panada. Hogg relates how, when he was walking in the streets and felt
hungry, he would dive into a baker's shop and emerge with a loaf tucked
under his arm. $This he consumed as he went along, very often reading at
the same time, and dodging the foot-passengers with the rapidity of
movement which distinguished him. He could not comprehend how any man
should want more than bread. "I have dropped a word, a hint," says Hogg,
"about a pudding; a pudding, Bysshe said dogmatically, is a prejudice."
This indifference to diet was highly characteristic of Shelley. During
the last years of his life, even when he was suffering from the frequent
attacks of a painful disorder, he took no heed of food; and his friend,
Trelawny, attributes the derangement of his health, in a great measure,
to this carelessness. Mrs. Shelley used to send him something to eat
into the room where he habitually studied; but the plate frequently
remained untouched for hours upon a bookshelf, and at the end of the day
he might be heard asking, "Mary, have I dined?" His dress was no less
simple than his diet. Hogg says that he never saw him in a great coat,
and that his collar was unbuttoned to let the air play freely on his
throat. "In the street or road he reluctantly wore a hat; but in fields
and gardens, his little round head had no other covering than his long,
wild, ragged locks." Shelley's head, as is well known, was remarkably
small and round; he used to plunge it several times a day in cold water,
and expose it recklessly to the intensest heat of fire or sun. Mrs.
Shelley relates that a great part of the "Cenci" was written on their
house-roof near Leghorn, where Shelley lay exposed to the unmitigated
ardour of Italian summer heat; and Hogg describes him reading Homer by a
blazing fire-light, or roasting his skull upon the hearth-rug by the
hour.

These personal details cannot be omitted by the biographer of such a man
as Shelley. He was an elemental and primeval creature, as little subject