Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/59

 DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

And so perhaps while Harriet was walking the

floor nights, trying to get her poem by heart her

husband was doing a fresh one for the other girl

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin with sentiments

like these in it :

Exhibit G

To spend years thus and be rewarded, As thou, sweet love, requited me When none were near. . . . thy lips did meet Mine tremblingly;. ..

Gentle and good and mild thou art, Nor can I live if thou appear Aught but thyself. . ..

And so on. &quot; Before the close of June it was known and felt by Mary and Shelley that each was inex pressibly dear to the other.&quot; Yes, Shelley had found this child of sixteen to his liking, and had wooed and won her in the graveyard. But that is nothing; it was better than wooing her in her nursery, at any rate, where it might have disturbed the other children.

However, she was a child in years only. From the day that she set her masculine grip on Shelley he was to frisk no more. ; ^If she had occupied the only kind and gentle Harriet s place in March it would have been a thrilling spectacle to see her invade the Boinville rookery and read the riot act. That holi day of Shelley s would have been of short duration, and Cornelia s hair would have been as gray as her mother s when the services were over.

Hogg went to the Godwin residence in Skinner

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