Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/28

 MARK TWAIN

Up to this time we have submitted to having Mrs. Boinville pushed upon us as ostensibly concerned in these Italian lessons, but the biographer drops her now, of his own accord. Cornelia &quot;perhaps&quot; is sole teacher. Hogg says she was a prey to a kind of sweet melancholy, arising from causes purely im aginary; she required consolation, and found it in Petrarch. He also says, &quot;Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and caught the soft infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest melancholy, as every true poet ought.&quot;

Then the author of the book interlards a most stately and fine compliment to Cornelia, furnished by a man of approved judgment who knew her well &quot;in later years.&quot; It is a very good compliment indeed, and she no doubt deserved it in her &quot;later years,&quot; when she had for generations ceased to be sentimental and lackadaisical, and was no longer en gaged in enchanting young husbands and sowing sorrow for young wives. But why is that compliment to that old gentlewoman intruded there? Is it to make the reader believe she was well-chosen and safe society for a young, sentimental husband? The biographer s device was not well planned. That old person was not present it was her other self that was there, her young, sentimental, melancholy, warm-blooded self, in those early sweet times be fore antiquity had cooled her off and mossed her back.

&quot;In choosing for friends such women as Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and Cornelia Turner, Shel ley gave good proof of his insight and discrimi-

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