my spirits are much improved. They had been improving, indeed, before I left the baths, after the deep dejection of the early part of the year."

Medwin, who was his guest at this time, presents to us a painful picture of the state of his mind. He had arrived from England, at Shelley's invitation, to pass the winter with him, and, suffering already from a long residence in the East, the journey to Italy brought on a severe attack of illness.

During six weeks the poet watched over him with the most affectionate zeal, applying his leeches, and administering his medicines, and attending upon him with even womanly tender

ness.

Reading many of his works now, for the first time, with admiration and delight, Medwin tells us that the poet was surprised at his enthusiasm, and would say

"I am disgusted with writing; and were it not for an irresistible impulse, that predominates my better reason, should discontinue so doing."

On such occasions he fell into a despondent

mood, most distressing to witness; was affected with prostration of spirit, that bent him to the earth; a melancholy too sacred to notice, and which it had been in vain to attempt to dispute.*

Nor was mental prostration the only thing he had to contend with. The pain in his side had returned, if it may be said that it ever left him, with increased violence, as well as those violent spasmodic pains which would sometimes, during their violent paroxysms, force him to lie on the ground till they were over, though they never made him querulous or irritable; "but," says Leigh Hunt, "he had always a kind word to give to those about him, when his pangs allowed him to speak."

Medwin, who was a believer in animal magnetism, consented, at Shelley's earnest request, to try its efficacy in his case; and one evening, in the presence of Mrs. Shelley and another lady, when he was violently attacked, he tells us, he succeeded in mesmerizing him. He says"The imposition of my hand on his forehead nstantly put a stop to his spasms, and threw

* Medwin's Life of Shelley.

him into a deep slumber, which, for want of a better name, has been called somnambulism.

"He slept with his eyes open. During the continuance of it, I led him from one part of the room to the sofa at the other end; and when the trance was over, after the manner of all somnambulists, he would not admit that he had slept, or that he had made any replies, which I elicited from him by questioning; those replies being pitched in the same tone of voice as my own. He also, during a second experiment, improvised some Italian verses, which were faultless, although, at the time, he had never written

one.

This mesmerism was continued afterwards by Mrs. Shelley and another lady, we are told, with success; and the poet is said to have replied to the question as to its disease and its cure,

"What would cure me would kill me."

But the practice was discontinued, as it revived his old habit of walking in his sleep.

Such is Medwin's account of this experiment in animal magnetism, and I give it for the benefit of those who are converts to that belief,

* Medwin's Life of Shelley.

no less than for the consideration of those who are not.

We have a description also of the poet's personal appearance at this time, from the hand of Medwin, to whom it may be presumed he presented a very different appearance from when he parted from him many years previous.

says,

He

"It was nearly seven years since we had parted, but I should immediately have cognised him in a crowd. His figure was emaciated and somewhat bent, owing to nearsightedness, and his being forced to lean over his books, with his eyes almost touching them; his hair still profuse, and curling naturally, was partially interspersed with grey; but his appearance was youthful, and his countenance, whether grave or animated, strikingly intellectual."

This extreme youthfulness of appearance Shelley never lost, and, when at Geneva with Lord Byron, a gentleman once took him for a boy of seventeen, and was astonished at the subtilty of his remarks and the great deference which Byron seemed to pay to him; nor was his as

tonishment the less when he found he had thus been criticising Shelley.

Such, however, were the exterior marks, together with his noble disinterestedness and unworldliness of character, which gained for him the epithet of "The Eternal Child.” *

Of the many friends that gathered round him at Pisa, the celebrated Vacca, whom Lord Byron pronounced the first surgeon on the continent, was one of the most intimate. His extensive practice, no less than ill-health, which soon after carried him off to an untimely grave, precluded their meeting often, but Vacca's ardent love for his country, and he enthusiasm with which he looked forward to its regeneration, was sure to find sympathy in the poet's nature.

In conjunction with many of the more enlightened of his countrymen, he constantly sought hope and encouragement for his noble aspirations in the cause of Italy, in its present distracted state, against its oppressors.

* See Gilfillan's Gallery of Literary Portraits.