He had formed to himself a beau ideal of all that is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this ideal even to the very letter." Toward the end of June the two poets made the tour of Lake Geneva in their boat, and were very nearly wrecked off the rocks of Meillerie.

On this occasion Shelley was in imminent danger of death from drowning.

His one anxiety, however, as he wrote to Peacock, was lest Byron should attempt to save him at the risk of his own life.

Byron described him as "bold as a lion;" and indeed it may here be said, once and for all, that Shelley's physical courage was only equalled by his moral fearlessness.
He carried both without bravado to the verge of temerity, and may justly be said to have never known what terror was.

Another summer excursion was a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable descriptions in his letters to Peacock, and in the somewhat Coleridgian verses on Mont Blanc.