I cannot help contrasting this action of the wanderer with the careful
self-regard of another friend who often came to see us, though I do
not remember that any of us were ever inside his doors. He was, I
believe, for some time actually a pensioner on Shelley's generosity,
though he ultimately rose to be comparatively wealthy. One night, when
he had been visiting us, he was in trouble because no person had been
sent from a tavern at the top of the hill to light him up the pathway
across the heath. That same self-caring gentleman afterwards became
one of the apologists who most powerfully contributed to mislead
public opinion in regard to his benefactor.
Shelley often called me for a long ramble on the heath, or into
regions which I then thought far distant; and I went with him rather
than with my father, because he walked faster, and talked with
me while he walked, instead of being lost in his own thoughts and
conversing only at intervals. A love of wandering seemed to possess
him in the most literal sense; his rambles appeared to be without
design, or any limit but my fatigue; and when I was "done up,"
he carried me home in his arms, on his shoulder, or pickback.
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