nd he went down to his
cabin and slept. When he awoke, it was to see fishing-boats running into
harbour under bare poles amid the hubbub of a thunder-squall. In that
squall the 'Ariel' disappeared. It is doubtful whether the unseaworthy
craft was merely swamped, or whether, as there is some reason to
suppose, an Italian felucca ran her down with intent to rob the
Englishmen. In any case, the calamity is the crowning example of that
combination of bad management and bad luck which dogged Shelley all
his life. It was madness to trust an open boat, manned only by the
inexperienced Williams and a boy (for Shelley was worse than useless),
to the chances of a Mediterranean storm. And destiny turns on trifles;
if the 'Bolivar' had been allowed to sail, Trelawny might have saved
them.

He sent out search-parties, and on July 19th sealed the despairing
women's certainty of disaster by the news that the bodies had been
washed ashore. Shelley's was identified by a copy of Sophocles in one
coat-pocket and the Keats in another. What Trelawny then did was an
action of that perfect fitness to which only the rarest natures are
prompted: he charged himself with the business of burning the bodies.
This required some organisation. There were official formalities to
fulfil, and the materials had to be assembled--the fuel, the improvised
furnace, the iron bars, salt and wine and oil to pour upon the pyre.
In his artless 'Records' he describes the last scene on the seashore.
Shelley's body was given to the flames on a day of intense heat, when
the islands lay hazy along the horizon, and in the background the
marble-flecked Apennines gleamed. Byron looked on until he could stand
it no longer, and swam off to his yacht. The heart was the last part to
be consumed. By Trelawny's care the ashes were buried in the Protestant
cemetery at Rome.

It is often sought to deepen our sense of this tragedy by speculating
on what Shelley would have done if he had lived. But, if such a question
must be asked, there are reasons for thinking that he might not have
added much to his reputation. It may indeed be an accident that his last
two years were less fertile in first-rate work than the years 1819 and
1820, and that his last unfinished poem, 'The Triumph of Life', is even
more incoherent than its predecessors; yet, when we consider the nature
of his talent, the fact is perhaps significant. His song was entirely an
affair of uncontrolled afflatus, and thi