you are aware how fond I am of your song on the Skylark; but
you ought, if Ollier sent you a copy of the enlarged _Calendar_
_of Nature_, which he published separately under the title of the
_Months_. I tell you this, because I have not done half or a twentieth
part of what I ought to have done to make your writings properly
appreciated. But I intended to do more every day, and now that I am
coming to you, I shall be _totus_ in you and yours! For all good, and
healthy, and industrious things, I will do such wonders, that I shall
begin to believe I make some remote approach to something like a
return for your kindness. Yet how can that be? At all events, I hope
we shall all be the better for one another's society. Marianne, poor
dear girl, is still very ailing and weak, but stronger upon the whole,
she thinks, than when she first left London, and quite prepared and
happy to set off on her spring voyage. She sends you part of her best
love. I told her I supposed I must answer Marina's letter for her, but
she is quite grand on the occasion, and vows she will do it herself,
which, I assure you, will be the first time she has written a letter
for many months. Ask Marina if she will be charitable, and write one
to me. I will undertake to answer it with one double as long. But what
am I talking about, when the captain speaks of sailing in a fortnight?
I was led astray by her delightful letter to Marianne about walks, and
duets, and violets, and ladies like violets. Am I indeed to see and
be in the midst of all these beautiful things, ladies like lilies not
excepted? And do the men in Italy really leave ladies to walk in those
very amiable dry ditches by themselves? Oh! for a few strides, like
those of Neptune, when he went from some place to some other place,
and 'did it in three!' Dear Shelley, I am glad my letter to Lord B.
pleased you, though I do not know why you should so thank me for it.
But you are ingenious in inventing claims for me upon your affection.

To HORACE SMITH

_Shelley's death_

Pisa, 25 _July_, 1822.

Dear Horace,

I trust that the first news of the dreadful calamity which has
befallen us here will have been broken to you by report, otherwise I
shall come upon you with a most painful abruptness; but Shelley, my
divine-minded friend, your friend, the friend of the universe, he has
perished at sea. He was in a boat with his friend Captain Williams,
going from Leghorn to Lerici, when a storm arose