Percy Bysshe Shelley from a friend, Shelley wrote him a letter inviting him to join him at his residence at Pisa. Keats replied with hopes of seeing him, but instead, arrangements were made for Keats to travel to Rome with the artist Joseph Severn. Inspired by the death of Keats, in 1821 Shelley wrote the elegy "Adonais". In 1821 Shelley met Edward Ellerker Williams, a British naval officer, and his wife Jane Williams. Shelley developed a very strong affection towards Jane and addressed a number of poems to her. In the poems addressed to Jane, such as "With a Guitar, To Jane" and
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady above in his "Journal" on more than one occasion [see December 5, 1750 and July 4, 1786].) Samuel Johnson in his "Lives of the Poets" also faulted the "Elegy" on similar grounds, referring to "the illaudable singularity of treating suicide with respect." A different kind of criticism, one on artistic grounds, is made by Maynard Mack in his important biography "Alexander Pope: A Life." Mack acknowledges that there are beautiful passages in the poem, but also finds that it is marked by a certain incoherence between elements and attitudes which are not fully reconciled, such as the idea of Roman