Trelawney were present when the body of
Shelley was burned; so that his ashes were saved, and buried in the
Protestant burial-ground at Rome, near the grave of Keats, whose body
had been laid there in the spring of the preceding year. _Cor Cordium_
were the words inscribed by his widow on the tomb of the poet.
The character of Shelley has been sadly maligned. Whatever faults he may
have committed against society, they were not the result of sensuality.
One of his biographers, who was his companion at Oxford, and who does
not seem inclined to do him _more_ than justice, asserts that while
there his conduct was immaculate. The whole picture he gives of the
youth, makes it easy to believe this. To discuss the moral question
involved in one part of his history would be out of place here; but even
on the supposition that a man's conduct is altogether inexcusable in
individual instances, there is the more need that nothing but the truth
should be said concerning that, and other portions thereof. And whatever
society may have thought itself justified in making subject of
reprobation, it must be remembered that Shelley was under less
obligation to society than most men.
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