Sometimes they seemed to grow out of his intense meditation, or to present themselves before his eyes as the projection of a powerful inner impression.

All his sensations were abnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination confused the border-lands of the actual and the visionary.

Such a nature as Shelley's, through its far greater susceptibility than is common even when with artistic temperaments, was debarred in moments of high-strung emotion from observing the ordinary distinctions of subject and object; and this peculiar quality must never be forgotten when we seek to estimate the proper proportions of Dichtung and Wahreit in certain episodes of his biography.

The strange story, for example, told by Peacock about a supposed warning he had received in the spring of this year from Mr.Williams of Tremadoc, may possibly be explained on the hypothesis that his brooding thoughts had taken form before him, both ear and eye having been unconsciously pressed into the service of a subjective energy.

(Fraser's Magazine, January, 1860, page 98.) On their return to England in September, Shelley took a cottage at Great Marlow on the Thames, in order to be near his friend Peacock.