tbrook as an inmate of the house. They
lived in York, Keswick in Cumberland, Dublin (which Shelley visited as
an express advocate of Catholic emancipation and repeal of the Union),
Nantgwillt in Radnorshire, Lynmouth in Devonshire, Tanyrallt in
Carnarvonshire, London, Bracknell in Berkshire: Ireland and Edinburgh
were also revisited. Various strange adventures befell; the oddest of
all being an alleged attempt at assassination at Tanyrallt. Shelley
asserted it, others disbelieved it: after much disputation the
biographer supposes that, if not an imposture, it was a romance, and, if
not a romance, at least a hallucination,--Shelley, besides being wild in
talk and wild in fancy, being by this time much addicted to
laudanum-dosing. In June 1813 Harriet gave birth, in London, to her
first child, Ianthe Eliza (she married a Mr. Esdaile, and died in 1876).
About the same time Shelley brought out his earliest work of importance,
the poem of _Queen Mab_: its speculative audacities were too extreme for
publication, so it was only privately printed.

Amiable and accommodating at first, and neither ill-educated nor stupid,
Harriet did not improve in tone as she advanced in womanhood. Her
sympathy or tolerance for her husband's ideals and vagaries flagged;
when they differed she gave him the cold shoulder; she wanted
luxuries--such as a carriage of her own--which he neither cared for nor
could properly afford. He even said--and one can hardly accuse him of
saying it insincerely--that she had been unfaithful to him: this however
remains quite unproved, and may have been a delusion. He sought the
society of the philosopher Godwin, then settled as a bookseller in
Skinner Street, Holborn. Godwin's household at this time consisted of
his second wife, who had been a Mrs. Clairmont; Mary, his daughter by
his first wife, the celebrated Mary Wollstonecraft; and his young son by
his second wife, William; also his step-children, Charles and Clare
Clairmont, and Fanny Wollstonecraft (or Imlay), the daughter of Mary
Wollstonecraft by her first irregular union with Gilbert Imlay. Until
May 1814, when she was getting on towards the age of seventeen, Shelley
had scarcely set eyes on Mary Godwin: he then saw her, and a sudden
passion sprang up between them--uncontrollable, or, at any rate,
uncontrolled. Harriet Shelley has left it on record that the advances
and importunities came from Mary Godwin to Shelley, and were for a while
resisted: it was n