218 



DISCOVERY 



ments; not I before made by- him: (i) "Two feluccas 

 went out of port at the same time, in the same direction 

 as Shelley's boat." (2) " Her starboard quarter was 

 stove in, evidently by a blow from the sharp bows of 

 a felucca, and, as I have said, being undecked and 

 having three tons and a half of iron ballast, she would 

 have sunk in two minutes." Also in an Appendix to 

 his Records ^ he gives explicitly his belief as to the 

 intentions of the crew who ran down the boat : " They 

 knew there would be a squall ; in that squall they 

 would run down the ' Don Juan ' [the original name 

 for the Ariel], drown the three people on board, and 

 get the bag of dollars which they had seen taken on 

 board. That was what tempted them. They succeeded 

 in all but the last part ; the boat's sinking so suddenly 

 defeated their getting the money." 



In the first instalment of this article I carefully 

 mentioned the matter of Shelley's cashing £50, lent 

 him by Bj-Ton, at Messrs. Webb and Barry's. He took 

 it down to the boat in a canvas bag. " Byron, Shelley, 

 Williams, and myself could not be distinguished by the 

 sailors at the harbour," says Trelawny,^ " and Bjnron's 

 and Shelley's boats had their sails loose ready for sea." 

 Taking all the evidence into account, I am inclined 

 to think that one of the two boats, which put to sea 

 at the same time as the Ariel, rammed her in the behef 

 that BjTon was on board with the money seen either 

 being cashed at the bank or taken down to the boat. 



Or was the plot thicker than this ? Byron had 

 many enemies along the coast. In particular there 

 was Masi, the affray with whom, on March 24th, I 

 dealt with at some length in the first instalment, and 

 who had sworn to have vengeance for his serious 

 injuries. The questions naturally arise, " Did this 

 man have a friend at Messrs. Webb and Barry's ? "or, 

 " Might not he or one of his friends have suggested to 

 the captain of one of the two feluccas that, if he ran 

 down the Ariel in the storm that was brewing, he would 

 find a good prize on board ? " I will not press this 

 supposition further than recalling that — 



(a) Masi had vowed vengeance not only on BjTon, 

 but on Shelley, and all the members of the " pistol 

 party." 



[h) He was a dogged type of individual whose plans 

 of revenge were not likely to have cooled down within 

 three months. 



(c) Miss Trelawny's version of the old sailor's con- 

 fession contains the sentence, "They did not intend to 

 sink the boat, but to board her and murder Bwon." 

 Why did they wish to murder Byron in particular, 

 when they obviously must have known or believed that 

 he was not the only " Inglese " on board ? Why is 

 the word " murder " used in this version [assassinare, I 

 take it, rather than ammazzare) ? 



> Ref. V. Pp. 263-264. 2 Ref. V. P. 115. 



Shelley's body was thrown up on the Tuscan shore, 

 near Via Reggio. It was found on July i6th or 17th. 

 The tall slight figure, the volume of Sophocles in one 

 pocket of the jacket and in the other the last volume 

 of Keats 's poems lately lent him by Hunt " doubled 

 back as if the reader, in the act of reading, had hastily 

 thrust it away," left no doubt in Trelawny's mind as 

 to its identity, though the sea had already done its 

 work. 



(Concluded) 



REFERENCES 

 I. Biagi, Dr. Guido. The Last Days of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 



(T. Fisher Unwin, 1898.) 

 II. Dowden, Edward. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

 Chapters XXIII and XXIV. (New and abridged 

 edition, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 

 1920.) For the details of Shelley's last days the new 

 edition is as serviceable as the two-volume 1886 edition. 

 This admirable work still remains the standard bio- 

 graphy. 

 III. Leigh Hunt. The Autobiography of. (Smith Elder & 



Co., Ltd.) 

 IV. Shelley. The Complete Poetical Works of. Edited by 

 Thomas Hutchinson, M.A., and including Mary Shelley's 

 notes. (Oxford Edition. Henry Frowde : Oxford 

 University Press.) 

 V. Trelawny, E. J. Records of Shelley, Byron, and the A itthor. 

 (George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., The New Universal 

 Librarj-.) First published in 1878, this book is a fuller 

 record than the Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley 

 and Byron, first published in 1858. 

 For further reading on the subject see references at end of 

 first instalment of article. 



Reviews of Books 



THE ENGLISH VILLAGE COMMUNITY 



The English Village : The Origin and Decay of its Com- 

 munity. An Anthropological Interpretation. By 

 Harold Peake, F.S.A. (Benn Bros., Ltd., 15s.) 



The Rural Community. By Llewellyn MacGarr, M.A. 

 (Macniillan & Co., Ltd., 8s.) 



Mr. Peake's study of the English Village Com.inunity is 

 in many respects a notable achievement. It is the work 

 of a scholar of wide reading and acute perception, who 

 has a quick grasp of the essential in a mass of detail, and 

 is able to see it in its proper perspective in relation to the 

 broad outline of his thesis. Its outstanding feature, 

 which to many \\-ill seem the most original, is the manner 

 in wliich Mr. Peake has brought the results of recent 

 anthropological research in the ethnology of Europe and 

 of Britain to bear upon the problems of the origin and form 

 of the Village Community as it appears in the liistorical 

 records of this coimtry. 



Early Village Communities in England fall in the main 

 into three classes : the Moorland Village, which is pastoral 

 rather than agricultural, and is sometimes regarded as 



