fled by the northern mail, dropping at York a summons to Hogg
to join them, and contracted a Scottish marriage at Edinburgh
on August 28, 1811.

The story of the two years and nine months during which Shelley
lived with Harriet must seem insane to a rational mind. Life
was one comfortless picnic. When Shelley wanted food, he would
dart into a shop and buy a loaf or a handful of raisins.
Always accompanied by Eliza, they changed their dwelling-place
more than twelve times. Edinburgh, York, Keswick, Dublin,
Nantgwillt, Lynmouth, Tremadoc, Tanyrallt, Killarney, London
(Half Moon Street and Pimlico), Bracknell, Edinburgh again, and
Windsor, successively received this fantastic household. Each
fresh house was the one where they were to abide for ever, and
each formed the base of operations for some new scheme of
comprehensive beneficence. Thus at Tremadoc, on the Welsh
coast, Shelley embarked on the construction of an embankment to
reclaim a drowned tract of land; 'Queen Mab' was written partly
in Devonshire and partly in Wales; and from Ireland, where he
had gone to regenerate the country, he opened correspondence
with William Godwin, the philosopher and author of 'Political
Justice'. His energy in entering upon ecstatic personal
relations was as great as that which he threw into
philanthropic schemes; but the relations, like the schemes,
were formed with no notion of adapting means to ends, and were
often dropped as hurriedly. Eliza Westbrook, at first a woman
of estimable qualities, quickly became "a blind and loathsome
worm that cannot see to sting", Miss Hitchener, who had been
induced to give up her school and come to live with them "for
ever," was discovered to be a "brown demon," and had to be