of half-a-dozen poets. It seems that, after serving in the
navy and deserting from an East Indiaman at Bombay, he passed,
in the Eastern Archipelago, through the incredible experiences
narrated in his 'Adventures of a Younger Son'; and all this
before he was twenty-one, for in 1813 he was in England and
married. Then he disappeared, bored by civilisation; nothing
is known of him until 1820, when he turns up in Switzerland in
pursuit of sport and adventure. After Shelley's death he went
to Greece with Byron, joined the rebel chief Odysseus, married
his sister Tersitza, and was nearly killed in defending a cave
on Mount Parnassus. Through the subsequent years, which
included wanderings in America, and a narrow escape from
drowning in trying to swim Niagara, he kept pressing Shelley's
widow to marry him. Perhaps because he was piqued by Mary's
refusal, he has left a rather unflattering portrait of her. He
was indignant at her desire to suppress parts of 'Queen Mab';
but he might have admired the honesty with which she retained
'Epipsychidion', although that poem describes her as a "cold
chaste moon." The old sea-captain in Sir John Millais'
picture, "The North-West Passage," now in the Tate Gallery in
London, is a portrait of Trelawny in old age.

To return to the Shelleys. It was decided that the summer of
1822 should be spent with the Williamses, and after some search
a house just capable of holding both families was found near
Lerici, on the east side of the Bay of Spezzia. It was a
lonely, wind-swept place, with its feet in the waves. The
natives were half-savage; there was no furniture, and no
facility for getting provisions. The omens opened badly. At
the moment of moving in, news of Allegra's death came; Shelley