CHAPTER XXIV.

Shelley an Opium Eater-The consequences-Imaginary attempt upon his Life-Its probable solution-The suspected assassin-Shelley's departure from Wales -Arrival in Dublin-Return to London.

SHELLEY'S departure from this wild and isolated region was hastened by an event which is involved in considerable mystery.

His health, always delicate, appears to have been at this period in a very critical state, and suffering as he was from nervous debility, the nature of his readings and the metaphysical abstractions in which he indulged kept his mind in a continual state of tension, which was still more aggravated by the immoderate use of

laudanum, with which he sought to dull the keen edge of the sorrows and painful thoughts that beset him.

De Quincy has afforded us some insight into the effect of this insinuating drug, and it does not appear that Shelley was wholly free from its baneful influence. He was under the strange delusion that several attempts had been made to cut him off, and that a price was set upon his head; but the most remarkable of any, was that of which he made a deposition before Mr. Maddocks, wherein he declared that an attack had been made upon him by an assassin.

On Friday night, the 26th of February, 1813, he and his wife had retired to bed between ten and eleven o'clock, he having previously loaded a pair of pistols which he always carried with him, expecting to have occasion for them. It was a wild and stormy night, and they had not been in bed more than half an hour, when Shelley imagined he heard a noise in the house.

Springing from bed, he seized his pistols and ran down stairs, entering a room from whence it seemed to him the noise proceeded, and

followed the sound of retreating footsteps into

an ante-room.

Here, according to Mrs. Shelley's account, Shelley saw a man who, in the act of escaping through the window which opens into a shrubbery, fired at him, but missed his aim-Shelley then returned the fire, but his pistol flashed in the pan, when the man sprang upon Shelley and knocked him down. A struggle ensued, during which Shelley fired his second pistol, with effect, as it seemed, for the man screamed and swore," by God, he would be revenged," adding that he would murder Shelley's wife and disgrace her sister.

At this point, Mrs. Shelley came down stairs, but the assassin had vanished. The servants had not gone to bed, but strangely enough they never appeared on the scene till the firing and the struggling were over, when the whole of the household assembled in the parlour, where they remained for some two or three hours, when Shelley was sufficiently calmed to induce them to retire to their beds, believing that his assailant was gone for the night.

It appears, however, that Shelley with his

man servant sat up on the watch, and according to Mrs. Shelley's account, she had been in bed about three hours, when she was alarmed again by the report of a pistol. She hurried down stairs, but by the time she got there, all was again quiet, except the storm, which was terrific, the rain descending in torrents and the wind. howling as loud as thunder.

Shelley declared that a second attack had been made upon him; he had sent the servant to see what hour it was, and during his brief absence, he heard a noise at the window, and immediately after saw a man's arm thrust through with a pistol, which was fired at him.

The ball passed through the window curtain and Shelley's flannel gown-but he remained unhurt. He took aim at the man, but his pistol again flashed in the pan. He then struck at him with an old sword which he found in the house, which his assailant tried to wrest from him, and was just on the point of succeeding, when his servant re-entered the room. The assassin vanished again before any body else could have time to see him, and what is still more singular, he left no trace behind

him, except the hole in the window curtain and in Shelley's flannel-gown. In relating the story, the poet stated that the ball had penetrated his nightgown and pierced his waistcoat! but where it struck after it had glanced off does not appear.

Such were the singular facts to which Shelley deposed before the sitting magistrate (Mr. Maddocks) the next morning, and considerable excitement and alarm was created in that quiet part of the country, where not even a robbery had taken place for several years.

Medwin tells us that the horrors of the inn

in "Count Fathom " were hardly surpassed by the recital Shelley used to make of this scene; but Mr. Maddocks, after careful consideration of Shelley's statement, arrived at the conclusion that the whole was a horrid apparition conjured up by an over-heated imagination; an opinion, I think, to which all must subscribe when the facts are considered.

I shall have to record later in Shelley's life, his capacity for calling up spectral visitations, and the shadowy world in which his speculations kept him at this time encouraged that