Letters from P. B. Shelley to Elizabeth Hitchener. (Bertram Dobell.
5s. net.)—These letters are now published for the first time, and Mr. Bertram Dobell, who furnishes an introduction and notes, expresses his delight that he has been able to give them to the world. We must own that we do not sympathise ; it would have been better, we think, to leave them alone. They are, indeed, to speak plainly, very silly. Mr. Dobell himself says : "Had Shelley lived ten years longer nothing would have galled him more—perhaps even in the last few years of his life it galled him much—than the thought that lie could not destroy the evidences of his inexperience and folly." Is it quite fair, then, to make public the things which the writer would willingly have suppressed ? Can we not enjoy the marvellous poetry of later years without having the foil of the silly things which the poet wrote when he was a lad ? Elizabeth Hitchener was a teacher, the daughter of a publican and ex-smuggler, with whom Shelley became acquainted when he was staying with his uncle, Captain Pilfold, whose daughter took lessons from her. She was about ten years older than the poet, a woman, it would seem, of some ability. Of the letters it is not necessary to say anything. It is a relief when once or twice we get something from the hand of Shelley's wife, Harriet Westbrook. Here there is a gleam of humour, which is conspicuously absent from the rest. The end of the affair is characteristic. The later letters contain vehement entreaties from Shelley that Elizabeth would come and live with them. Shp went, and in five months the arrangement had become impossible. His " guiding star" had become a "brown demon."
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