Edward John Trelawney, Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (Chp. 9):
Shelley was in high glee, and full of fun, as he generally was after these “distractions,” as he called them. The fact was his excessive mental labor impeded, if it did not paralyze, his bodily functions. When his mind was fixed on a subject, his mental powers were strained to the utmost. If not writing or sleeping, he was reading; he read whilst eating, walking, or traveling – the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning – not the ephemeral literature of the day, which requires little or no thought, but the works of the old sages, metaphysicians, logicians, and philosophers, of the Grecian and Roman poets, and of modern scientific men, so that anything that could divert or relax his overstrained brain was of the utmost benefit to him. Now he talked of nothing but ships, sailors, and the sea; and although he agreed with Johnson that a man who made a pun would pick a pocket, yet he made several in Greek, which he at least thought good, for he shrieked with laughter as he uttered them. Fearing his phil-Hellenism would end by making him serious, as it always did, I brought his mind back by repeating some lines of Sedley’s, beginning
Love still has something of the sea
From whence his mother rose.
During the rest of our drive we had nothing but sea yarns. He regretted having wasted his life in Greek and Latin, instead of learning the useful arts of swimming and sailoring.
