lady's lark, hanging outside for air and song." According to Hogg, this
period of London life was a pleasant and tranquil episode in Shelley's
troubled career. His room was full of books, among which works of German
metaphysics occupied a prominent place, though they were not deeply
studied. He was now learning Italian, and made his first acquaintance
with Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch.

The habits of the household were, to