r generations ceased to
be sentimental and lackadaisical, and was no longer engaged in enchanting
young husbands and sowing sorrow for young wives. But why is that
compliment to that old gentlewoman intruded there? Is it to make the
reader believe she was well-chosen and safe society for a young,
sentimental husband? The biographer's device was not well planned. That
old person was not present--it was her other self that was there, her
young, sentimental, melancholy, warm-blooded self, in those early sweet
times before antiquity had cooled her off and mossed her back.

"In choosing for friends such women as Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and
Cornelia Turner, Shelley gave good proof of his insight and
discrimination." That is the fabulist's opinion--Harriet Shelley's is
not reported.

Early in August, Shelley was in London trying to raise money. In
September he wrote the poem to the baby, already quoted from. In
the first week of October Shelley and family went to Warwick, then
to Edinburgh, arriving there about the middle of the month.

"Harriet was happy." Why? The author furnishes a reason, but hides from
us whether it is history or conjecture; it is because "the babe had borne
the journey well." It has all the aspect of one of his artful devices--
flung in in his favorite casual way--the way he has when he wants to draw
one's attention away from an obvious thing and amuse it with some trifle
that is less obvious but more useful--in a history like this. The
obvious thing is, that Harriet was happy because there was much territory
between her husband and Cornelia Turner now; and because the perilous
Italian lessons were taking a rest; and because, if there chanced to be
any respondings like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or
of sentiment in stock in these days, she might hope to get a share of
them herself; and because, with her husband liberated, now, from the
fetid fascinations of that sentimental retreat so pitilessly described by
Hogg, who also dubbed it "Shelley's paradise" later, she might hope to
persuade him to stay away from it permanently; and because she might also
hope that his brain would cool, now, and his heart become healthy, and
both brain and heart consider the situation and resolve that it would be
a right and manly thing to stand by this girl-wife and her child and see
that they were honorably dealt with, and cherished and protected and
loved by the man that had promised