This excerpt from The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Thomas Medwin is KILLING me.
Medwin was Shelley's cousin; he knew Shelley and Byron and their circle, and later fabricated much of what he wrote about them, to the hatred of Mrs. Shelley. However, considering Shelley's frequent complaints even in letters of his complex jealousy toward Byron (and subsequent guilt for it), and considering Shelley's dramatic use of language, I can completely imagine him going on heated rants about "the Byronic Energy." That's so him. This is the same dude who wrote a poem for Byron starting with the lines "If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill / Pleasure" and ending with the lines "the worm beneath the sod / May lift itself in worship to the God" like ummm! . . . bro was enchanted . . . the Byronic Energy really did take his powers . . .













