surpassed his expectations; and the unspeakable beauty of Naples and its
environs added to the impression he received of the transcendent and
glorious beauty of Italy.

Our winter was spent at Naples. Here he wrote the fragments of
"Marenghi" and "The Woodman and the Nightingale", which he afterwards
threw aside. At this time, Shelley suffered greatly in health. He put
himself under the care of a medical man, who promised great things, and
made him endure severe bodily pain, without any good results. Constant
and poignant physical suffering exhausted him; and though he preserved
the appearance of cheerfulness, and often greatly enjoyed our wanderings
in the environs of Naples, and our excursions on its sunny sea, yet many
hours were passed when his thoughts, shadowed by illness, became
gloomy,--and then he escaped to solitude, and in verses, which he hid
from fear of wounding me, poured forth morbid but too natural bursts of
discontent and sadness. One looks back with unspeakable regret and
gnawing remorse to such periods; fancying that, had one been more alive
to the nature of his feelings, and more attentive to soothe them, such
would not have existed. And yet, enjoying as he appeared to do every
sight or influence of earth or sky, it was difficult to imagine that any
melancholy he showed was aught but the effect of the constant pain to
which he was a martyr.

We lived in utter solitude. And such is often not the nurse of
cheerfulness; for then, at least with those who have been exposed to
adversity, the mind broods over its sorrows too intently; while the
society of the enlightened, the witty, and the wise, enables us to
forget ourselves by making us the sharers of the thoughts of others,
which is a portion of the philosophy of happiness. Shelley never liked
society in numbers,--it harassed and wearied him; but neither did he