Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/47

 DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

letter containing Shelley s self -exposure which we have been considering. This is it. One should in spect the individual sentences as they go by, then pass them in procession and review the cake-walk as a whole :

Shelley s happiness in his home, as is evident from this pathetic letter, had been fatally stricken; it is evident, also, that he knew where duty lay; he felt that his part was to take up his burden, silently and sorrowfully, and to bear it henceforth with the quietness of despair. But we can perceive that he scarcely possessed the strength and fortitude needful for success in such an attempt. And clearly Shelley himself was aware how perilous it was to accept that respite of blissful ease which he enjoyed in the Boinville household: for gentle voices and dewy looks and words of sympathy could not fail to remind him of an ideal of tranquillity or of joy which could never be his, and which he must henceforth sternly exclude from his imagination.

That paragraph commits the author in no way. Taken sentence by sentence it asserts nothing against anybody or in favor of anybody, pleads for nobody, accuses nobody. Taken detail by detail, it is as innocent as moonshine. And yet, taken as a whole, it is a design against the reader; its intent is to re move the feeling which the letter must leave with him if let alone, and put a different one in its place to remove a feeling justified by the letter and substitute one not justified by it. The letter itself gives you no uncertain picture no lecturer is needed to stand by with a stick and point out its details and let on to explain what they mean. The picture is the very clear and remorsefully faithful picture of a fallen and fettered angel who is ashamed of himself; an angel who beats his soiled wings and

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