ABSTRACT
62I have observed that I was only absent from London once for nine or ten days in ten years. My object was to see a friend at Amiens, during which I ran on to Paris for a couple of days, after an absence of eleven years. I called on my old friends the Galignani, who were publishing compact editions of English works. I wrote several notices of the lives of the poets for them on my return. Among those required was Shelley, with an engraving of the poet, of which none was extant. I applied to Mrs. Shelley, and she lent me all the assistance in her power. There were few more able or agreeable of her sex than this lady. I believe I was indebted to Horace Smith for my first introduction to one whose talents and memory I shall never cease to esteem. She possessed a very superior mind, and those candid well regulated manners which are founded on truth and sincerity. She was as incapable of double dealing in her words, as she would be of masking her person to deceive strangers. In conversation she bore no resemblance to her father, making allowance for the difference of sex, and that softness of manner in which descriptions are clothed when they fall from woman. She conversed with correctness and elegance, without reserve or affectation. An original thinker, she had also considerable imaginative power. To Shelley she was a most attached wife. I got Mr. R. P. Davis to paint a portrait of Shelley from a picture in his widow’s possession, and under her instructions, in order to prevent Galignani from commencing to engrave a miserable representation very unlike the poet. Mrs. Shelley had the best and only resemblance of her husband, but it was unfinished. I applied to her and she wrote me.
