and Charles Clainnont to help him with an oar, embarked and went up the river. They passed Reading and Oxford, winding through meadows and woods, till arriving at Lechlade, fourteen miles from the source of the Thames, they still strove to help the boat to reach this point if the boat would not help them. This proved impossible. After three miles, as cows had taken possession of the stream, which only covered their hoofs, the party had perforce to return, still contemplating proceeding by canal and river, even as far as the Clyde, the poet ever yearning forwards. But this, money and prudence forbade, as twenty pounds was needed to pass the first canal; so they returned to their pleasant furnished house at Bishopsgate. On this trip Mary saw Shelley's old quarters at Oxford, where they spent a night, and they must have lingered in Lechlade Churchyard, as the sweet verses there written indicate. Shelley and Mary were now settled for the first time in a home of their own : she was making rapid progress with Latin, having finished the fifth book of the Æneid, much to Shelley's satisfaction, as recounted in a letter to Hogg. Hogg was expected to stay with them in October, and in the meanwhile, under the green shades of Windsor Forest, Shelley was writing his Alastor, and, as his wife describes in her edition of his poems, *' The magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forest scenery we find in the poem," She writes:—
None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn spirit that exists throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, and the breedings of a poet's heart in solitude the mingling of the exulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe inspire with the sad and trying pangs which human passion imparts give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had
