Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/27

 DEFENSE OP HARRIET SHELLEY

haps had never existed. How does one do that? How does one see the invisible? It is the fabulist s secret; he knows how to detect what does not exist, he knows how to see what is not seeable; it is his gift, and he works it many a time to poor dead Harriet Shelley s deep damage.

&quot;As yet, however, if there was a speck upon Shelley s happiness it was no more than a speck&quot; meaning the one which one detects where &quot;it may never have gaped at all&quot;- -&quot;nor had Harriet cause for discontent.&quot;

Shelley s Latin instructions to his wife had ceased. &quot;From a teacher he had now become a pupil.&quot; Mrs. BoinviHe and her young married daughter Cornelia were teaching him Italian poetry; a fact which warns one to receive with some caution that other statement that Harriet had no &quot;cause for dis content.&quot;

Shelley had stopped instructing Harriet in Latin, as before mentioned. The biographer thinks that the busy life in London some time back, and the intrusion of the baby, account for this. These were hindrances, but were there no others? He is always overlooking a detail here and there that might be valuable in helping us understand a situation. For instance, when a man has been hard at work at the Italian poets with a pretty woman, hour after hour, and responding like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment in the mean time, that man is dog-tired when he gets home, and he can t teach his wife Latin; it would be unreasonable to expect it.

�� �