"You'll excuse me, sir—you'll excuse me, I think; but I could relate to you a fact, and I think I will venture to relate to you a fact connected with the late Mr. Shelley." "Do," said I. "I think I will," replied the tall, stout man, heaving a deep sigh, and erecting himself to his full height, far above my head, and casting a most awful glance at the sky; "I think I will—I think I may venture." "It is certainly something very sad and agonizing," I said to myself; "but I wish he would only bring it out." "Well, then," continued he, with another heave of his capacious chest, and another great glance at the distant horizon, "I certainly will mention it. It was this: When Mr. Shelley left Marlowe, he ordered all his bills to be paid, most honorably, certainly most honorably; and they were paid—all—except—mine! There, sir! it is out; excuse it—excuse it; but I am glad it is out."
"What! a bill!" I exclaimed, in profoundest astonishment; "a bill! was that all?"
"All, sir! all! every thing of the sort; every shilling, I assure you, has been paid but my little account; and it was my fault; I don't know how in the world I forgot to send it in."
"What!" said I, "are you not the squire here? What are you?"
"Oh, Lord! no, sir! I am no squire here! I am a tradesman! I am—in the general way!"
"Drive on!" I said, springing into the carriage; "drive like the Dragon of Wantley out of this place: Shelley is remembered in Marlowe because there was one bill left unpaid!"
There again is fame. It would be a curious thing if the man who deems himself most thoroughly and universally famous, and walks about in the comfortable persuasion of it, could see his fame mapped upon the country. What an odd figure it would make! A few feeble rays shooting here and there, but all around what vast patches of unvisited country, what unilluminated regions, what deserts of oblivion of his name! Shelley lived, and suffered, and spent himself for mankind; and, in the place where he last lived in England, within thirty miles of the great metropolis of genius and knowledge, he is only remembered by a bad joke on his boat, by his disbelief of the devil, and by a forgotten bill. Were it not forgotten, he had been so! Eheu! jam satis.
On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England once more. He was never to return. His own fate and that of Byron were wonderfully alike. The two greatest, most original, most powerful, and influential poets of the age were driven into exile by the public feeling of their country. They could not bring themselves to think on political questions with a large party, nor on religious ones with a still larger; and every species of vituperation and insult was let loose upon them. As if charity and forbearance had been heathen qualities, and wrath and calumny Christian virtues, the British public most loftily resolved not to do as Christ required them—to love those who hated them and despitefully used them—but to hate those who loved them, and had noble virtues, though they had their errors. Their errors should have been lamented, and their doctrines refuted as much as possible; but there is no law, human or divine, that can release us from the law of love, and the command of seventy times seven forgiveness of injuries. Both these great men died in their exile of hatred; the world had its will for the time, and the spirits of these dead outcasts must now have their will, in their deathless volumes, to the end of time.