Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/183

Rh temperaments. How can it be otherwise? There is room for plenty of destructive criticism on them all, before we have passed through the empty thunder and spectacular lightning, and can hear 'the still small voice' that is the clear and eternal note of the Godhead. Since we speak of Shelley, let us speak of him with absolute simplicity and candour. He can afford to be spoken of in that way; indeed, no other way is worth the attempting, and surely, if he were alive and one of us, he himself would be the first to agree to this.

It is absurd to claim for him any great practical abilities. His ignorance of life and living was extreme. His personal relations make up one long list of grotesque misconceptions. He was, in the obvious sense of the word, a visionary, and his violent antagonisms were far more caused by his disgust with the contact of reality than by any genuine appreciation of the relative values of good and evil. He made no sane and conscious effort to understand things. He did not know how to strike injustice in its weakest part, or how best to help on the downtrodden. He wasted three-fourths of his energy on side-issues. He was always taking seriously the wrong people and the wrong ideas. He held Harriet Westbrook for a victim of social oppression, whereas she was merely the average