Hunt, 'I heard strange and alarming shrieks, mixed with the voice of a man. The next day it was reported, by the gossips, that Mr. Shelley, no Christian (for it was he who was there), had brought some very strange female into the house, no better of course than she ought to be. The real Christian had puzzled them: Mr. Shelley, in coming to our house that night, had found a woman, lying near the top of the hill, in fits. It was a fierce winter night, with snow upon the ground, and winter loses nothing of its fierceness at Hampstead. My friend, always the promptest, as well as most pitying, on these occasions, knocked at the first houses he could reach, in order to have her taken in, but the invariable answer was that they could not do it. At last, my friend sees a carriage driving up to a house at a little distance. The knock is given; the warm door opens; servants and lights pour forth. Now, thought he, is the time. He puts on his best address, which anybody might recognize for that of the highest gentleman, as well as an interesting individual, and plants himself in the way of an elderly person, who is stepping out of the carriage with his family. He tells his story; and asks him if he will go and see the poor woman. 'No, sir; there's no necessity for that sort of thing, depend on it; imposters swarm everywhere, the thing cannot be done. Sir, your conduct is extraordinary.' 'Sir,' cried Mr. Shelley, at last, forcing the flourishing householder to stop, out of astonishment, 'I am sorry to say that your conduct is not extraordinary; and, if my own seems to amaze you, I will tell you something that may amaze you a little more, and, I hope, will frighten. It is such men as madden the spirits and patience of the poor and wretched; and, if ever a convulsion comes in this country, which is very probable, recollect what I tell you; you will have your house, that you refuse to put this miserable woman into, burnt over your head.' 'God bless me, sir! dear me, sir!' exclaimed the frightened wretch, and fluttered into his mansion. The woman was then brought to our house, which was at some distance, and down a bleak path; the next day my friend sent her comfortably home and, adds Mr. Hunt, this was one of the most ordinary of Shelley's actions.
As a poet, we think Shelley has never been surpassed; and we could point out many of his passages which are without their equal, even if we look for their parallel in the works of Shakspeare, Byron, and Milton. But the wild speculative sublimity of his thoughts, the refined intellectuality of his ideas, and the mysterious intertexture of sentiment with feeling, which are the characteristics of his poetry, will always hinder him from becoming popular. Yet, with all this, there is a simplicity about his writings, as remarkable, it has been observed, as its views and speculations are remote and peculiar. A very just notion of his style has been taken by the biographer to whom we have before alluded, who observes, that in all Shelley's works there is a wonderfully sustained sensibility, and a language lofty and fit for it. 'He has the art,' continues the same authority, 'of using the stateliest words and the most learned idioms without incurring the charge of pedantry, so that passages of more splendid and sonorous writing are not to be selected from any writer since the days of Milton; and yet, when he descends from his ideal world, and comes home to us in our humble bowers, and is yearning after love and affection, he attunes the most natural feelings to a style so proportionate, and withal to a modulation so truly musical, that there is nothing to surpass it in the lyrics of Beaumont and
