Shelley,
however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend, contrived
a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the Maremma, to
cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the forests,--a boat
of laths and pitched canvas. It held three persons; and he was often
seen on the Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians, who remonstrated
on the danger, and could not understand how anyone could take pleasure
in an exercise that risked life. 'Ma va per la vita!' they exclaimed. I
little thought how true their words would prove. He once ventured, with
a friend, on the glassy sea of a calm day, down the Arno and round the
coast to Leghorn, which, by keeping close in shore, was very
practicable. They returned to Pisa by the canal, when, missing the
direct cut, they got entangled among weeds, and the boat upset; a
wetting was all the harm done, except that the intense cold of his
drenched clothes made Shelley faint. Once I went down with him to the
mouth of the Arno, where the stream, then high and swift, met the
tideless sea, and disturbed its sluggish waters. It was a waste and
dreary scene; the desert sand stretched into a point surrounded by waves
that broke idly though perpetually around; it was a scene very similar
to Lido, of which he had said--
'I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows.
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