They had forgotten their passport; but Shelley's irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, and they entered Venice--only in time, however, for the child to die.
Nearly the whole of the winter was spent in Naples, where Shelley suffered from depression of more than ordinary depth.

Mrs.Shelley attributed this gloom to the state of his health, but Medwin tells a strange story, which, if it is not wholly a romance, may better account for the poet's melancholy.

He says that so far back as the year 1816, on the night before his departure from London, "a married lady, young, handsome, and of noble connexions," came to him, avowed the passionate love she had conceived for him, and proposed that they should fly together.

(Medwin's Life of Shelley, volume 1 324.

His date, 1814, appears from the context to be a misprint.) He explained to her that his hand and heart had both been given irrevocably to another, and, after the expression of the most exalted sentiments on both sides, they parted.