unsurpassed and unsurpassable; but I can hardly
pardon a man for cruelty and turpitude merely because he produces a few
masterpieces of art.

A confident and serene critic attacks Mr. Arnold very severely because
the latter writer thinks that poets should be amenable to fair and
honest social laws. If I understand the critic aright, we must all be so
thankful for beautiful literary works that we must be ready to let the
producers of such works play any pranks they please under high heaven.
They are the children of genius, and we are to spoil them; "Childe
Harold" and "Manfred" are such wondrous productions that we need never
think of the author's orgies at Venice and the Abbey; "Epipsychidion" is
lovely, so we should not think of poor Harriet Westbrook casting herself
into the Serpentine. This is marvellous doctrine, and one hardly knows
whither it might lead us if we carried it into thorough practice.
Suppose that, in addition to indulging the spoiled children of genius,
we were to approve all the proceedings of the clever children in any
household. I fancy that the dwellers therein would have an unpleasant
time. Noble charity towards human weakness is one thing; but blind
adulation of clever and immoral men is another. We have great need to
pity the poor souls who are the prey of their passions, but we need not
worship them. A large and lofty charity will forgive the shortcomings of
Robert Burns; we may even love that wild and misguided but essentially
noble man. That is well; yet we must not put Burns forward and offer our
adulation in such a way as to set him up for a model to young men. A man
may read--

The pale moon is setting beyont the white wave,
And Time is setting with me, oh!

The pathos will wring his heart; but he should not ask any youth to
imitate the conduct of the great poet. Carlyle said very profoundly that
new morality must be made before we can judge Mirabeau; but Carlyle
never put his hero's excesses in the foreground of his history, nor did
he try to apologize for them; he only said, "Here is a man whose stormy
passions overcame him and drove him down the steep to ruin! Think of him
at his best, pardon him, and imitate, in your weak human fashion, the
infinite Divine Mercy." That is good; and it is certainly very different
from the behaviour of writers who ask us to regard their heroes'
evil-doing as not only pardonable, but as being almost admirable.

This Shelley controvers