Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/141

Rh was love, is so cruelly entangled in the unforeseen consequences of his acts that he seems to have wrought the work of hatred.

What, then, under this presentation of the case, remains to be said for that ideal character which those who love Shelley believe to have been his possession? That, beginning life with a theory which left every desire and impulse free course, which imposed no restrictions except those of his own honor and self-respect, which acknowledged no command not proceeding from his own reason, he yet served the truth he saw with entire loyalty and sincerity of heart; that, making many errors throughout a darkened life, he did not strive by lightness of heart or logical sophistication to avoid their penalties of misery and remorse, but kept them in memory and bore his burden of sorrow courageously; that by intense thought and bitter experience he came at last to find the laws of life and to obey them. He found how impossible it is for the individual to solve the problems put before him, so that he himself grew content to leave many of these in doubt; found how ignorant it was in him to make his own experience the measure of the conditions of general human