LETTER XXI.

To MR. AND MRS. LEIGH HUNT.

Great Marlow, 29th June, 1817.

MY DEAR FRIENDS,

I performed my promise, and arrived here the night after I set off. Everybody up to this minute has been and continues well. I ought to have written yesterday, for to-day, I know not how, I have so constant a pain in my side, and such a depression of strength and spirits, as to make my holding the pen whilst I write to you an almost intolerable exertion. This, you know, with me is transitory. Do not mention that I am unwell to your nephew; for the advocate of a new system of diet is held bound to be invulnerable by disease, in the same manner as the sectaries of a new system of religion are held to be more moral than other people, or as a reformed parliament must at least be assumed as the remedy of all political evils. No one will change the diet, adopt the religion, or reform the parliament else.

Well, I am very anxious to hear how you get on, and I intreat Marianne to excite Hunt not to delay a minute in writing the necessary letters, and in informing me of the result. Kings are only to be approached through their ministers; who indeed as Marianne shall know to her cost, if she don't take care, are responsible not only for all their commissions, but, a more dreadful responsibility, for all their omissions. And I know not who has

a right to the title of king, if not according to the Stoics, he to whom the King of kings had delegated the prerogative of lord of the creation.

Let me know how Henry gets on, and make my best respects to your brother and Mrs. Hunt. Adieu.

Always most affectionately yours,

P. B. S.

APPENDIX TO PROSE WORKS,

VOLS. I, II, AND III.

CONTENTS OF THE APPENDIX.

I. Letter on the Candidature of Lord Grenville.

II. Reports of Speech in Fishamble Street Theatre, Dublin.

III. Account from the Dublin Weekly Messenger of Shelley's

Speech.

IV. Letter of "An Englishman" to The Dublin Journal.

V. Letter of "A Dissenter" to Faulkner's Dublin Journal.

VI. Official Papers connected with Shelley's Visit to Ireland.

VII. The Four Ages of Poetry, by T. L. Peacock.

VIII. Letter of Messrs. Ballantyne & Co. concerning The Wander-

ing Jew.

IX. Letters to Stockdale, from Sir T. Shelley and T. J. Hogg.

APPENDIX.

I.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF "THE MORNING CHRONICLE," ON THE CANDIDATURE OF LORD GRENVILLE FOR THE CHANCELLORSHIP OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.'

SIR, It has been truly said, that a silly friend is frequently more injurious than a decided enemy. This observation recurred to me while reading in the Courier, a letter from an injudicious opponent of Lord Grenville, in which the attention of the University of Oxford is called to the personal pretensions of the three Candidates, for the vacant Chancellorship. Now, it is only by keeping out of sight the personal inferiority of the Duke of Beaufort and Lord Eldon, by the artful introduction of extraneous

Lord Grenville. . .' At the bottom of this puddle of inaccuracies one would look to find a basis of solid fact. Mr. MacCarthy (Shelley's Early Life, p. 24) found in The Morning Chronicle for the 15th of November, 1809, a date long before Shelley went to Oxford, a letter on this subject signed "A. M. Oxon." There is some reason to think this letter was written by Sir Timothy Shelley, with his son's assistance. It is therefore included in the Appendix to Shelley's Prose Works.