arriage laws,
and inconsistently blames him for his inconsistency in marrying Mary
Woolstonecraft. Of that remarkable woman he observes that scepticism
"destroyed in her all that fine, pure feeling which is the glory of the
sex." But the only proof he vouchsafes of this startling statement is
a single sentence from one of her letters, which Mr. Watkinson
misunderstands, as he misunderstands so many passages in Carlyle's
letters, through sheer inability to comprehend the existence of such a
thing as humor. He takes every jocular expression as perfectly serious,
being one of those uncomfortable persons in whose society, as Charles
Lamb said, you must always speak on oath. Mr. Watkinson's readers might
almost exclaim with Hamlet, "How absolute the knave is! We must speak by
the card, or equivocation will undo us."

The next culprit is Shelley, who, we are told, "deserted his young wife
and children in the most shameful and heartless fashion." It does not
matter to Mr. Watkinson that Shelley's relations with Harriet are still
a perplexing problem, or that when they parted she and the children
were well provided for, Nor does he condescend to notice the universal
consensus of opinion among those who were in a position to be informed
on the subject, that Harriet's suicide, more than two years afterwards,
had nothing to do with Shelley's "desertion." Instead of referring to
proper authorities, Mr. Watkinson advises his readers to consult
"Mr. Jeafferson's painstaking volumes on the _Real Shelley_." Mr.
Jeafferson's work is truly painstaking, but it is the work of an
advocate who plays the part of counsel for the prosecution. Hunt,
Peacock, Hogg, Medwin, Lady Shelley, Rossetti, and Professor
Dowden--these are the writers who should be consulted. Shelley was but
a boy when Harriet Westbrook proposed to run away with him. Had he
acted like the golden youth of his age, and kept her for a while as
his mistress, there would have been no scandal. His father, in fact,
declared that he would hear nothing of marriage, but he would keep as
many illegitimate children as Shelley chose to get. It was the intense
chivalry of Shelley's nature that turned a very simple affair into a
pathetic tragedy. Mr. Watkinson's brutal methods of criticism are out
of place in such a problem. He lacks insight, subtlety, delicacy of
feeling, discrimination, charity, and even an ordinary sense of justice.

James Mill is another flagrant sinner. Mr. Watkinson