In Pisa Byron and Shelley were constantly together, having in their company at one time or another Shelley's cousin and school fellow Captain Thomas Medwin (1788-1869), Lieutenant Edward Elliker Williams (1793-1822) and his wife, to both of whom the poet was very warmly attached, and Captain Edward John Tre lawny, the adventurous and romantic seaman, who has left im portant and interesting reminiscences of this period. Byron ad mired very highly the generous, unworldly and enthusiastic char acter of Shelley, and set some value on his writings ; Shelley half worshipped Byron as a poet, and was anxious, but in some con junctures by no means able, to respect him as a man. In Pisa he knew also Prince Alexander Mavrocordato, one of the pioneers of Grecian insurrection and freedom ; the glorious cause fired Shelley, and he wrote the drama of Hellas (1821) with its magnificent choruses breathing of hope for the future of mankind.
The last residence of Shelley was the Casa Magni, a bare and exposed dwelling on the Gulf of Spezia. He and his wife, with the Williamses, went there at the end of April 1822 to spend the summer, which proved an arid and scorching one. Pea cock describes Shelley as being disillusioned during his last days; there is certainly a trace of melancholy in his later lyrics and correspondence ; a foreboding of some approaching fatality which, however, he appears to have attempted to divert. Shelley and Williams, both of them insatiably fond of boating, had a small schooner named the "Don Juan" (or more properly the "Ariel"), built at Genoa after a design which Williams had procured from a naval friend, but the reverse of safe. They received her on May 12, found her rapid and alert, and on July 1 started in her to Leg horn, to meet Leigh Hunt, of whose arrival in Italy he had just been notified. After doing his best to set things going comfortably between Byron and Hunt, Shelley returned on board with Williams on July 8. It was a day of dark, louring, stifling heat. Trelawny took leave of his two friends, and about half-past six in the evening found himself startled from a doze by a frightful turmoil of storm. The "Ariel" had by this time made Via Reggio; she was not to be seen, though other vessels which had sailed about the same time were still discernible. Shelley, Williams and their only com panion, a sailor-boy, perished in the squall. The exact nature of the catastrophe was from the first regarded as somewhat disput able. The condition of the "Ariel" when recovered did not favour any assumption that she had capsized in a heavy sea—rather that she had been run down by some other vessel, a felucca or fishing smack. In the absence of any counter-evidence this would be sup
posed to have occurred by accident; but a rumour, not strictly verified and certainly not refuted, exists that an aged Italian sea man on his deathbed confessed that he had been one of the crew of the fatal felucca, and that the collision was intentional, as the men had plotted to steal a sum of money supposed to be on the "Don Juan," in charge of Lord Byron. In fact there was a moderate sum there, but Byron had neither embarked nor intended to embark. This may perhaps be the true account of the tragedy; at any rate Trelawny, the best possible authority on the subject, accepted it as true. He it was who laboriously tracked out the shore-washed corpses of Williams and Shelley, and who undertook the burning of them, after the ancient Greek fashion, on the shore near Via Reggio, on Aug. 15 and 16. The great poet's ashes were then collected, and buried in the new Protestant cemetery in Rome. He was, at the date of his untimely death, within a month of completing the thirtieth year of his age.
The character of Shelley can be considered ac cording to two different standards of estimation. We can estimate the original motive forces in his character; or we can form an opinion of his actions, and thence put a certain construction upon his personal qualities. We will first try the latter method. It can not be denied that his actions were in some considerable degree abnormal, dangerous to the settled basis of society, and marked by headstrong and undutiful presumption. But it is remarkable that, even among the censors of his conduct, many persons are none the less impressed by the beauty of his character; and this leads us back to our first point—the original motive forces in that. Here we find enthusiasm, fervour, courage (moral and physical), an unbounded readiness to act upon what he considered right prin ciple, however inconvenient or disastrous the consequences to him self, sweetness and indulgence towards others, extreme generosity (he appears to have given Godwin, though sometimes bitterly op posed to him, between £4,000 and £5,000), and the principle of love for humankind in abundance and superabundance. He re spected the truth, as he conceived it, in spiritual or speculative matters, and respected no construction of the truth which came to him recommended by human authority. No man had more hatred or contempt of custom and prescription; no one had a more authentic or vivid sense of universal charity. The same radiant enthusiasm which appeared in his poetry as idealism stamped his speculation with the conception of perfectibility and his character with loving emotion.