calls this theory an "eternal law."
For, in this life of illusion, it is in passionate love that we most
nearly attain to communion with the eternal reality. Hence the more of
it the better. The more we divide and spread our love, the more nearly
will the fragments of goodness and beauty that are in each of us find
their true fruition. This doctrine may be inconvenient in practice, but
it is far removed from vulgar sensualism, of which Shelley had not a
trace. Hogg says that he was "pre-eminently a ladies' man," meaning that
he had that childlike helplessness and sincerity which go straight to
the hearts of women. To this youth, preaching sublime mysteries, and
needing to be mothered into the bargain, they were as iron to the
magnet. There was always an Eve in his Eden, and each was the "wonder
of her kind"; but whoever she was--Harriet Grove, Harriet Westbrook,
Elizabeth Hitchener, Cornelia Turner, Mary Godwin, Emilia Viviani,
or Jane Williams--she was never a Don Juan's mistress; she was an
incarnation of the soul of the world, a momentary mirror of the eternal.
Such an attitude towards the least controllable of passions has several
drawbacks: it involves a certain inhumanity, and it is only possible for
long to one who remains ignorant of himself and cannot see that part of
the force impelling him is blind attraction towards a pretty face. It
also has the result that, if the lover is a poet, his love-songs will be
sad. Obsessed by the idea of communion with some divine perfection, he
must needs be often cast down, not only by finding that, Ixion-like,
he has embraced a cloud (as Shelley said of himself and Emilia), but
because, even when the object of his affection is worthy, complete
communion is easier to desire than to attain. Thus Shelley's love-songs
are just what might be expected. If he does strain to the moment of
ingress into the divine being, it is to swoon with excess of bliss, as
at the end of 'Epipsychidion', or as in the 'Indian Serenade':

"Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!"

More often he exhales pure melancholy:

"See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother.
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?"

Here the failure is foreseen; he knows she will not kiss him. Sometimes
hi