_Shelley's death_
Pisa, 25 _July_, 1822.
Dear Horace,
I trust that the first news of the dreadful calamity which has
befallen us here will have been broken to you by report, otherwise I
shall come upon you with a most painful abruptness; but Shelley, my
divine-minded friend, your friend, the friend of the universe, he has
perished at sea. He was in a boat with his friend Captain Williams,
going from Leghorn to Lerici, when a storm arose, and it is supposed
the boat must have foundered. It was on the 8th instant, about four
or five in the evening, they guess. A fisherman says he saw the boat
a few minutes before it went down: he looked again and it was gone. He
saw the boy they had with them aloft furling one of the sails. We hope
his story is true, as their passage from life to death will then have
been short; and what adds to the hope is, that in S's pocket (for the
bodies were both thrown on shore some days afterwards,--conceive our
horrible certainty, after trying all we could to hope!) a copy of
Keats's last volume, which he had borrowed of me to read on his
passage, was found _open_ and doubled back as if it had been thrust
in, in the hurry of a surprise. God bless him! I cannot help thinking
of him as if he were alive as much as ever, so unearthly he always
appeared to me, and so seraphical a thing of the elements; and this
is what all his friends say. But what we all feel, your own heart will
tell you....
It has been often feared that Shelley and Captain Williams would meet
with some accident, they were so hazardous; but when they set out on
the 8th, in the morning it was fine. Our dear friend was passionately
fond of the sea, and has been heard to say he should like it to be his
death-bed....