me
Out of her looks into my vitals came;
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
A killing air which pierced like honey-dew
Into the core of my green heart, and lay
Upon its leaves,--until, as hair grown gray
O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime
With ruins of unseasonable time."

This is a plain and only too intelligible reference to the college
experiences to which I have alluded. The youth for the moment thought
that he had encountered her whom he was seeking, but, instead of the
Florimel, he found her venal, hideous, and fatal _simulacrum_; and
he indicates even the material consequences to himself in his injured
aspect and hair touched with gray. He continues his search.

"In many mortal forms I rashly sought
The shadow of that idol of my thought:
And some were fair,--but beauty dies away;
Others were wise,--but honeyed words betray;
And one was true,--oh! why not true to me?
Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,
I turned upon my thoughts and stood at bay."

"Oh! why not true to me?" has been taken by some very few who were
cognizant of the facts as constituting an imputation on the one whom
he first married; but I am convinced that the interpretation is wrong,
although the surmise on which that interpretation is based was partly
correct. Nothing is more evident than the fact that Harriet possessed
rather an unusual degree of ability, but enormously less than Shelley
desired in the being whom he sought, and equally less than his
idealizing estimate originally ascribed to her. It is also plain, from
her own letters, that she courted his approval in a way far too common
with the wives of the artist-tribe, and perhaps with most wives: not
being exactly what he wished her to be, and lacking the faculties to
become so, she tried to seem it. The desire was partly sincere, partly
an affectation, as we discern in such little trifles as her suddenly
using the word "thou" in a letter to Hookham where she had previously
been using the ordinary colloquial "you." That she was not quite
ingenuous we also detect in the fast-and-loose conduct which enabled
her, while affecting to become what Shelley deemed her to be, also to
play into the hands of very inferior people, who must sometimes have
counselled her against him behind his back; and this, I am sure, is
what he means by "Oh! why not true to me?" though he may include
in the question a fervent regret for the fate which attend