according to his own canons of taste and execution, without being
hampered by any advice from Shelley. There is also a letter from Keats
to his two brothers, 22nd December, 1817, saying: 'Shelley's poem _Laon
and Cythna_ is out, and there are words about its being objected to as
much as _Queen Mab_ was. Poor Shelley, I think he has his quota of good
qualities.' As late as February 1818 He wrote, 'I have not yet read
Shelley's poem.' On 23rd January of the same year he had written: 'The
fact is, he [Hunt] and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not
having showed them the affair [_Endymion_ in MS.] officiously; and, from
several hints I have had, they appear much disposed to dissect and
anatomize any trip or slip I may have made.' It was at nearly the same
date, 4th February, that Keats, Shelley, and Hunt wrote each a sonnet on
_The Nile_: in my judgment, Shelley's is the least successful of the
three.

Soon after their marriage, Shelley and his second wife settled at Great
Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. They were shortly disturbed by a Chancery
suit, whereby Mr. Westbrook sought to deprive Shelley of the custody of
his two children by Harriet, Ianthe and Charles. Towards March 1818,
Lord Chancellor Eldon pronounced judgment against Shelley, on the ground
of his culpable conduct as a husband, carrying out culpable opinions
upheld in his writings. The children were handed over to Dr. Hume, an
army-physician named by Shelley: he had to assign for their support a
sum of L120 per annum, brought up to L200 by a supplement from Mr.
Westbrook. About the same date he suffered from an illness which he
regarded as a dangerous pulmonary attack, and he made up his mind to
quit England for Italy; accompanied by his wife, their two infants
William and Clara, Miss Clairmont, and her infant Allegra, who was soon
afterwards consigned to Lord Byron in Venice. Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke,
who was Keats's friend from boyhood, writes: 'When Shelley left England
for Italy, Keats told me that he had received from him an invitation to
become his guest, and in short to make one of his household. It was upon
the purest principle that Keats declined his noble proffer, for he
entertained an exalted opinion of Shelley's genius--in itself an
inducement. He also knew of his deeds of bounty, and from their frequent
social intercourse he had full faith in the sincerity of his
proposal.... Keats said that, in declining the invitation, his sole
motive