Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/182

170 And lastly, there is the amiably silly effort after reconciliation which takes the shape of 'poor dear Shelley.'

All this is very strange to the new generation. Why this disquietude about Shelley? He is no more to us than any one else. We want to get out of him just what there is to be got; nothing more, nothing less. We have no interest in making him seem other than he is. We do not want to assault him; he does not block the way. We do not want to worship him; he does not appeal to us sufficiently. Why, then, should we take sides over his love affairs with Harriet Westbrook and Mary Godwin? Both the girls were quite uninteresting and unimportant in themselves. All they showed was Shelley's capacity for making a fool of himself over women. But nobody now comes to blows over Byron's separation from his wife, because everybody sees that it was the very best thing that could have happened to him. We take the affair merely as a factor in the formation of his life and character. Why cannot we do the same with Shelley?

This necessity for swallowing or rejecting people in the bulk is a survival of a period totally uncritical, and we should protest against it. The greatest men have the most grave limitations. They have the limitations of their time, the limitations of their